I’m not saying I peaked at two, but I certainly gave myself an uphill struggle. This jacket was from M&S, or St Michael to be precise. Bomber-style, it was white cotton with red, blue and yellow stripes. It was jolly and innocent in the way of a deckchair, and I appear to have worn it a lot in 1986 and 1987, with mustard dungarees, or shorts and T-shirts in clashing prints. On my feet, I am often pictured wearing scuffed white trainers or a pair of T-bar shoes that are still stashed away in an attic in Sheffield. They were my first proper pair of shoes and, as I would tell anyone who would listen, they were burgundy, not red.
I was too young then to be able to remember anything concrete from this period, and what I can recall is filtered through grainy family photo albums: vast, northern French skies and wide sandy beaches, jellies (the shoes) and Calippos. My dad’s BMW, the smell of his cigar smoke clinging to the leather seats and the packet of Soft Mints that was always in the glovebox. Crazy golf and grownups’ parties where women in mists of perfume laughed raucously about things I couldn’t understand.
I wore this jacket to meet Bertie Bassett, a figure whose pink face and liquorice nose loomed large over my childhood because my mum worked for the company. No wonder it reminds me of the carefreeness of being two, or three, or four. But I think what I love the most about this look is what I love about a lot of children’s clothes: it’s not just the garments themselves but the way they get worn, truly worn. Outfits get thrown together at that age; kids don’t “curate”, they chuck. Sequin frocks over jogging bottoms; straw hats that need to be worn on a cold day in December with a snowsuit; orange teamed unapologetically with red, pink and an exclamation of purple.
This jacket speaks to a time before my awkward preteen years and my mistaken belief that shin pads were an acceptable everyday accessory, with or without the full Sheffield Wednesday strip. It also speaks to the present because once, scrolling Vinted late at night while feeding my few-month-old daughter, I found the same jacket for sale. It was marked up as “vintage” and going for a silly amount; old St Michael’s is sought-after stuff. I bought it regardless and my daughter Olive has since worn it while learning to scoot, dribbling her way through strawberry lollies and sitting on the same overcast beaches in northern France.
I like this idea of clothes as an echo of the past, even if it seems a lot to load on to a jacket. Plus, the way Olive wears it, wears everything, speaks to that unabashed confidence of childhood. This morning, for nursery, it was paired with a dinosaur T-shirt with a tutu and Crocs. Olive swaggers like she has dancehall running through her head; no doubt, no fear. I could use a bit of that. If only they did the jacket in my size.
