I’m going to Glastonbury this weekend. I’ve been before, but any fashion tips? I’m 24.
Ellie, by email
It never fails to amaze me that anyone associates festivals – especially festivals held in Britain – with fashion. And yet, judging by the 10,785,943 emails I’ve received just today from fashion PR companies full of “festival fashion suggestions!!!!”, I seem to be in the minority on this. Personally, I approach dressing for festivals in the same way I tackle dressing for longhaul flights: as if I’m about to embark on an endurance test. I gaze upon those who place style over comfort in these scenarios with a feeling that is a mix of 10% admiration and 90% bewilderment.
I appreciate that Glastonbury has developed a reputation for being a catwalk in a field – a Milan-in-Somerset, if you will – thanks to the endless pap photos of celebrities milling about stylishly backstage. But what no one seems to realise is that these celebrities are all staying either in Babington House or in massive Airstream mobile homes in the VIP section, which have luxuries such as indoor plumbing and plug sockets. Therefore, they are not exactly representative of the festival look. It’s easy to look good when you can have a hot shower every morning and a blow-dry; less so when your only form of personal hygiene for four days is a wet wipe.
And the cold! My main memories of Glastonbury involve freezing at 3am and wandering around in the dark drizzle, looking for my sleeping bag. The idea of taking up valuable packing space with a feather boa instead of another sweatshirt is as anathema to me as skipping lunch in order to buy shoes. Why would I need shoes when I’d be lying on the floor having fainted from hunger?
I think the big misapprehension about Glastonbury – about any big event – is that people care what you’re wearing. They don’t. They’re too busy looking for their damn sleeping bag. We’re so used to seeing the festival via the photos of celebrities that it’s easy to confuse these images with reality, and believe that we’re all being looked at, too. I made this mistake when I went to LA last year to cover the Oscars for this paper and, on some unconscious level, imagined that people would be looking at my clothes on the red carpet the way I had, for so many years, looked at theirs. It turned out, amazingly, that no one gave a stuff what I wore, because they were too busy staring at Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett.
“No one’s looking at you,” was one of the most reassuring things a teacher told me when I was a teenager, crippled by self-consciousness. It liberated me to stop worrying about how I thought people wanted me to look and just be how I wanted to be. Of course, this maxim doesn’t work so well now, given that everyone is their own paparazzo, posting their selfies online and hoping for likes. But I maintain it is a useful message for life.
Look, I salute anyone with the constitution to plan a Glastonbury look, and if it helps you get in the mood, go to it. But I personally find that being warm and dry is the only moodsetter I need, and if I achieve that with three sweatshirts, a cagoule, some old thermal leggings and pair of boots, well, I’m pretty pleased with my Glastonbury look. You’re going into a warzone, Ellie. Arm yourself.
Final word: anyone who wears flip-flops to Glastonbury needs psychiatric assistance immediately. Seriously, have you seen the toilets? You might as well save yourself the effort of even going to Somerset. Just inject gangrene directly into your heel and head to the amputations wing of a hospital. Happy to help!
How wrong is it to wear your maternity clothes after the baby has been born?
Me, here
The question is not really about its wrongness, but its viability. In short, do you look weird wearing maternity clothes when the baby is on your exterior instead of your interior? I really wanted to believe not. Having spent however much money on those clothes, it seems absurd to wear them for only six months and then chuck them away. Surely they can be incorporated into your normal wardrobe?
Not so much. After giving birth, I accepted I’d have to get rid of the maternity jeans with their bizarre elasticated knit waistbands, although I kept one pair to be worn when eating Christmas lunch (my Christmas day look is as stylish as my Glastonbury one). But, I thought, if I still wore the draped maternity tops, I would look fine. And I did, if by “fine” you mean “kinda pregnant”. True, it was fun to see the look of sheer horror on the face of the person I live with when I came down to breakfast that morning, but it was not quite the chic look I aspired to that day.
