But you see them together and you think that some sort of game is being played, surely.  That the girls fumbling with purses on the street corners are deliberately emulating the hookers of bigger cities; that the blokes, staggering in zig-zag patterns, letting their English voices loose upon the town, are deliberately ignoring every siren call until the last, choosing not to look up a zebra-patterned skirt or at the way a pair of rubber legs is crossed.  Each human his (or her) own, complete, exhibit.  And each exhibiting for an invisible audience.  Not for the disdainful eyes of you or me, or of the girl in jeans holding her boyfriend’s hand.  No, not for us do they strut and pose.

But now, here I am, hours away from what should be a much-needed romantic and relaxing getaway (nothing better than abandoning the week halfway through, pretending to live more spontaneously than we do), trying to mentally pack, and all I can think is this (and I know it’s shallow, but somehow the fate of this experience seems tied to how well I’m dressed when we arrive):

What on earth do posh people wear when it’s raining?

One of my favorite pastimes is to peruse online shops for hours, actually hours, on end.  Select things I would buy if I could.  I hate this lustful nature of mine, this hunger for things; but I seek comfort in it anyway.  I like to think about what Jeanette Winterson wrote in her preface to Oranges are not the Only Fruit: “When Keats was depressed he put on a clean shirt. When Radclyffe Hall was oppressed she ordered new sets of silk underwear from Jermyn Street.”  And I think: if a clean shirt or a new set of silk underwear (ah how I’d love to order sets of silk underwear, how I’d love, even, to have matching underwear, something that said “sexy” and not “you need new pants”) extinguishes the fear, the oppresive mould of our youthful poverty, allows us some freedom of thought and imagination, then why not?  Why not buy eBay dresses and lust after shoes we can’t afford?  Why not consider our appereance carefully in the mirror, consider whether or not we feel comfortable with the reflection?  Perhaps it’s shallow; but sometimes it’s the best we’ve got.

1) First, let’s discuss men who wear sweatbands (I mean the ones that go round your wrists, not the ones round your head, though that would be weird on a whole different level) whilst doing something ordinary and untaxing–say, walking down the street eating a pack of crisps.  Wearing a perfectly respectable shirt and jeans.  And flip flops.  Not trainers, but flip flops.  (Did you ever see anyone play sport in flip-flops and look anything but silly?  Come to think of it, did you ever see anyone play sport in flip-flops period?) Because I just don’t understand this one.  Maybe in the 1980s this was cool (it made you look preppy, sporty, ready-f0r-anything?), but in 2009, it just makes it look like you’re either a) suffering from worryingly overactive sweat glands, in which case why is that crisp Jack Wills polo so miraculously dry? or b) strangely concerned with dripping sweat into your crisps or indeed, c) both.  So I guess what I’m trying to say is, boys, get a grip: either on a tennis racket, in which case, please feel free to wear wristbands to your hearts’ content, because Roger Federer does, and it seems to work for him; or on reality.  You look silly.

2) Shops.  Let’s talk about shops for a moment.  I don’t mean the high-street, high-fashion variety, or the second-hand charity kind, or anything in-between.  I mean, I sometimes don’t know where to go when I need to get something very basic, like, say, Vogue (just this once, don’t ask the inevitable “need?” question–remember, I’m ill).  Not either of the two corner shops within a stone’s throw of our house, certainly–though I can go to either if I need the basic ingredients for a meal, and one or the other if I’m short on newspapers or booze.  Not the Co-Op down the road, either, apparently (I stuck my head far into the magazine rack to check, but all they had was Cosmopolitan and about a billion tabloids, so I bought the Cosmo and spent a furious half hour on the couch wondering how the editors get away with it all and, if they really know all the secrets to success, happiness, self-confidence and a sizzling sex-life, why anyone bothers to buy the magazine anymore–shouldn’t we all be out fucking and shopping?).  I struck gold at the newsagent across the street from the Co-Op, unsurprisingly, but here’s the thing that gets me: the newstand seems to carry just as much food, and as many household odds-and-ends, as the Co-Op.

I always thought that newsagents, like newsstands, were temples to the printed page, where glossy magazines and dozens of newspapers in dozens of different languages stood proudly on display, while cigarettes and the occasional bit or bob hid behind the counter, but this is obviously and vastly untrue.  There’s even one on the Cowley Road with a post office and, allegedly, a dry-cleaning service.  I’m just not sure that in the US, there’s a comparable complexity of shops.  Sometimes I want to pop into Boots, which I’ve had a hard time learning is not, despite appearances, synonymous with CVS, to buy something I think I should be able to get there–a magazine, a house-cleaning product, laundry detergent–only to be whisked by the crowds past baby clothes, expensive perfumes, women standing idly at designer perfume counters, seven aisles that encourage you to shampoo-condition-colour-moisturize-stylize your hair, and a thousand other things I didn’t know I could use to improve my appearance.

3) On a similar note…when I’m sick, there are two things that I crave invariably: lots of love and attention, and an infusion of brand-name artifical American goop.  The former has been bestowed well and kindly upon me by the Man, who has been nothing short of angelic these last few days; but the later has proven far trickier to get hold of.  Specifically, I want Gatorade, I want PowerBars, and I want saltine crackers.  The first and the last I can more or less find replacements for, but there is not, I don’t think, in all of England, a single PowerBar.  Ordinarily, fake food shot up with vitamins, made chewy and artifically flavourful, wrapped up in shiny plastic, would not particularly appeal to me, and I certainly wouldn’t mourn its absence in a country which has given me so many other good unwholesome foodstuffs, like Jaffa Cakes and Curly Wurlys (they do know how to name things here).  But PowerBars are like comfort food for times of physical woe, and when I’m sick I get particularly irrational about this.  Obviously.

The way I see it, each is as obscure as the other. Pretty to look at, maybe, sometimes, and kind of interesting, if you’re stoned, or feel like entering an upside-down world where nothing makes any sense, but otherwise empty.

Enter the fashion magazine: our guide to the fashion world, a dictionary, if you will, an art-history major for the catwalk. Today, you see, I walked to Tesco (the longest walk, in my current state) to buy soup, drugs, and a Vogue.

My Vogue, as it turned out, came with bonus material: The (Topshop-sponsored) Ultimate Catwalk Report. I was so excited! I eat this stuff up! Pages and pages of high-resolution photographs of popsicle-sticks-with-lips strutting (or whatever it is they do) down the runway in….you name it. Jumpsuits? Check. Toutous? Check. A snakeskin-print bag “that’s part luxe backpack, part roomy tote”? Check. Pyjamas? Check! See-through dresses? Check! (Who says men aren’t interested in Vogue?) A swimsuit with belt, heels, and leather trenchcoat? Che-eck. (Yep, you heard it here first: Spring is all about pairing your old bikini with a designer coat to give it new life–that’s some sharp credit crunch thinking!)

It’s like a freakish combination of pornography, people-watching, and well-timed comedy rolled into one glossy, and very colourful, package: amazing.

In the midst of my elation, I started thinking: how do they do it? How do they look at all these clothes (clothes? can you call them that?), at all these images of models dressed up like the emaciated dolls of our nightmares, and determine that there’s a pattern for the upcoming fashion season? Like, wow, this poor model was made to wear a plastic yellow bubble over her head (check it–page 34–if you don’t believe me), so that means that flamboyant hats are the thing for Spring!

No: honestly, I think they’re making it up. I think if you put a group of editors in one room and another group of editors in another, and didn’t let them talk to each other, they’d come up with completely different visions for Spring/Summer ’09 (as it’s called, apparently). I think they see what they want to see in the designer collections, and interpret it for us. To be honest, it’s good of them: that stuff needs translation. They give us the trends with such authority, but frankly, I think they’re probably sitting in their offices right with a glass of champagne thinking, whew, fooled ‘em again!

And then, there are the pet-trends. The ones that they mention every year, the one they throw repeteadly against the wall of consumerism and pray sticks. Like the Midi-length skirt, which crops up every few seasons and looks like a good idea (but then again, what doesn’t on a life-size pencil): it’s a long skirt, no, it’s a short skirt, no, it’s–in between! But then you try one on and you realize that unless your legs are six feet long on their own it’s never going to look anything but frumpy, and besides, you can’t walk properly.

Or the jumpsuit. “Vogue still loves…jumpsuits,” says this month’s issue. “Get to grips with the all-in-one. It’s here to stay.” I’m sure it is: in the pages of magazines. Have you actually ever seen an ordinary woman walking down the street on her way to work, or to the pub, or to go shopping, in a jumpsuit?

Neither have I.

So I salute you, high fashion: for your ingenuity, your artistic endeavors, and, mostly, your balls. And I eagerly await the day when someone realizes that anyone can interpret what’s happening on the kalediscope we call runway. In the meantime, I’m off to consult the encyclopedia Vogue in the bath.

I’m a big fan of the old holey jumper. I have an entire collection of them, mostly inherited from The Man, who rips tears in the armpits of his jumpers at a rate of about two per week, it seems: oversize, thick, unraveling-at-the-hems. Basically old duvets with armholes. And as they are a staple of my household wardrobe, I was shocked to discover that it’s not understandable that I might wear them whilst, say, washing the dishes, or watching a film on the couch, or writing in the study (which tends to be very, very cold).

I’ve come to the conclusion, after a fairly in-depth study of fashion magazines (well, after reading a lot of them in the bath, anyway) that fashion is utterly arbitrary. Forget what Meryl Streep says in The Devil Wears Prada: cerulean blue was only ever in vogue because, well, it just was—and only fell out of vogue because it did. If I had the right job, I could make fashion decisions for the world, too: give me a column in the front of any glossy Saturday magazine and see if I don’t get everyone to start dressing like me.

But despite all that, there’s a certain fashion magazine tone of voice: if you’re a girl, you probably know the one I mean. It’s authoritative. It’s almost propagandistic, it’s so convincing. It doesn’t once occur to you to question the assertion that peep-toe ankle-boots are in (PEEP-toe ankle-BOOTS, the rational side of your mind screams, but you shut it up at the first glimpse of Kate Moss modeling the trend). What do we humble readers know anyway?

So not only was I surprised to find that I was breaking standard lounging-around-the-house fashion etiquette, but I also quickly came to the conclusion that, in fact, I’ve become unduly sloppy in my hibernation-dressing lately, and, really, there isn’t an excuse for wearing hand-me-down-jumpers with gaping holes in exciting places. It’s probably not what Kate Moss would do, and it’s certainly not what the pouty blonde in The Times does.

But here I am at home, and the only thing I want to be wearing is—what else—a holey jumper. Preferably with holey tights (yes, I do own several pairs) and mismatched socks. And that authoritative fashion voice cannot permeate this inclination! She’s not allowed in my house; at least, she’s not allowed near my old jumpers.

But the best response, the most astute, I think, comes from The Man, who, upon hearing the headline, had only one thing to say:

“Oh, fuck off!”

And then he turned on his heel in a jumper which is beginning to show a little wear in the armpits.

*despite my penchant for bad puns, The Man actually came up with this one…

Overwrought: “If, for the fashion-forward, instead of Prada and Primark it’s now all about feel-good car-boot sales, charity shops, free-cycling and frock exchanges, for the rest of us it is an hour in Tesco fossicking for the two-for-ones and the nearly-past-their-sell-by reductions, putting £20 worth of petrol in the car instead of filling the tank…growing herbs on the windowsill, making lots of shepherd’s pies…and saying ‘no!’ (possibly for the very first time) to the kids when they demand stuff at the checkout…so not only is it exactly how it bloody well ought to be but it is all the better for being without smug self-righteousness or a gleeful need to be somehow au courant with ‘recession chic’.”

This is Observer columnist Kathryn Flett’s version of a now very familiar tune: the “oh-my-gosh-they-tell-me-the-economy-is-failing-so-now-I’m-going-to-panic-and-buy-less-stuff” song. But Flett’s own amazement should have tipped her off to something: “as I ambled from Tottenham Court Road to Oxford Circus and down Regent Street,” she writes, “I was faintly astonished, given that the financial blight formerly known as The Crunch is now officially The Recession, to find that instead of tumbleweed and stumblebums the Street was heaving with shoppers, laden with bags, wearing the glazed expression of hardened consumers in search of their fix.”

Insincere: What exactly is there to be astonished about, I wonder? In the Sunday Times Style magazine, editors suggest a “skinted” (i.e. “affordable” version) of a £7,000+ designer cocktail dress which costs a mere £50 from a popular high street shop. This is an increasingly common phenomenon–”credit crunch friendly” shopping advice–but let me ask you this: is £50 really affordable, if all is going to shit like they say it is? Do we really have any right to express shock at our fellow consumers, who flit in and out of the Oxford Street shops as readily as they did “before” (as if there was a before; as if poverty was not always a vague and distant threat, as if the mentality that Flett describes is not merely the same state of mind that the young and strugglign are in always)? I don’t think we do; even if Vogue is handing out suggestions on how to live an affordably fashionable life, instead of merely a fashionable one, it’s still Vogue, and we’re still human.

We’re seduced, you see–as Flett alludes to–by the idea of recession (wartime chic, growing our own onions, snuggled in a sparsely furnished lounge with nothing but our own fires to keep us warm in the darkening winter). The Sunday Times Style magazine, this sunday, features “The Joy of Thrift: India Knight’s Brilliant New Book on the Glory of Make Do and Mend” on its cover, with an impossibly beautiful blonde in a 1950s-era outfit, pretending to knit; but is this actually what we want to do? Of course it isn’t, as Colin McDowell rather ironically points out in the same magazine: “Clearly the way forward now is austerity,” writes McDowell. “Thrift shops and dress agencies immediately come to mind, but it is wise to remember this: one of fashion’s golden rules states that all the most God-awful garments in the world are destined eventually to sink to the thrift-shop clothes rail, which is fashion’s equivalent of Skid Row. Avoid. Just as definitely, do not go into that murky world called home dressmaking or–even darker-alterations. And under no circumstances start to knit.”

We could translate McDowell’s paragraph thus: “Clearly the way forward now is austerity–pretend austerity. Thrift shops may come to mind, but it is wise to remember this: there is no real need to be actually austere, so for God’s sake stay as far away from the charity shop, the sewing machine, and the knitting needles as possible. A failure to do so will mark you out as unfashionable and, even more horrifically, genuinely strapped for cash; so do your bit and head on down to the affordable high street shops.”

With this in mind, Kathryn Flett’s concluding paragraph seems suddenly thin. What exactly is wrong, we wonder, with “feel-good boot sales” and charity shops? Why shouldn’t we feel good–and how is this worse than frequenting the ethically dubious Tesco and putting–you poor thing–just £20 of petrol in the car? Surely recycling items is not only “recession chic” but actually necessary. In her own panic, Flett seems to have forgotten that we have another crisis on as well; and a less glamerous one at that, for there is no chic precedent for an environmental emergency.

I’m tempted to say we should combine our crises: if we’re so concerned about pinching pennies, why not put our money where it really matters and nowhere else? Why not visit Oxfam occasionally, instead of Topshop or New Look? The beauty of fashion, I’ve always thought, is that it is what we make it, and nothing else–if “recession chic” is in, then let’s use it. Why not grow herbs on the windowsill–and potatoes in the garden, and onions and lettuce, and then invite our friends over to sip wine and warm the house? Why feel that we can’t spend an extra few pounds on local, fresh foodstuffs, that we have suddenly to be slaves to Tesco and Asda just because the politicans tell us that money is in short supply and Wall Street has fallen?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m as shopping–happy as the next Young Thing, and yes, I like my clothes. A few months ago I made a silent challenge to myself: to buy no clothing except underwear and stockings new; and it’s working remarkably well. I probably won’t cease consuming altogether–I’m too young, perhaps, too insecure–but I’ll happily forgo an extra pint at the pub or this seasons’ It-Outfit if it actually means something. We simply can’t afford empty gestures anymore.

I was in the bedroom, trying on my mom’s cast-away clothing (a slightly juvenile ritual we go through each time I visit her, or vice versa). First she gave me a dress–polka dotted and colorful, nicely cut. I modeled it in the kitchen to the (admittedly tame) approval of the men. So I was feeling good about the next piece: a dark navy wraparound dress with bell sleeves. In front of the mirror, mom and I admired how well it hugged my curves, how lovely the fabric, how all around fabulous it was. Privately, I thought its finest feature was the way it hung on my rear, but I never got a chance to showcase this to my love: as soon as I entered the kitchen, he said one word, with a wrinkled nose:

“No.”

“What?” I said. I figured I’d misheard. Maybe he had been talking about something else. Maybe he had been responding to a voice in his head, or maybe he had made a mistake with his eyes, and thought I was wearing a trash bag. But surely he’d come to his senses.

“Oh, no,” he said again. I blinked.

“Really?” I said.

“It’s the sleeves,” he told me. “They look like something a forty-year-old woman would wear.”

“Look at this face,” I said, gesturing wildly. “Does this look like the face of a forty-year-old-anything?”

“No,” he told me. “That’s exactly the problem. It’s–it’s completely incongruous.”

Back in the safety of the bedroom, I considered myself in the mirror. My buttocks looked fabulous; my breasts looked rounded, my abdomen looked–astonishingly–flat. But there it was: floppy forty-year-old-woman sleeves. I tried hiking them up, but no. All I could see was a middle-aged body with a twenty-something face.

How can two people see the same thing so differently? And which one of us is right? More importantly, to a girl trying to make her way in the world with some semblance of fashion sense, how on earth am I supposed to know what really looks good and what doesn’t? The worst bit is, I can’t even write this off to his being a man: he’s shockingly good at picking out clothes for women, and some of my all-time favorite pieces were spotted not by me, or a trendy girlfriend, but by my own true love. I trust his judgment; but I also trust mine, and I’m fascinated by how oppositely we can react to something as simple as a little navy blue dress.

The next thing I tried on was a forest green turtleneck jumper, which I liked mostly for its color. It had a seam in the back and the first thing he did when I came into the room was frown and ask if I was wearing it inside out.

“No,” I said emphatically, trying not to sound too petulant.

“Oh,” he said, his face falling.

But I put it in the “keep” pile anyway, just in case.