Sunday, November 04, 2007

CLICHÉ LIKE SUNDAY MORNING...


I am being kindly picked up to go and retrieve my car from its post fireworks display/drank a vat of mulled wine resting place. I am still snoozing when the doorbell rings. I brush my teeth and pull on the cosiest clothes I can find. We go outside. I am wearing: bedhead hair, a bobbly cashmere jumper, track pants, Ugg boots (to hand because they now serve as slippers), a pashmina (I swear this is true) and Rayban Wayfarers*. I am not clutching a Starbucks Venti takeout cup or a small dog but I still look like I've just left an L.A. yoga class that started in 2001.

I have no food in the house (as usual) and wonder if I can go to the supermarket looking like this; which I never do on a Sunday as this is when everyone else goes. My entire life in London is constructed (thanks to working from home) around doing things at a different time to everyone else. Work all Friday night, late night partying on a Wednesday, go to the supermarket hardly ever, but at no other time than a week day mid morning.

I decide to brave it, fearing this will be the time I bump into the ex I never bump into. But it turns out, every other chick in Sainsbury's is wearing a variation of my "outfit". We are all wandering round like Stepford Wives played by off duty Desperate Housewives, putting organic this and fairtrade that into our trolleys.

(*Except the Wayfarers should really be Aviators.)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

well when i am at home..i always look like i am ready to play volley ball in someone,s back yard at any given moment or any sign of a ball. not that i would, but my clothes beg to differ. oh but i can't go shopping shopping at the grocery store like this....too many cute boys.
delphine

RD said...

Be brave! In the US I have never felt under-dressed. You can quite literally go to the grocery store in your pajamas bottoms and a sweatshirt. But here in London it happens all the time, but in a more complicated way: half the people make fun of me for overdressing, the other half ignore because I'm too casual. What's one to do? BB

JEANNE-AURORE COLLEUILLE said...

Ah that age old dilemma... Should I put on makeup for a quick errand just in case the deadringer of Matt Dillon circa Rumble Fish should happen to be buying carrots at the same time as me? Working from home, I'm faced with this every day. (ps: Hope you enjoyed your Paris trip, I tried to comment on your post about Bernard Sylvain & give you a great address for jewellry but I'm not sure it worked.) LCDS

CB said...

hahaha, you are every woman in america. why yes, i am stereotyping. i live here; i can do that.

Claire said...

LCDS: oh no I didn't get that comment...but I'm always happy to hear of good jewellery addresses...

Anonymous said...

do you have any idea how chic you are that a bad day is dressing like a celeb leaving an L.A. yoga studio in 2001? As opposed, hypothetically, to a woman wearing pajama bottoms, hair in topknots, a full green canvas apron covered in paint splotches, sockless, merrells on feet, atopped with a flourescent "hunter" orange hoodie?

let's just say, I make an impression while walking my dogs-- fortunately-- on very, very few poor souls--

bluepoppy

Claire said...

well really that sounds ever so arty and bohemian. Mmm, a paint splattered apron would be lovely. May I encourage you to wear even more orange so you don't get mistaken for a...what is it exactly they're hunting?

The Spicers said...

Yes! You sound like half the people in my local grocery on any given day, except the cashmere jumper would be an oversized Champion sweatshirt and a large Dunkin Donuts cup would complete the outfit. It's true: you can never be too underdressed in America. I see pajamas all the time in public...