DON'T LOOK AT ME...

I feel slightly as if I'm supposed to come in here and post a load of looks from the SS11 shows. I'm all for inspiration, but what I'm interested in at the moment is what I want to wear now and why. And maybe what you want to wear now and why. It has to be in context otherwise I'm prone to snoozing. What you wear depends on all sorts of things: where you're going, how you feel, the weather, what's clean, what the last film you saw was. I seem to veer further and further away from **Fashion** in and of its existence in a vacuum with every season, until this time round the bombardment of fashion week related emails and tweets has had the reverse effect - of making me blank it all out. Until Paris maybe.

What I want to wear is the same as it's always been. Well made, plain, almost nondescript, good quality clothes that don't scream look at me. Basically, I don't want people to look at me, then it's easier for me to look at them. I've talked about this same thing of feeling comfortable dressing in a quietly androgynous way so many times over the years. The funny thing about it is, sometimes people are really disturbed if you don't dress the way they think you should. They really want you to wear a foufy red dress, or even to know that you wore a foufy red dress to something they didn't even attend. I find it a bit strange, since other than when it was my job to tell people what to wear (which involved them feeling comfortable and happy in what they were wearing), I'd never dream of telling anyone how they should dress.  Especially if that person clearly had a strong idea of their own style, I'd kind of assume they knew what they were doing. I can wear clothes that are very beautifully constructed, made of fabric that feels good on me and it's my little secret. It's not for anyone else and I feel comfortable wherever I go. I'm not advertising to the world how much I love clothes, most people wouldn't even notice if they saw me. But then, those that do notice, those are the keepers. 

In a recent article Sally Singer said that people who dress in a pared back minimal way have to constantly update their wardrobes as proportions change so fast. "The fastest things to date are those classics, cause it's just proportions laid bare. There's nothing else going on." I worship Sally Singer but I totally disagree with her on this. A classic Crombie coat is a Crombie coat, otherwise it's something different. The line doesn't change. I see what she's saying though: people who get obsessed with the perfect shirt are going to end up with a wardrobe full of shirts that look almost exactly the same but have minutely different details.

Because I dress in such a low key way, I don't really need anything much for this winter (thanks Phoebe Philo and The New Minimalism). I could do with replacing a couple of things that I've literally worn to death, and I still haven't got on top of the dealer boot situation. But if I had to buy a few things, A.P.C. Madras has killed it as always with the winter collection, which is weird as you'd think Madras would lend itself more to summer. And either of these two looks from Steven Alan would have me sorted for the winter months.

{**Fashion** = said with jazz hands}