Fashion victim
Petronella Wyatt
Door Marks & Spencer. It has found
itself in the same position as our Prime Minister. Tony Blair. It can do nothing right. Everyone attacks it for slavishly following the wrong road, for losing the trust of its core dressers, and for shocking customer-abuse. Predictions of its imminent demise appear almost daily in the media.
It is time someone stood up for this beleaguered creature, assailed by both rivals and hostile commentators. Under particular attack are its attempts at modish-looking clothes and contemporary underwear. As far as we know, none of Marks & Spencer's knickers has found its way on to the head of an Iraqi prisoner, but a pair might as well have done for all the flack they are getting.
But first, the frocks. Its new range, per una due, is excoriated for aping fashionable clothes, when the average Marks & Spencer shopper is allegedly above such things. She just wants to slop about in bellbottoms. M&S was attacked for continuing to churn out 'middle-aged' productions — rather like the old Labour party, in fact. But now that the stores have modernised, no one seems happy either.
Yet a little investigation showed that many of the clothes sold under the muchcriticised per una due label inspire lengthy waiting-lists. There were two suits this summer, both in pink and both in the Chanel style, for which I put down my name. They cost one tenth of the price of Chanel dresses, yet when I wore them to the latter's Sloane Street store, the shop assistants asked me whether I had bought them in their Paris branch on the rue Cambon.
Aside from providing two of my staple summer outfits — which could be worn with ease by anyone between 20 and 50 — M&S provides most of my underwear. Recently, it launched a lingerie label called Truly You. Silly name, I agree. But not, as most commentators have claimed, silly merchandise.
Some thirty-something media person called Julia or Carole (perhaps it was Cherie's friend Carole Caplin, who shrieks of chic, I don't think) was asked to comment on Truly You and said that its erotic designs were misplaced. Women, she claimed, want only to wear comfortable underwear. Apparently uplift and balcony bras and lacy knickers do not fall into this category. How very dull and unimaginative.
All normal women aspire to pretty underwear. Even if no one else sees it, it has the effect of a glass of iced champagne. As Cole Porter wrote, 'It is strange how lovely lingerie/ can affect a gal's false modesty.' And why should sexiness preclude comfort? Any woman who believes that it does knows nothing about fashion.
Consider Coco Chanel. Her innovative contribution to women's clothes was to make them comfortable and fluidly sexy. She removed stays and corsets and adopted jersey material that clung flatteringly to the figure. Her approach was considered shocking and outrageous. Yet who had the last laugh? Not Chanel's detractors.
And what is this so-called comfortable underwear meant to consist of? Massive support underpants like the ones Rene Zellweger wore in Bridget Jones's Diary? Enormous polyester bras in taupe? Not only are these types of underwear ugly but they also show under clothes. 'Comfy' pants are the sort that ride up four inches over your jeans and can be seen bulging through every evening dress, creating the unfortunate silhouette of a snowman.
If underwear is going to show — and it never should in the daytime under the basic guidelines of good taste — it had better be attractive. Particularly if one is over 30. Older women need all the help they can get. The genius of Marks & Spencer's Truly You range is that it conceals unsightly bumps while providing a bit of excitement. I would have thought that all sensible grown-up women would applaud this feat. But unlike the French, we British never really know what we want. Just imagine, though, if our pants and bras were designed by Gordon Brown — with John Prescott overseeing the produce?
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