British Vogue - 10.2019

a long time since I wore Levi’s. In both cities, Levi’s

are now for the young, worn mom-style, pulled up to

the belly button and accompanied by a cropped white

vest or a brutally ugly throwback sweater with a

comedy logo (Care Bears, The Simpsons, DARE), or

a clearly flammable shellsuit top, or a normcore flannel

shirt, vintage crap, all of which looks inexplicably

fabulous – on them. I think of it as a form of generation

Z revenge dressing, intended to demonstrate – to the

generation that crashed the economy and despoiled

the planet – that we can’t buy back our youth or return

to 1991 to reclaim what’s been lost. They wear it well.

Mass-market cheap clothes have a different life here

and there. In New York, they tend to be poorly cut,

with loose buttons and sticky zips. Often they look

as if they’ve been constructed out of the remains of a

ghost net, and rarely survive three washes. They do

look good when brand new, but, again, mostly the

young seem to benefit, or whoever can be bothered

to trawl Lower Broadway on a weekly basis. In

London, cheap clothes are so good, so plentiful, that

only the very foolish and uncreative fail to make use of them.

It’s the delight of the Londoner to turn up to a wedding or a

club looking a million dollars in an outfit that cost £49.99, thus

demonstrating a good eye, canny style and admirable thriftiness.

Nobody in London is impressed by the branded bags, shoes

and watches that New York women always look so proud to

own and yet whose only possible message to the passing observer

is that there’s money in them there hills. Cheap kids’ clothes,

in England, are of astonishing quality when compared with

their American equivalent. Every September our children are

flattered at the school gate by Americans who have no idea

that when I say, “It’s a brand called George,” this means

I bought it for a tenner in a supermarket called Asda.

“Unending beauty, ever fresh, ever new, very cheap and within

the reach of everybody, bubbles up every day of the week from

an inexhaustible well.” That’s Virginia Woolf writing about

the experience of shopping on Oxford Street. The only update

required is our present guilty awareness of the ugly labour

conditions underpinning our fast-fashion pleasures. Most

Londoners don’t brave Oxford Street very often, but they go

to the identical stores in their own hoods, and pick through

the piles for a bargain. If you’re clever about it, as my mother

is, these purchases act as a base against which to set off your

own more fabulous items, in her case, a collection of South

African Zulu crowns, that look even more regal combined with

a shiny minidress rescued from the sale rack at the back of

Cricklewood’s Matalan. The first ennobles the second, until

you can’t tell the difference. I was born into this London habit

of mix and match and I cannot change it in New York. My

“Rachel Comey” white heels are actually Zara, all my “gold”

and “silver” hoop earrings are from branches of the Duane

Reade pharmacy, and my fanciest underwear can be bought in

packs of 10 at Gap. However, New York has instilled in me

the importance of tailoring, of a good dress that reaches to the

knee and can be worn anywhere, and of the kind of well-made

brogues in which you can walk 40 blocks – and I spend too

much money on all of them. I look around and see that I am

not alone. Notwithstanding the aforementioned cult of youth,

grown-up dressing is respected and celebrated in New York,

and constantly supported by other grown-up women who will

stop you in the street, sometimes several times a day, if they

see something they admire. I don’t think there’s a higher

compliment in this world than being stopped by a stylish

50-year-old and asked where you got your winter coat. (It is,

in terms of its effect on the spirit, the exact opposite of being

cat-called by a bloke in a van.)

I

n the New York summer, things get more complicated:

few can remain stylish in that heat. The temptation to go

floaty and diaphanous is strong, like a net curtain awaiting

a passing breeze. I hate floaty. And diaphanous. Thankfully

there is very little boho spirit in Manhattan, and hardly anyone

spends the season in those long, flowy, tasselled or fringed

garments that you do seem to get a lot of in London, and which

entail being able to create a silhouette out of the natural contrast

between your waist and the rest of your body. Having no waist,

I can’t rely on such fripperies. And though crisp, tailored shorts

or the kind of summer dresses that need ironing will get you

some strange looks in the London parks (where wrinkled linen

and cotton sundresses abide), in New York, summer proves no

obstacle to a certain formality. Formality. Is that the key

difference? Brooklyn would laugh at the suggestion, but to my

eye both Brooklyn’s transplanted hipsters and its original natives

appear – when compared with their London equivalents in

Shoreditch or Harlesden – somehow more arch, more obviously

stylised, more in costume, more like someone on TV. Which

leads many to the argument that London fashion is, by

Poppy

Delevingne

GETTY IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK

In London,

above from

top: Laura

Bailey; Emma

Weymouth;

Jodie Comer

10-19-Well-Zadie.indd 238 16/08/2019 13:31