I almost gave up on this blouse. What you can’t see in the picture is the pile, out of shot, of things I tried on with it and gave up on
I can’t pull off “ironic” fashion. Man, I wish I could, because I love it on other people. I see Chloë Sevigny photographed at an East Village party in high-waisted bleached “mom” jeans, and I want to be her. I go gooey-eyed just looking at Alexa Chung rocking a pie-crust blouse in the front row. But on me, it never quite works. It’s partly an age thing, but not only. (Sevigny is 41.) Maybe I have the wrong hair for irony. Or the wrong eyebrows? Somehow, the ironic, awkward, tongue-in-cheek note I’m visualising as very-Miuccia-Prada just looks plain awkward, on me.
But I am nothing if not a trier, which is why I’m here today in not just any pie-crust blouse, but a pie-crust blouse designed by Alexa Chung for Marks & Spencer. It goes on sale on 13 April, a date that will no doubt go down in fashion history as Peak Irony. To be honest, though, it nearly didn’t happen. I almost gave up on this blouse. What you can’t see in the picture is the pile, out of shot, of things I tried on with it and gave up on. High-waisted pale Mom jeans, which brought out the nursery-school-assistant-Princess-Di tones of the blouse, not in a quirky way, just in a weird way. A pair of stiff culottes, whose proportions made me look like a lamb chop wearing one of those white fringed paper hula skirts with which butchers ornament racks of lamb.
Related: What I wore this week: a summer dress you can actually wear
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