I’ve always loved velvet. The last seven
years of blog posts can attest to that. It’s one of my most consistent fabrics:
forget-me-not blue velvet capes, bottle green velvet coats, plum velvet
blazers, khaki velvet heels, navy velvet boots, deep turquoise velvet skirts,
raspberry velvet waistcoats, and plenty of black velvet trousers, dresses and
jackets. You name the garment, I’ve probably got it in velvet (sometimes in
multiple permutations – I am the girl, after all, who rather obscenely owns
four – four! – different blue velvet jackets). I’m always on velvet high alert:
picking it out in charity shops, always ready to discern between the cheaper,
nasty stuff, and that properly heavy, thick texture.
Recently, I went a step further, buying a
whole velvet suit. Highly unusually for me, it was from Marks & Spencer.
In a rather uncharacteristic turn of events, having spent a good half hour
eyeing up all the satin bras and beautiful knickers (honest to god, the M&S
underwear department is one of the most consistently soothing places on earth),
I spotted the suit being sported on a mannequin. It was delicious. It was
gorgeous. I wanted it to be mine. Half an hour later and I walked out with
heavy bags and a much lighter wallet than planned.
It was worth it. Since that point I’ve hung
out in it, danced in it – that swoosh of fabric adding extra rhythm to my hips
– and sported it at events. I feel different whenever it gets pulled on: bolder,
more assertive, more decisive, more glamorous, fully inhabiting my limbs. Like
the best garments, it bestows a sense of both possibility and capability.
Angela Carter writes in ‘Notes For a Theory
of Sixties Style’ that: “Velvet is back, skin anti-skin, mimic nakedness. Like leather and
suede, only more subtly, velvet simulates the flesh it conceals, a profoundly
tactile fabric.” I adore this essay, but I’m not sure if I’m entirely with her.
Instead I wonder if it part simulates, part embellishes. Unlike silk, there’s
less mimicry here – more a suggestion of something jeweled, something that,
yes, does invite tactile appreciation, but also hides and clings to what lies beneath.
Anyway, velvet is most certainly back
again. It’s all over the internet, the catwalk, and the high street – people praising it left, right and, well,
everywhere else too. This is unsurprising. Depending on the shape it takes, it
has the capacity to be sexy, playful or deliciously understated. It’s also a
fabric which manages that neat hat-trick of feeling good, looking good, and
tapping into a particularly enticing set of cultural images.
Velvet is dusty red stage curtains. It’s
green sofas at antiques markets. It’s the Christmas dress you wore when you were
five. It’s Prince strutting his way around the stage. It’s vamps, harlots and
femme fatales who know just how fabulous they look. It’s every person who ever
felt suave in a plush black suit. It’s sixties minis, seventies maxi-skirts and
Laura Ashley dresses at their finest. It’s stage costumes and cocktail parties.
It’s Halloween high drama with lace aplenty. It’s medieval style sleeves, and
perfectly cut trousers, and Pre-Raphaelites. It’s princesses, knaves, witches.
Of course, us commoners have only been
allowed to wear the stuff in all its tremendous permutations for the last few
centuries. Pre 1604, sumptuary law enacted plenty of weird and wonderful
restrictions on who was allowed to wear what. Velvet, silk and “spangles” on
sleeves and linings were for the upper echelons only (you can read the
exhaustive list of rules here). Clothes were literal embodiments of power. They
were coded messages – visibly marking rank and status. And the more luxurious
the fabric, the fewer the numbers of people allowed to go about their day in
it.
Well, no such issue there now. We can all
revel in velvet. And it seems that plenty are. I’ve chatted to several friends
recently who’ve been enthusing about all things crushed, brushed and
luxuriously textured. One had bought a red velvet suit. Another a gold velvet
dress. And me? Am I happy with just possessing this navy suit? Yes. Mostly. I
think. Though there is a small, illogical, wholly ridiculous part of me that
wants it in green too.
I
enjoyed giving the suit the full Rosalind treatment: an item not being truly
mine, it seems, until it’s been worn somewhere entirely out of context. When I
bought it, I didn’t expect to be trying to leap onto hay-bales without scuffing
all that navy goodness. But there we go. A gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta
do. Here I styled it with second hand brogues, the Aspinal feather print box bag of dreams, a
perfectly colour matched vest, and lashings of Revlon berry lipstick.
