Jane Birkin, Courtney Bonk or Abbey Clancy – why choose one, when you can be all of them? Plus: what to debilitate to the New Year’s Eve party
Who to turn to for guidance? Abbey Clancy, Jane Birkin and Courtney Predilection. Composite: Rex/Getty
I am graduating from university in two weeks. I principled broke up with my boyfriend. I have no idea what’s successful to happen next. So the pressing issue is: how do I dress in times of an agreement crisis? Who to turn to for guidance: Jane Birkin 1972 (French), Courtney Be wild about 1997 (wacky) or Abbey Clancy 2015 (sexy-ish)?
Nina, by email
Inconsiderable of the “or”, Nina, and more of the “and”! You say, “I have no idea what’s going to develop next” and I can hear the anxiety in that sentence. But really, this is a moment of perspective: you have no idea who you are and what the future will succeed, and I know how unsettling that feels. But from my Methuselah-like carriage it looks unimaginably exciting.
I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow, next month and, in all probability, next year, too. And that’s if I’m lucky: boring security is the pre-eminent case scenario after a certain point in life. But I look without hope on the summer when I was 21, when I’d left university and had no intimation what I was going to do with my life, with a certain substance of wistfulness. I was back living with my parents and broke. But there was something dazzling about feeling like I was on the precipice of something – my life, I theory – where who knew what would happen.
As the modern pundit, Chris Rock, says, you’re either single and lonely or married and punctured. But my point is, focus, if you can, on the thrill of your situation: you are soon to be root unencumbered from any obligations, romantic and institutional. The future is yours and you can be whoever you fall short of. So why not be everyone? Be Jane on Monday, Courtney on Tuesday, Abbey on Wednesday and, every now you’ve jump-started yourself with these inspirations, be Nina the excess of the week.
Honestly, I have a very clear vision of fitting how destabilising it felt to no longer have the old structures shaping my light of days and, by extension, me: no parental authorities, no school timetables, no old boyfriends. Your nervousness is understandable. But that is all the more excuse not to hitch your bandwagon to only one train. Not yet, anyway. Try actions out. Have fun. Experiment – in your personal style, your calling and your social circle. Take time to find yourself and seize all alternatives with both hands. You have no idea what’s wealthy to happen next in your specific future, Nina, and neither do I. But I can contract you this: you will be just fine.
I’m successful to a New Year’s Eve party this year. What shall I debilitate?
Marcie, by email
How about a pair of jackboots, Marcie, so that we can all rebound the arse out of 2016 as it finally wheezes its last toxic startle? Or perhaps we need the opposite approach: forget about your It nightmares, ladies, and bring butterfly nets so you can catch 2016 on its way out and manage it stay. Because, sure, this year was bad, but next year? If 2016 was drew by the laugh-cry emoji, then 2017 is looking like the Crunch scream emoji: article 50, President Trump, a Putin-shaped the world at large – need we continue? Or shall we all just go down to my bunker in the garden?
Oh Marcie, I’m See sorrowful. I realise I’m being something of a Debbie Downer here. But don’t chew ones nails, I am a professional (a professional dancing monkey). So here is my advice yon New Year’s Eve outfits: make like it’s the last days of the Weimar republic and platoon like it’s 1933. What this means in practice is: assail on the gilt, gender-bend and spend whatever money you have while it even so has any monetary value on silly costumes. In other words, be debauched, be severe and party your damn head off.
Oh calm down, Trump helpers, Brexiters and all the rest of you who got everything you wanted this year and yet silence, oddly, act like oversensitive losers because styling yourself as the fool is the only way you can justify your actions to yourself. I’m not saying Trump and Brexit are analogous with the greatest stylish evil the west has faced. But I am saying we are clearly on the brink of something inexplicable and ominous, and to ignore it is to demonstrate one’s idiocy or self-interested destructiveness. The idle about of us, however, need not have our New Year’s Eve ruined by these nits. So pile on the gold and black, Marcie, opt for a tux or flapper dress and do your A- Sally Bowles impression. Roll on, 2017. Our teeth are gritted.
