I am a busy Wigmore this eve, what with doing my civic duty, packing my bags and binge eating raisins. Packing? Binge eating? If this doesn't telegraph that I'm going to see my faily this weekend that clearly I am not working hard enough on my signifiers. It's my beloved grandad's 80th birthday party and the whole family contingent coming variously from Norfolk, Suffolk, 10 minutes away and Philadelphia will be there. It will be odd and sort of delightful an sort of painful as it is the first time in a decade that everybody will be in the same room. The Wigmores are much like everyone else on this. Please see Tolstoy for details.
Tales of family strife and inadequate photoshopping lead me neatly and thematically into one of my auctions currently ongoing: the Marc Jacobs eccentric crisp white shirt. Here's the blurb from the listing:
White shirts are a bit of sartorial no-go for me. I'm a bit of a messy person - pretty certain that if I could be bothered to go and look in a mirror, I'd find my face smeared liberally with peanut butter. That's just who I am. So, it is with some sadness that I say goodbye to this fancy Marc Jacobs blouse, odd and delightful as it is.
The best way to describe this 100% cotton shirt is as office-cum-sportswear with mild Japanese influences. You've got your high neck collar and obi-style waist belt and then you've got all this trainer shoelace-style corsetry going on. Don't even get me started on the eyelet 'vents' in the armpit.
That said, with this eclectic detailing, this is also a shirt that will impress your boss and your mum. The cotton is very thin and very good quality. It is in used condition and will probably need to make friends with Mr Bleach to bring it back to optimum white-iness but at this price, who are to deny its severe and insane charms?
My relentlessly peppy upselling exhausts even me, small readership. The truth is, I've barely worn this shirt. It was exciting to own relatively inexpensive Marc Jacobs (the shirt was the victim of a poor photography/copy combo and I got it for a steal on ebay) but the white issue was a problem. So too is its history.
I don't know if you're familiar with the politics of the family photograph when the family in question is broken. Rest assured that if there has been any animosity, every printed image becomes pregnant, bloated with meaning and good ol' fashioned accusation. Do you see who we are? Do you see what you have left? My Marc Jacobs shirt, bleached by flash and cropping to appear much more respectable than it actually is, was the star of one such photo campaign, taken approximately five years ago this very month on the occasion of my father's birthday:
The Wigmore siblings in repose. Now that I look at it, I think I look like my sister and I are on a slightly awkward second date. Check me going in to cop a feel and bust a move. The empty glass decanter in the background, the symmetry of the dining chairs, that horrible house plant, it breaks my heart a little, the good intentions behind it all. This was to be sent to my dad in Philadelphia as a birthday gift, to join the gallery of images of my sister and I displayed proudly on the wall of his distant American study. The fact that we were between two and seven years old old in all of these pictures was something that had always bothered me. It surely couldn't be a coincidence that the moment we stopped ageing coincided with the moment he stopped being happy. This photo, with its chipper blonde wood frame was meant to bounce across the Atlantic proving something: look at us dad! We're grown women! With neat hair! Starched shirts!
I think we took over 70 photos in total. If there was a nuance in 'wholesome' we didn't utilise, I've yet to hear about it. The shirt was of such quality: papery fine and soft like elderly skin. The truth is that mum is the only one of us with the mad skills needed to iron it properly. I distinctly remember her squeal of delight through the condensation of the iron - Ooh, it's good quality Beck!
It is good quality. It's a delight. It's just not the skin for me. All I can see in these photos is how tired I look. It's odd but I think I look younger now - maybe I am ageing backwards. This weekend I will be wearing a Christopher Kane crocodile dress and seeing the best in everyone.
Onwards!
Becky
Skim my angst! Buy my stuff!
It is good quality. It's a delight. It's just not the skin for me. All I can see in these photos is how tired I look. It's odd but I think I look younger now - maybe I am ageing backwards. This weekend I will be wearing a Christopher Kane crocodile dress and seeing the best in everyone.
Onwards!
Becky
Skim my angst! Buy my stuff!
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