I like the colour red. Actually I love the colour red. I love red things, crimson things, scarlet things (even letters) and I really, really love to wear red. Red makes me happy, it is a flaming reflection of me, bright, angry, passionate, in your fucking face and hot. #ofcourseimeantemperaturehot
But what never ceases to dazzle me is the number of people who comment on it. It happens almost every day. FFS I’m wearing red; I’m not naked, I’m not wearing a latex unitard, I’m not daubed in tangerine tan, I am most definitely not wearing anything with the shoulders cut out of it, I’m not wearing religious attire, I am not wearing my underwear outdoors, I just choose to wear red.
Wearing red in London, or previously in Paris, is so conspicuously unique as to be remarkable, as in, people vocally, loudly remark upon it. In the lift at work, in the dentist waiting room, as I leave my apartment to go to work and most remarkably, two weeks ago, on the tube.
I’ll come back to the tube incident, but the lift comments always amaze me.
“Wow, look at you! Always so colour coordinated!”
“It is so funny the way your shoes and your phone match your outfit”
“Here she is, the lady in red”*
It isn’t funny that everything matches; it is not a fortunate accident, nor is it a coincidence. I do it on purpose!
You may have read an article about Obama’s suits, or about Steve Jobs’ polo neck t-shirts, or about Diane Keaton’s pantsuits. It is not by chance that these people wear the same 5 items of clothing every day. They do it so they don’t have to think about what they are going to wear, one less decision to fret about in an increasingly busy life, saving all too precious time in an all too busy day. And lets be frank, unless you are a fashion model, or an extra in The Devil Wears Prada, when you dress for work, who is giving an actual f**k about the minutiae of your outfit?
Bred as I was in an Anglican Private Day School for Boys and Girls^, I wore the same thing every single day for 8 years; a navy wool skirt, a navy wool jacket, a navy silk tie and a lemon cotton blouse. A uniform provides safety, security and reliability and it saves about 8 hours a week otherwise spent deciding whether to wear the brown one or the coffee one or the fawn one or the chestnut one or… I would also contend that the majority of men waste but a nanosecond of their early mornings determining the combination of armour with which they intend to cover themselves before attacking another day behind a desk. I am sat down, I’m on a mobile phone or I’m typing emails; no actually gives a toss what I am wearing…oh but they do!
There is another reason the Famouses wear the same thing every day, it’s their brand, it’s their marker, it’s their calling card. They do it so they are easily recognisable; they do it to be unique. They do it because their bob and big sunglasses (Anna Wintour), their gloves and stiff white collars (Karl Lagerfeld) or their tan and just-a-little-bit-too-undone shirt (Simon Cowell) are harbingers of their specific personal avatar. Like the Spice Girls, or Voltron, or the characters in Cluedo; everyone has their colour, everyone has their specific toon and everyone shoulders their unique carapace.
In my case, in the grand tradition of the most fashionable of fashion designers, Valentino, I chose red.
I chose red because it goes with my skin. I wasn’t permitted to wear pink when I was a small person. Motherbear wasn’t hot on dressing her little red-faced girl in a cloud of pink flounces; she said it clashed. I was always the blue while the Art-sist-ologer and her olive-er skin got the pink. I have blotchy red skin that coordinates perfectly with my red tops, my red dresses and my red jeans. I chose red because it matched.
I chose red because it’s the proverbial “red rag”. When I approach, flaming, spitting and stalking, the bulls (read the bullIES) scarper. It’s less of an effort to argue with someone who’s running away. It’s easier to blindside someone who is blind. It’s easier to win if they are already on their back foot.
I chose red because I live in Europe. When the sun is so bright it burns away your retinas, colour is not so much a choice as requisite. Neon rashies, white hats, white clothes in general, all of it protects against the harsh light of a Sydney day. Here in Europe, everyone wears grey. Their coats are woven from grey wool to protect against the grey rain that falls from a grey sky upon their grey souls. Motherbear did once comment as I left the house wearing a Fuchsia wool coat and red Dr Marten boots; you must really stand out in London, looking the way you do, compared to the rest of them. She’s right, I do.
As the minions march across London Bridge, their grey coats wafting in the wind, me and my brights are bouncing. As the pointy-shoed, tight-trousered dudes saunter into their offices, ready to make a mockery of one and t’other, I stomp in sneakers with purpose and punch. As the little ladies twitter in Topshop, and totter on tiptoe, I revel in rouge, ready to rage for another day, another day at war, but at war in comfort.
So about that girl in the tube.
She was about 20, she had mermaid multicoloured hair. She was wearing ironic acid-wash jeans and an ironic rock T-shirt of a band she wouldn’t have been old enough to have ever seen live. She looked cool AF and if I noticed her during the 4 stops we shared a pole, it was because she really did look that awesome. I wanted to look like she did’ footloose and fancy-free. I wished I didn’t have to wear boring work clothes so I could look like her, like myself.
And then...as I jumped the stairs two at a time, earning a few extra heartbeats in a heartlessly boring day, she popped up beside me and said, “is red your favourite colour?” Somewhat taken aback that an actual human being with all their sandwiches in their proverbial picnic had spoken to me in London’s Underground Labyrinth, I wavered, “Yeah, yeah it is”. “Well you look so cool, you really do!” she burst out.
She proffered no clichéd reference to an 80’s song by Chris de Burgh, no sly giggle, no malice, no mirth, just genuine appreciation of another someone dancing to their own tune.
And that, dear reader is why I always wear red. I wear red because it’s me; it isn’t you, it isn’t them, its me… and there’s no syrupy 80’s ballad for it.
*I do love that people always offer Lady in Red, never Scarlett O’Hara, Ruby Tuesday or Red Red Wine, or anything else really
^That is what the website says #rollsoffthetongue
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