Fashion feng shite

Revisiting an old column

Picture by Adrienne Leonard, from Unsplash - it’s not my house, although I do fancy those hat boxes.

The comments on my last free post (about my current shoe life) were so lovely and very kindly mentioned the column I used to write for Good Weekend, which this Substack is named after. In the Times it was called Closet Talk.

So I thought it would be fun to revisit one of those old pieces, which is from October 18, 2003. I don’t think this one was used in any of the anthologies, so I hope everyone will read it fresh.

Dirty tricks

Somebody recently gave me a hilarious little book as a housewarming present. Written by Anna Crosbie, it’s called Feng Shite and is described as ‘a Little Book of Household Messing’ that is ‘full of simple and practical tips to help you have a pathologically untidy house with practically no effort’.

Here are some examples from the book:

• If in doubt, keep it. One never knows when the World Screw Crisis will kick in.

• Every so often, forget to put your rubbish out for the garbagemen.

• Constantly start new hobbies and quite quickly learn to dislike them.

After reading Feng Shite about 1000 times and snorting with amusement every time, it occrred to me that similar principles could also be applied to one’s wardrobe.

So with all due respect to Ms Crosbite, here are my rules of Fashion Feng Shite.

• Always put clothes away neatly right after wearing them. This ensures that anything stained or requiring mending will stay untouched until the next time you really need to wear it.

• Push clothes needing dry cleaning right to the bottom of the laundry basket so you can better forget about them. It allows them to become foully crushed and take on the pungent odour of nearby socks etc, by the time you next desperately need them. Works best with tailoring.

• Put hand-washing in a special overpriced, hand-embroidered linen bag at the bottom of the clothes basket (just above the tailoring), so you can really forget about favourite things and think you’ve lost them.

• Buy a long-haired pet.

• Never treat stains immediately. If your hostess insists on emergency action and the time of a red wine incident, always use a brightly-coloured paper napkin to rub water uselessly into white clothes - or a white one on dark fabrics. This will ensure a double layer of staining.

• Store all your tights in a big tangle. Ideally wash and dry them this way.

• Men, never untie your tie. Just loosen it, pull it off and hang it on the doorknob.

• Try to wear pants slightly too long for the shoes you intend to wear with them. That way you can catch your heel constantly in the hem, causing it to unravel and eventually tear. So simple!

• Never have jacket sleeves shortened, just fold them under, slightly skewiff. Quite quickly a permanent dirty crease will form and stay put even if you ever get them altered to the right length.

• This also works with the legs of jeans.

• Take dessicated laundry from the dryer and place it in large attractive baskets. These can become a feature around your home. When you wish to wear the clothes they will be so impossibly wrinkly you will have to put them through the washer again. Perfect!

• On the rare occasions when you extract clothes before the Simpson Desert part of the drying cycle, never iron them while they are still very slightly ddamp. Wait until they have become bone dry - it will take much longer and you will never have a satisfactory result.

• When travelling, make sure you don’t quite put the tops back on shampoo, body lotion etc.

• Use patented shoe renovating lotions to perk up scuffed black shoes. They are quick and easy to use and guarantee a sinister plasticised sheen on even the very best leathers.

• Never use shoe trees - in fact, just chuck all your shoes in a basket where they can scuff up together.

Unpacking: don’t.

This is another free post.

I am so enjoying this little run of posts for all, because I completely understand we can’t all sign up as paid subbies for every Substack that catches our fancy.

But perhaps - as this is how I make my living - you would like to throw this sea lion a fish? Or, to put it another way, Buy Me a Coffee. Massive thanks to everyone who has already done this.

All the love, as always, to my paid Subscribers. We goexclusive again in a couple of days.

Thanks also to everyone who LIKES this post, which gives the algorithm a poke.

More to come people!