I had 20 minutes to get ready for the trip to Brittany I’m currently enjoying and packed with no thought beyond the essentials: earplugs, chargers and my emotional support pillow. On arrival in this lovely seaside town, I opened my case to a troubling sight: nothing but striped tops, navy on white; white on navy, mid-blue and white; grey and white …
Could there be anything more mortifying than walking along the Brittany seafront in a marinière? It’s basically Breton cosplay; the equivalent of posing outside the Louvre in an Hermès silk scarf, belted mackintosh and beret, smoking unfiltered Gitanes: ridiculous. Why not sing a sea shanty while I’m at it?
Even if I had paid more attention, it would have been a struggle to pack stripeless. Stripes have gone from the “devil’s cloth” – a signifier of marginality worn by sailors, prostitutes and convicts – to the ubiquitous uniform of middle-class womanhood, what you wear to pick up some Nocellara olives in Waitrose.
Apparently a £400 turtleneck version is this winter’s It-knit and I tried to count how many Breton tops there are on the Boden site, but got dizzy, and perilously close to buying another. Stripes are so easy and pleasing and it’s not as if I have any aspiration to imaginative or elegant dressing: “clean” is enough of an achievement.
I went out on day one in my only plain top but it instantly became apparent that I needn’t have worried. A solid proportion of the flâneurs, cyclists and coffee drinkers were bestriped. Not only that, but driving around, even the smallest towns – the ones where cafes close out of season and where the roundabouts carry pleading signs appealing for doctors to move there – have somewhere to buy stripy tops; the local TK Maxx equivalent has a rail of them outside, undulating temptingly in the sea breeze. It’s like an inverse Where’s Wally basically: stripes everywhere.
Why fight it? I’m going with the local flow and wearing two layers of stripes today; if it gets any colder, I’ll go full Breton millefeuille. Chic, never; stripy, always.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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