Do I want to dress like Kate Middleton? A fashion website that I like recently suggested I should, but I’m not convinced.
Paula, north-east London
Thank you, Paula, for sending me the link to the aforementioned fashion website, because reading its little promo has now given me insight into what a lobotomy would feel like without the benefit of pain relief.
“Kate the Great!” begins our missive (you’re already feeling the drill enter your skull, aren’t you?). “We’ve been following Kate Middleton’s recent social engagements with keen interest – and we’re seriously impressed.” (Are you? Really? Because not even the royals look half-interested in their social engagements, so well done you for mustering this enthusiasm.) “Endless events, public appearances and parties, and she never puts a nude-pumped foot wrong in the style stakes.” (See if you can find the contradiction in that sentence.) “Jealous?” (No.) “Us too!” (Great.) “Give your wardrobe the royal treatment with tailored dresses, pencil skirts and accessories fit for a princess.” The “royal treatment” here being that I pay thousands of pounds for clothes that Kate gets for free because of who she married. Thanks for the tip.
Yes, taking apart what is essentially a fashion advert does have the distinct tang of getting a barrel and taking an AK-47 to the fish inside. But sometimes this can reveal something more than fish guts. I’d really like to call time on this idea that Kate Middleton should be a fashion icon because her late mother-in-law was. She shouldn’t. Whatever guff people say about the Queen, fashion is not what the royals are here for. To be honest, I’m not sure what they are here for, but that’s because I’m a heretic from the colonies who has only lived here for 25 years, so what do I know?
What I do know, however, is that trying to pretend the British royals are fashionable is like going to the cinema and expecting to be able to buy a roast chicken. Who knows, maybe some cinemas do sell roast chicken (in France, probably; possibly Sweden or Italy). But it’s definitely not a given and especially not here. So let’s stop demanding our cinemas sell roast chicken, OK? Give those cinemas a break and give me one, too. I can’t stand the constant hope and disappointment.
Here’s my next issue (I’m in a terrible mood today, folks, so brace yourselves, this is going to be a bumpy ride. Consider this my Peter Finch in Network moment.) I’m just too old and too bored to have any truck any more with the idea that a celebrity should be applauded for their fashion sense when we all know the only sense they have is hiring a stylist who finds clothes for them and literally puts them on for them. That is how difficult these people find the act of getting dressed. Well done, Nicole Kidman, for hiring a stylist who called up Alexander McQueen’s PR and borrowed a dress for you! We all know this, right? No one thinks Julianne Moore goes to Harvey Nichols before the Oscars and somehow has some magical eye that enables her to find the perfect dress that none of us bought because we’re too stupid and busy liking photos of salad on Instagram, right?
So, in short, no, I don’t want to dress the way Kate Middleton’s stylist dresses her and nor should you, Paula. I don’t mean this disrespectfully to Ms Middleton – who I’m sure is a charming woman – but, really, you’re better than this. We all are. Even Kate is, probably. There is no helping certain fashion websites, but the rest of us can aspire to more than lobotomy by advert.
If someone has very obviously had cosmetic surgery, should you acknowledge it or not?
Geoffrey, by email
It’s a tough one, I grant you, Geoffrey. After all, the person has submitted themselves to an extraordinary amount of pain and cost. Surely, you might think, the polite thing would be to acknowledge it? You might think that, but you would be wrong. The polite thing is to pretend the person has always looked like this. Vogue has a corker of an example of that this month in its interview with Renée Zellweger. Now, Zellweger looks a little different these days. How to deal with this silicone elephant in the room? Easy: “Let’s get it out of the way: Renée Zellweger looks perfectly normal to me,” the interview begins. Um, OK! “And if she has done something to her face (and does it really matter?), then hats off to her, she looks terrific.” How’s that for some fancy footwork? She doesn’t look like she’s had anything done, but if she has, GOOD FOR HER.
Here’s my tuppence on the matter: no one should be judged, negatively or positively, for doing whatever they want to their body. It is this judgment that makes people who have had the work feel like they have to deny the obvious. The best thing for everyone is if the person who has had the work laughs at the critics and gossips and makes like Dolly Parton who famously said: “If I have one more facelift, I’ll have a beard.” Now I’m not saying Zellweger has had work or not, but I do think all of our lives would be marvellously improved if she started cracking jokes about pubic facial hair in Vogue.
Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com.
