Future frivolities

Even on the better days 2020 had to offer, I found myself unwilling or unable to summon up the energy to much care about what I wore. That’s not to say I didn’t care about clothes: the steeper the decline into coronavirus and chaos, the more voracious my “need” for various items of apparel became. I’ve always been big on charity shops and second-hand stores; bereft of my usual supplies due to lockdown, I turned instead to online apps like Depop, purchasing a bevy of items clearly essential for my makeshift sick bed at my parents’ flat (a vintage pink velvet suit, a sequined cropped jacket and floor-length sparkly gown listed amongst the carnage).

Sustainable as my purchases were, I didn’t really need them. Or did I? An ardent fan of animal patterns and all-things glittery, the joy contained within my ever-exploding wardrobe bore no resemblance to the person I actually was at that time. We are creatures of comfort; what we wear reflects so much of the way we feel.

I clung doggedly and dourly to my jogging bottoms and pyjamas (nighttime pyjamas alternated with daytime pyjamas, an important distinction) because, beaten down by illness and oscillating between various states of lockdown, I didn’t feel like myself. For so many of us, at a time of uncertainty and collective grief, we weren’t seeking anything more or less than solace, and our attire reflected it. But we knew: this too shall pass.

I’ve been the lucky owner of this poodle purse for over fifteen years. I bought it from a British Heart Foundation shop in a small town in Buckinghamshire and paid £2 for the pleasure. It seems fanciful to call it a bag, or even a purse: it can hold, at a push, a bank card and a couple of 50ps. But it was love at first sight, and as the years pass and age becomes us both my devotion to the poodle only grows stronger.

Paradoxically, it’s also fair to say that this accessory has not enjoyed a great deal of use. Despite appreciation for its sequinned façade and sausage-string handle, by the beginning of last year the cherished poodle had been rendered fundamentally ornate. From the corner of my room it watched me balefully with its beady eye, resigning itself to a lifetime spent indoors (good practice, as it turns out).

In a year where quite literally nothing happened, I clearly had as few opportunities to use a vintage pink velvet suit as I did a sequinned poodle/glorified cardholder. But, as it turns out, I did need those things: to remind me of who I once was and who I would be. That joy need not equate to usefulness; that there is great importance to be found in frivolity. And I’ll need my pink suit and poodle after all: to step out into a new world, any day now, and be all that once was and all that’s yet to come.