The first questions I ask every morning, often before I’m properly awake or just before the alarm goes off, are: What am I going to wear? What do I have to do? Where am I going?
For some people this is a quick check of what’s in the wardrobe, but it can turn into an existential question: Who am I, and who do I want to be? For people with large wardrobes, it may even be: Who was I, and do I want to be that again today?
The only time I don’t ask these questions is when I’m depressed. Then I don’t care about the outside world, and whatever strength I have goes into picking something up off the floor. It happened after a particularly bad break-up, when everything was in disarray, when I left school during a recession and felt the sting of being outside normal life, and again in the grief after my father’s death. This is zero fashion, where clothes are simply there to do a job and you don’t care about yourself, let alone anyone else, and it’s not a good place.
Fortunately, I have good friends who shook me out of it, because those are exactly the times you need to stay as fabulous as possible and give yourself the best attention.
When I was thinking about writing on this subject, I thought of those friends, now scattered around the world, and the hours we spent when we were younger poring over magazines, analysing looks and models and discussing styles, all the while sharing a bottle of wine.
Plenty of wine police critics will turn their noses up at the idea of associating wine with fashion. In my experience, the ones who protest loudest are often the first to leave their no-frills wives by the pot plant at a party and chase the girls with the shimmeriest lipstick and the most outrageous heels. They have little idea about the cycles of fashion, they’re hypocritical to boot, and their shrill admonishments aren’t worth the time of day.
So what is personal style? Plenty of people in wine have it. Jancis Robinson, who writes for the Financial Times, has a distinctive style, and I remember first seeing her in intellectual Japanese designers, which made me wonder whether that carries over into her taste in wine. Many friends who buy wine for a living have a strong personal style too, which makes sense, since their everyday work is deciding what not to buy. Sound familiar? There are plenty of men in wine with a great deal of style as well, and it has very little to do with money and a lot to do with attitude.
What I’d like to do is look at wine the way my friends and I once looked at clothes. We spent years analysing fashion, I’ve spent as many working in wine, and in both I keep asking the same question: why do I like this, in particular?
The people who have settled on a personal style tend to be great students, of wine or clothes, and of people too. I wouldn’t say I’ve settled on mine, and I’m always a little envious of those who are sure of theirs, whether it shows in high fashion, a simple handkerchief in the pocket or a beautiful pen. I’m still searching for new ideas, just as I am with wine.
Miuccia Prada once said that when people ask her how to be stylish, her only answer is to study. You can’t buy style, you have to work at it, and it has nothing to do with money. Wine, like fashion, also rewards becoming a canny shopper. And as a line often attributed to Yves Saint Laurent puts it, to have style, you must believe in yourself. The most important thing is confidence.
I hope this helps you feel good about your choices, with some confidence in what you like and a few different ways of looking at why you like it.
Juel x
Archive note: First published in May 2012. Part 2, on minimalism, followed in June 2012.
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