Idon’t know about you but I am so bored of all my clothes right now. My favourite jumpers have tipped from comforting familiarity into the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt. My winter coat hulks awkwardly on its peg in my hallway – like a party guest who doesn’t know when to leave, getting on my nerves every time I walk past it.
This happens every year at the tail end of winter. Every year, at the point when spring is in the air but in a flighty, unreliable way (it’s still cold in the mornings, still dark in the evenings) I run clean out of enthusiasm for everything I’ve been wearing.
Which is rubbish, because feeling good about my outfit is the best trick I know for feeling good about a new day. But much as I would like to shove the coat in the attic and start wearing gingham sundresses and espadrilles, it’s not a practical solution: I would probably give myself pneumonia and ruin said espadrilles in a muddy puddle.
So this year I’ve got a plan. Eight new styling tricks to spice up what’s already in our wardrobes. No shopping, just styling. Wearing the same clothes, but in different ways. This is a terrible time of year to go shopping. There is no point buying more winter clothes, because you won’t get enough wear out of them before summer happens, and when autumn rolls around they will feel like old clothes, so that’s a waste of time and money. And it’s too early to go in on proper summer clothes, which aren’t going to be of much use in the weeks of unreliable weather we’ve still got to get through.
Styling tricks can transform your wardrobe. Nothing makes you look more instantly up-to-date than wearing your clothes the way the in-crowd do. One season it was shoulder-robing our coats, another it was French-tucking our shirts. Styling lets you play with your wardrobe, have fun with it, and that helps put the spark back into getting dressed.
Styling tweaks can bring old favourites back into your look (hello, leopard, my old friend) and shuffle the deck so that the spotlight falls somewhere different. (See: the Power Sock, below.) I have spent much of the past few weeks watching fashion shows – which offer brilliant people watching in general, but are specifically excellent for getting a jump on the latest tips and tricks about how to wear clothes – and have distilled some key lessons into these ways to breathe new life into your between-seasons wardrobe. Are you ready, team? Let’s go.