Thongs and bikinis in the pub: British women just can't dress for hot weather
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Loading... - J. OLIVEIRA
- 15 Jul 2020
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Yesterday I caught a stifling commuter train to town and there was a blonde woman in my carriage wearing leopard-print hot pants and a skimpy white T-shirt. Which would have been fine if she was 17, but she looked 47. Quite frankly, the only female over 40 who can rock that look is Kylie – and she spends 10 hours a day in the gym.
But the most tragic thing about this tale was that the woman in hot pants was me. In my defence, I don’t have any clothes suitable for this weather that don’t yell “St Tropez pool party!” Like most women of my ilk and age, the only time I need clothes for Mediterranean weather is when I’m in the Med and then I’ll mostly don a bikini and sarong. Worse still, I haven’t updated any of my swelter-garb since 2004 when my first son was born and we swapped South of France jaunts for Norfolk bucket-and-spade hols.
You’re as likely to need long-johns as a bathing suit when approaching the sea at Brancaster in July. So when something as outlandish as a heat wave sweeps over the British Isles, I find myself frantically burrowing in the attic to retrieve a little red linen dress that I recall wearing to the British Grand Prix in 1996. Only to find I had a 25-inch waist in those days.
I am far from alone. Although the bulk of sartorial complaints in sizzling weather focus on pasty-legged blokes in sandals and shorts, I believe women are actually the worst offenders. At least men are generally wearing something that’s borderline recognisable as actual clothing. But at the moment roasting women can be sighted in crop tops, running shorts, thigh-length slips and see-through sun-dresses, all of which reveal several ugly inches of greying bra strap.
A friend told me he saw a young woman in a bikini and “nothing else” in a London pub. Yet another relays the news that, “thongs, even of a leopard variety,” abound on Hampstead Heath, while the writer Amanda Craig spotted a nun swimming in a wimple at the Ladies’ Pond there.
A well-dressed sunbather relaxes in Brighton - just please, don't go to work like this (Photo: London News Pictures)
For 11 months and three weeks of the year British women hide behind opaque tights, Spanx and long sleeves and maintain the illusion we are toned, honed honeys. Then the sun comes out and the illusion is shattered. The situation’s deteriorated since we all caught the festival contagion. Suddenly those folk who remember Woodstock and the first few Glastos, alongside those who merely aspire to them, believe we can all wear nothing much except a coronet of daisies.
It’s truly not our fault, we’re just not grown and ripened by the regular heat needed for summer elegance. French women all own a zillion chic linen shifts for the gamine figure that float along baked high streets. We sturdy British femmes, however, have to invest our fashion savings in items that keep us warm at summer weddings and Glyndebourne nights: cashmere cardigans, pashminas and summer coats (ever seen Emmanuelle Beart in a summer coat? No, I didn’t think so).
Still, if the heat wave continues, we can at least follow the splendid advice given to one biographer of Margaret Thatcher, Eliza Filby, by her great aunt, who said: like shellfish, you should avoid underwear in those months that contain the letter “r”. I feel this would suit our native women very well: we may not be stylish, but we are fearless.
