Here’s a quick question: what do you reckon is the average height of a woman in the UK? Wrong! Or at least wrong if you were to go by the spring fashions festooning the high street.
This week, I took my thrice-yearly trip to a “mall”, as we now must learn to call shopping centres, and was met with a parade of 6ft-long floral prairie dresses.
They were far longer than I am, far ditsier than I am and far (far) more shapeless than I am. And I’m generally perplexed.
Give up? The average height of a woman in Britain is 5ft 3in. Yes, really. It makes me (me!) totally average – even if some of my friends are an unnecessarily leggy 5ft 6in. So why aren’t more clothes made to fit the likes of me?
Now I’ve always enjoyed a flouncy frock. But not wrapping round my legs as I walk or trailing on the ground. I have nice knees, dammit, that deserve to see the light of day occasionally.
Unfortunately, the current crop of sprigged ‘cottagecore’ offerings from Zara to Arket via M&S make me look like a cross between Mable off of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time and an Amish schoolmarm.
It’s all very well influencers and fashion experts telling thrillingly average women to just take their flappy Anthropologie marquees off to their local tailor and have the hems raised. But it’s not just the yardage that makes these dresses unwearable. As a result of the length, the other proportions are out of whack when they’re shortened.
As you can tell, I’m feeling really rather militant, which is ironic because I’ve reached the stage where I seldom buy anything new. I just do a quick recce to see what’s back in fashion and then rootle round the deepest recesses of my bedroom until I find the relevant colour, fabric or style.
If I’m lacking in the au courant shades of orange and Kermit green (sorry to be the bearer of bad colourways), there’s always a charity shop or eBay to fill any wardrobe lacunae.
Why, just this week a fabulous pre-loved dove-grey satin dress arrived from somewhere in the Midlands. My husband was so impressed when I tried it on that in a rare moment of candour I confessed it had “cost real money”. Weirdly, he perked up even further.
“I’m glad you’re treating yourself to something new for a change,” he said. “Go on then. How much was it? More than £200?”
My jaw dropped – does this man not know me at all after so many years? The dress was £35. Because it was pre-owned, the thrillingly average woman I had bought it from had already taken up the hem. Yay!
And so I did what all women instinctively do when a man asks them how much something costs; I dissembled. Except this time in the counterintuitive direction.
“It was £165, or something like that,” I told him, with a straight-from-central-casting air of vagueness. He nodded and knowledgeably confirmed it was worth every penny.
I haven’t the heart to tell him I remain Second Hand Rose wearing second-hand clothes, but it works for me. Not only am I a virtuous member part of the circular economy, but nobody will ever mistake me for one of Michael Bentine’s Potty people.
