Winter Warmers

Yesterday I left the house wearing a coat and sunglasses. Alas, thus is the weather in London; you don’t know whether you’re going to get rained or sweated on. At this time of year, it’s difficult to approach the prospect of purchasing a coat with anything other than mild distain, you already forked out on your autumn mac and your winter woolly. With shops and fashion pages bursting with pastels and florals is it worth sweating it out in your military for a little bit longer?

Giving in and buying a new coat is kind of like admitting defeat, acknowledging that summer is never ever coming and that we’re going to be pump-full of rain for the rest of eternity.. but maybe it doesn’t have to be so bad. Consider this, we like accessories. This is a fact. You can never have enough bags, shoes or hats. It’s impossible. So consider the possibility that this dreary grey weather is Britain’s blessing in disguise (a very big disguise wearing a cloud as a moustache and dribbling with delight) they don’t call London the fashion capital of the world for nothing! Milan? Pah. Paris? Whatever! We are one accessory above the rest,  ladies I present to you… the Jacket.

I like a military parka with my pastel dress, a varsity coat over leather leggings and a smart blazer type mixed up with a great big floaty number. When you’re trying to rock the Chung look you really can’t mix it up enough, so wearing just one jacket for the entire season is definitely out of the question. There’s one small problem with all of this, it’s all well and good planning a new spring/summer wardrobe that allows for your new ‘accessory’,  and all-to-easy to get carried away with the cornucopia of mish-mashed looks the addition of this amasing little item can create, but can I afford it? Probably not. Can I afford twenty of it to go with every outfit in my wardrobe? Definitely not.

It was Thursday night (or as I like to call it ‘shopping night’) in the city, and I found myself in a crowded bar surrounded by more options than I had time to try on. I imagined how I would look with that one or how this one would look on my arm. I didn’t know what I would be going home with but I had a feeling that it was all a very bad idea, that I would wake up in the morning with my credit card on the bedroom floor, violated. Then something caught my eye, 60% off you say? Mid-season sale? Hell yes.

I left that night with a cute little sporty type, (but it wasn’t the only one!)