Arctic winds are a-blowing in London today. The sun is warm and the sky is perfectly blue with litle white fluffy clouds speeding across it but the wind-chill and the spine-shivering cuts announcements from the government today just make you want to swathe yourself in layers and layers of cashmere. Luckily this season's trends are, if you hadn't already noticed, big on the chunky knit. But working out what to wear with a big cable knit sweater isn't always easy - a chunky knit can completely eradicate the shape of the person underneath so you look warm but slightly like an oversized cat toy.
My own solution is to go for short skirts and tailored coats or jackets, cashmere gloves and a good scarf. A short flippy skirt may not be the best option when walking over a windy Waterloo bridge, as I discovered during a Marilyn moment this morning, but they do look nice or you could swap them for some surprisingly forgiving leather shorts. A pair of thick black tights will go a long way to preserving any modesty you have remaining.
At the moment I swear by John Lewis' cotton tights, because I'm not meant to be wearing lycra, but usually it would be my belovedFalke Cotton Touch tights.
Below is a slightly idealised version of what I'm wearing today (obviously I don't have this kind of money so almost all of mine is ebay and car boot sale alternatives but a girl can dream)...
Let's start with the coat - mine is an oversized sharply cut black APC number that I found for £10 in a charity shop. I particularly like the pin-stripe lining that peeks out when I unbutton and roll up the cuffs. However in dream land this season I would have bought this and pushed the coat to the back of the wardrobe (or at least taken it to the dry cleaners becasue I wouldn't have to wear it every day or freeze);
Underneath it would be a much more swish version of the soft cream cable knit chunky crew neck that I'm wearing right now which was £1.50 at the car boot sale and is actually for a 10 year old boy. The luxury version is from Prada, but here's anotehr alternative from D&G - technically a dress but a little on the short side without something underneath it even for me;
And underneath that would be a silk shirt buttoned all the way up to the top tucked into either shorts or a short skirt. The shirt I'm wearing is a very old, slightly worse for wear, grey, lumberjack, £1 Primark bargain bin find from way back when but I'd much rather be wearing this one;
Some kind of ankle boot is essential, and a little platform helps navigate the puddle strewn pavements of London without getting your feet completely soaked. The ones I have on are desert boots (who came up with that name? how can anything suede with a heel be useful in heat and on sand?) from River Island and are a pinky-sand colour with a chunky rubber heel. But of course in fantasy land where my feet never hurt wearing heels I'd be wearing these;
I don't wear a huge amount of jewellery other than the pieces JFK has given me which I am inseperable from, so one amazing piece like this would do nicely;
And of course a scarf and some gloves are essential.I like my scarves big and snuggly - a hood is definately an added bonus to this one and I could never say no to long fluffy Margiela gloves...
Is it scarves or scarfs? No matter, the important thing is that we all agree that scarves are wonderful, wonderful inventions. Is there anything as good when it's cold and raining and miserable outside than wrapping yourself in a giant knitted cashemre scarf of amazingness? Well, probably, yes, but still it's up there with some of the better things in life.
But despite the cold edge to the air, it's not quite the time for giant cashmere scarves that would make you faint from heat exhaustion on the tube. No, it's still just about the right time for floaty strips of chiffon, squares of silk and triangles of bightly coloured cotton.
An no-where offers a better selection than Liberty's scarf room which has just relaunched in the hallowed dark wood panelled central hall of one of the UK's best shops.
I had a sneak peak on Thursday and it's rather glorious, with styling stations to teach us lesser mortals how to stop a stupidly expensive square of silk sticking to your lipstick or flying off in the wind. After all these scarves, although spectacularly beautiful, do tend to be tricky to wear.
They have a nasty tendency to fall off at innappropriate times, which means you are constantly tugging at them. You knot one around your neck to stop it flying away and it suddenly tightens and now you're being strangled, which really is too much suffering even for fashion.
Which is why it seems especially magnanimous of Liberty to take its expertise, or rather those of its chief scarf tier Lauranne, to the masses via the very modern medium of youtube with these rather charming videos.
The scarf is definitely having a moment. Hermes launched a useful resource a few weeks ago now in the shape of its own scarf campaign site called Jaime Mon Carre, or I Love My Scarf. It also has a number of tutorials organised to reflect the styles of women living in some of the worlds most stylish cities - London, New York, Paris and Tokyo (hah Milan, you are too boring for us). Those damn French do still manage to outshine the rest of us though.
Image via Living Dolls because I can't get the site to work on my laptop to take a screen grab for some reason
Neither the Liberty videos or the Hermes site are especially new, but they've both merited repeated viewings from me over the last three weeks or so.
The result is that I want even more scarves than the suitcase full I already own (in my defense it's a very, very small vintage vanity case) and will be wiling away a number of hours stroking hideously expensive ones that I could never in a million years afford in the new Liberty scarf room just in case you were wondering where you could find me.
