Walking along behind this woman in Central today - all in black except for her neon satin shoes - I was suddenly pierced by the strongest memories of the early 1980s. Neon colours do that to me, perhaps because they are so clearly associated with that era, just when I was coming alive to colour and texture and the allure, elusiveness and changeability of fashion, and have never really been worn since - until now, apparently.
More specifically, I'm in Miss Selfridge in Hanover Street in Edinburgh, with The Church of the Poison Mind (which even at the time I derided as puerile) on the shop's stereo and spectacularly bad-tempered Shirley Manson serving behind the counter. I'm picking up a blue and white striped ra ra skirt and contemplating a neon yellow bangle or belt to go with it.
When I was 14, Miss Selfridge was the key to being the person I wanted to be: happy, confident, popular, wearing my stripy skirt, neon dangling from my ears as I skipped along Princes Street.
I think perhaps cynicism began to set in not long afterwards, and I favoured black (and dyed my hair to prove it); I never wore neon again and probably never will. It was strange to be skewered today by the sight of someone's shoes.
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5 comments:
I can't imagine you skipping along Princes Street. Or wearing neon earrings for that matter. Are you sure that was you?!
No of course not; I was trying to conjure up the idea that it was a momentary vision, brought on by Miss Selfridge-induced hysteria, of how life could be...
I discovered black in about 1983 and have to honestly say that I have not really moved on since then. My only nod to colour is the occassional red/magenta/crimson/scarlet.
When I say a group of young kids hanging out the other day in their big baggy T-shirts with neon slogans on the front, studded belts and skinny jeans - it was like being in an 80s timewarp. It made me feel very old that I remembered it all from first time around!
I coveted anything neon when I was about 10, and I have never worked out why. It is hideous and best left to highlighter pens.
I am with MSS regarding black, it is just so much easier than fiddling around with colour.
Does this mean "black" is the new black?
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