What exactly the big summer reveal entails has always been pretty clear for most of us. Basically it’s our legs that we will suddenly have to get out after a winter spent hiding them away. Which means we are destined to spend the next month or so Psycle-ing, depilating and fake-tanning them into looking a little less like moles blinking in daylight; certainly a lot less hairy.
There are arms too, of course, suddenly let out from under jumpers and jackets, but there is not much you can do about your forearms. And if you are the sort to bust out your upper arms away from the beach, I place money on your being a year-round exerciser/depilator/fake-tanner who is baffled by all of the above.
I feel it’s my duty to flag up to you that it is about time you started thinking about your shoulders too. Summer 2016 is all about the schmoulder, courtesy of an array of va-va-voom off-the-shoulder tops the likes of which haven’t been seen since Carmen Miranda in Down Argentine Way.
The good news is that there’s not much you can do when it comes to shoulders but think about them. Shoulders are shoulders, and you can’t — praise be — exercise your way into having a new and improved pair. So let’s just concentrate on the tops.
It has long been a signature look at the label Tibi, and this season’s black-and-white floral silk Amara style is one of the loveliest around (£365, net-a-porter.com). Another stand-out is Milly’s cotton poplin cutaway style, which has a white nehru collar section, pale blue sleeves and plenty of schmoulder in between (£200, milly.com).
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“We will spend the next month depilating and fake tanning
On the high street, Finery offers a similar cutaway approach with its Aldworth Acid Flower-print Cold Shoulder blouse (£49, finerylondon.com), as does Zara with its pale blue top with cut-out shoulders (£22.99, zara.com). Hobbs’s red-and-white floral silk Salvador style is more conventionally Carmen (£139, hobbs.co.uk), as are J Crew’s silk blue check version (£178, jcrew.com) and Mango’s yellow-and-white striped one (£29.99, mango.com). Ganni has the lovely carnation-strewn Jones style — either red on cream or white on blue (£90, ganni.com).
Most practical is Maje’s Loris (£155, maje.com), in a paisley-like pale-blue-on-white print. Its elasticated top means it can be worn as a round-neck on days when, to misquote Ms Miranda, bananas is not my business. Which, let’s face it, is most days.
Osbert the trendspotter
A reminder that trend-chasing, schmoulder and all, is not something that our generation invented comes in the form of Osbert Lancaster’s Cartoons, Columns and Curlicues (£40, pimpernelpress.com). This is a republication of the best — for which read most entertainingly acute — work by the cartoonist and social satirist who was, among other things, a kind of Peter York of his day.
My favourite of the boxed trio of books is Homes Sweet Homes, first published in 1939, which skewers the assorted interiors trends of past centuries, starting with the Normans and pressing the accelerator when it hits the 1900s. And so we are introduced to “Cultured Cottage”, for example. “Nine out of ten country cottages — that is, the more sanitary and comfortable nine — are occupied by writers, film stars, barristers, artists and BBC announcers,” we are told. (Which means it must be nine and a half today.) The woman in that cartoon is definitely wearing Céline. Then there’s “Curzon Street Baroque” (she’s in Chloé), and “Modernistic” (has to be Vetements).
There is a free evening talk, Osbert Lancaster: An Appreciation, at 6.30pm on May 10 at the Riba Bookshop, London W1. Details at https://66pp.wordpress.com/ 66pp.wordpress.com. If only Lancaster were still around to give us Ikea Ikebana, Variations on the Theme of Selfie Stick and so much else besides.
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21st-century tulip fever
Of course I had heard that thing about tulips coming up blind the year after they first flower, but I didn’t believe it, which is why I didn’t bother to plant any more last autumn — which is why I now have one lone tulip on my terrace.
A shame, because I think tulips are a fine flower, so much so that, should I have found myself in 17th-century Holland, I am sure I could have dropped ten times my salary on the Viceroy, apparently the ultimate must-have bulb.
Tulip mania was made famous by a book published two centuries after its 1637 peak, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, written by a journalist called Charles Mackay. I can only imagine what Mackay would have had to say about the hype surrounding Vetements’ DHL T-shirt, which costs an unbelievable £185 (mytheresa.com).
I digress. What does a tulip lover in need of some tulips do, aside from buy herself a vaseful? Treat herself to Sevda’s beautiful dusky pink British Tulip Garden Rose silk twill scarf (also available in blue and in violet; £175, sevdalondon.com). Definitely money not at all delusionally spent.