21 h. ago My favourite childhood outfit: ‘I loved my homemade hat – the strong papal vibes were unintentional’

If there were any justice in the world, the hats I made at four would be in the Costume Institute at the Met. Sadly, after this, I abandoned my DIY approach to fashionI would love to have picked something super cute: a sparkly tutu; an adorable pair of Mary Janes. Or something cool: an oversized denim jacket with the collar popped, perhaps.But no. Here is an entirely unhinged photograph of me aged four wearing a homemade (obviously) hat – strong papal vibes unintentional – embellished with drawings of my teddy (name: Ted) and with actual Ted himself affixed to the hat. I am also wearing two anchoring hair slides because of the weight of this magnificent creation. This is a look that speaks to the boundless creativity of childhood, of making your own fun as the rest of the family snoozes in the late afternoon sun, in a time before the attention economy was monopolised by algorithms. Continue reading...

Society

45 h. ago My favourite childhood outfit: ‘I liked this M&S jacket so much I’ve bought a vintage one for my daughter’

As a kid, I wore this jacket to meet Bertie Bassett – and it still reminds me of being carefree at two or three, before the awkwardness of my preteen yearsI’m not saying I peaked at two, but I certainly gave myself an uphill struggle. This jacket was from M&S, or St Michael to be precise. Bomber-style, it was white cotton with red, blue and yellow stripes. It was jolly and innocent in the way of a deckchair, and I appear to have worn it a lot in 1986 and 1987, with mustard dungarees, or shorts and T-shirts in clashing prints. On my feet, I am often pictured wearing scuffed white trainers or a pair of T-bar shoes that are still stashed away in an attic in Sheffield. They were my first proper pair of shoes and, as I would tell anyone who would listen, they were burgundy, not red.I was too young then to be able to remember anything concrete from this period, and what I can recall is filtered through grainy family photo albums: vast, northern French skies and wide sandy beaches, jel...

Politics

63 h. ago My favourite childhood outfit: ‘I am in classic British beachwear – a cardigan knitted by my nan’

Whatever the season, I was always in something hand-knitted, and this outfit was colour-coordinated right down to the cheese and onion crispsI inherited my hands from my nan. Long and slim with hard but feminine nails, we called them “piano fingers”, though neither of us ever learned to play. While I went on to use mine for writing, my maternal grandmother dedicated hers to knitting. Decades before the Sewing Bee or Tom Daley’s Instagram, Barbara would go to the local wool shop for designs and supplies – everything, right down to tiny buttons. As her first born granddaughters, my elder sister and I were the natural beneficiaries of this skill, willing mannequins covered in glitter glue and nostalgia.When I look back at photos of myself until around the age of six, I realise I’m usually in knitwear. This commitment to wool was not limited by season or location: in my early years, whenever I was photographed on a beach, I was wearing a cardigan as the waves splash at my feet, like an ...

Society

69 h. ago My favourite childhood outfit: ‘The coat I inherited from Grandpa became my teenage refuge’

After my grandfather died, I claimed his heavy, silk-lined overcoat and wore it with Doc Martens. I sat on it in parks, slept under it on people’s sofas. Then, one day, it disappeared ...I was 15 when Grandpa died. He was 69, too young, but on the plus side he was doing what he most loved – digging on an archaeological site. We weren’t close in the way I was with Granny; he could be quite scary. But we got along fine and I liked him. Mum said I could help myself from his wardrobe.I had only known him dressed for retirement, in blue workers’ overalls for archaeological digging, or baggy beige shorts for caravanning holidays. But it seemed he had been quite dapper back in the day. I helped myself to collarless shirts and a couple of suits (the best was a silvery-grey mohair one that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Paul Weller’s wardrobe). And this overcoat. Continue reading...

Events

3 d. ago My favourite childhood outfit: ‘Batman is one of my finest looks ever – I’d use this on my passport, if I could’

It was Christmas, and my father introduced me and my brother to the gathered family as Batman and Robin. We kept wearing the disguise for a weekWhat I love about this photo is that it couldn’t look any more early 80s if it tried. Everything from the velvet curtains to the plastic flowers, the old-school cathode-ray tube TV to the MK1 metallic purple Ford Escort just in view (the one in which I would later learn to drive), screams 1981. Pictured, we have Pandy the bear; my younger brother Jon, five; Sooty; and yours truly, aged seven, all of us covering a variety of skin and hair colours between us. (Like all the best superheroes, I’m adopted.) The photo would have been taken by my dad using his Kodak camera with flash cube, sporting bell-bottomed jeans and sideburns, while my mum, with her beehive haircut, sipping a Babycham, would probably have been on hand for moral support.These outfits were made by our gran (my mum’s mum), who was as much a whiz with the sewing machine and a kni...

Politics

3 d. ago My favourite childhood outfit: ‘Grandma chopped her gown into a minidress – and lent me her Bet Lynch coat’

It was an era of velvet Laura Ashley dresses, but they weren’t for me. Instead I channelled Debbie Harry, Madonna, Wendy James from Transvision Vamp, Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn MonroeWhen I was a teenager in the 1980s, I had a lot of favourite items of clothing: scrunchy turquoise cargo trousers with an elasticated waistband, grey suede pixie boots, a skimpy beach T-shirt with the word “Hawaii” written on it (a place I have never visited), a Cyndi Lauper-inspired ra-ra skirt with ruffles in pink, white and, yes, turquoise. But there were so many objects of desire that I was not permitted to acquire: crinkle-effect stilettos, a Frankie Say Relax T-shirt, jelly shoes, drainpipe jeans, a matador hat like the ones Mel & Kim wore Also out of my reach for most of my teens was the thing I wanted most: the effect of a whole outfit. A look. Until this one night.I was about to turn 17 and this was my outfit for the school dance. It was all sourced from my grandma’s wardrobe, except for th...

Politics

4 d. ago My favourite childhood outfit: ‘I wore Dad’s suede jacket until bits of it dangled into my tea’

I had a habit of nicking his clothes – I wore his suit jacket as a coat and his threadbare checked shirt as nightclothes. I felt great in them, like a chip off the old blockI loved Dad’s old suede jacket. He’d had it for as long as I could remember, an artefact from his more rock’n’roll days, and it had been worn into buttery softness. When the lining finally disintegrated, and the suede thinned to imminent oblivion, he decided to retire it. But I couldn’t bear to see it go.I tried it on and felt great – like a chip off the old block. It wasn’t at all heavy and the softness extended to the buttons that were covered in matching suede material. Sure, it had a patina of London grime and smelled of Old Holborn tobacco, but I thought it was cool. I was about 13 and couldn’t afford to buy a suede jacket in a million years, so I claimed it as my own, and set about bringing it back to life, like the singing mending mice in Bagpuss. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago My favourite childhood outfit: ‘I was an innocent Muslim girl – and a walking endorsement for ecstasy’

At 14, on a family road trip to Europe, I mixed traditional shalwar kameez and trendy T-shirts. Unfortunately, I didn’t really understand what was on my shirt ...My favourite teen outfit was memorable for the wrong reasons. Age 14, in a desperate attempt to be cool, I bought a graphic print T-shirt depicting a bright green can of 7Up with bubbles effervescing from the top – oblivious to the fact that it didn’t say 7Up at all, it said, “EUp”, and the bubbles were not bubbles, but MDMA pills being dropped into the can. To make matters worse, the image also included Fido Dido – the cartoon mascot for 7Up – sporting bloodshot eyeballs while smoking a spliff. Little did I know that I, an innocent, drug-free Muslim girl, was a walking endorsement for ecstasy.I wore it in 1992, the year my dad decided it was time for a grand family road trip across Europe. There were 12 of us in total, aged between five and 50: aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins – we all piled into a minibus my dad had hired...

Politics