Be bold, be British

WITH the release of the second Sex and the City film on 27 May there will be a collective sigh across the land and a lament from women everywhere that they want to be styled by cool fashionista Patricia Field.
"I wish I could dress like that all of the time - I wish I could take my wardrobe to a whole new level," a friend of mine said this week after seeing the film trailer.
And she wasn't talking about the designer labels either, but the combinations of colours, styles, patterns and the ever-refreshing twist given to each outfit seen on Carrie and co. 

True these are New York ladies with money to burn but apart from that, are they really so far removed from us? 
Is their eclectic fashion ever suitable for us mere mortals?
Actually, I would argue that as a Brit, you have more encouragement than most to dress like that.  Last week my French mother told me about a middle-aged couple she had seen walking down the street; he was wearing a burnt orange cord suit, she was in a long tutu with a raincoat slung over the top.
As other shoppers stopped to witness the spectacular sight, mum smiled and told me later: "It's only something you would see in Britain and I love it." 

And she has a point. As a nation we are known for being eccentric (bog snorkelling and cheese racing anyone?), but cool Britannia is still a phrase commonly heard too and I think the two ideas are very closely linked.
After all, when was the last time you saw someone in comfortable jeans, shapeless sportswear top and bland trainers and felt a deep respect and admiration for them?

It's our ability to be eccentric which has earned us a place on the fashion radar. 
There doesn't have to be any hard and fast rules about fashion so when you choose your clothes in the morning, the last thought you should have is: "Does this top stand out too much?" or whether the colours clash.  Sure you can dress accordingly to the occasion, whether it's office wear or a weekend look with friends and family, but don't for a minute consider that you are confined to blending in with the background or that you don't deserve to look good.

Clothes aren't about how much they cost - they are about how much they make you feel.
And if that feeling is less than £1million, then don't bother with it; your country needs you goddammit.

The tweets and the bees

I NORMALLY get the hang of social networking sites very easily, MySpace? Yup. Facebook? Yup. Bebo? No, I'm not 14. 

So after a news-training course at work, I was feeling particularly inspired to sign up to Twitter (yes I'm aware I'm about two years behind the rest of the world). The benefits for keeping up-to-date and looking out for potential stories were highlighted and I thought it would be very exciting. Uploaded my photo, linked this site to it, hunted down celebrities to follow and wrote a couple of tweets.

Within a day I had three random people following me. Fantastic, going by those statistics, I should have an army of followers within a month.

However a few days later I had lost two of them. Clearly they weren't impressed by my tweets: "Why are there so many bumble bees this year?" and "I keep finding glitter on my skin, maybe I lose it through my pores."  So for a day or two after that, I was suddenly scared to tweet - just incase I lost my one remaining follower.  And I felt ashamed, I did want to announce my new Twitter profile to my Fbook friends but then worried that they would laugh at the one-follower freak.

I searched through other tweeters - and I'm still failing to see the difference between my bumble bee observation, and someone else who has nearly 200 followers and their latest tweet was about buying asparagus. And the person wasn't even famous.

And that's another can of worms: you can follow celebrities.  You can literally keep up to date with what they are doing daily. If I tried to follow them in real life and watch them pop into Asda for a packet of Nik Naks or try to climb in the same black cab, I would have a restraining order slapped on me in no time.  The cynic in me asks how long will it be before some American wins a legal case against a celeb for stalking them because they were already posting that info on a tweet anyway?

Obviously the celebs have high numbers of followers and it's a good way to keep fans updated; I can see how Twitter works from that perspective. 

So I don't know how much longer I will keep tweeting. I'm confused by all of the little symbols you need to use; and the fact you have to shorten links; and I'm already feeling trapped by the 140 character limit; and generally for something which offers the virtual spacial equivalent of a Post-It note, it is causing me so much more stress than I had expected.

Perhaps I'll just concentrate on answering the great bumble bee question and keep my thoughts to myself.