With a focus on the Fashion, Beauty and General Attitude each show made me want to wear or emulate
I absolutely love the telly. It is interesting to me that ‘cinema’ has long been one of the interests that is de rigueur if putting together a persona that will get you on the dinner party/’kitchen sups’ circuit. TV, not so much.
For me, TV, like a novel, allows you to spend a long time in the company of characters you’re interested in. Cinema though, is a short story or a novella – if it’s amazing, my pleasure is slightly tempered by being kicked out of its universe too soon. If a film is anything other than amazing, I lambaste myself for having spent 90 minutes watching the bloody thing when I could have been doing anything else.Â
As I don’t like the way that most TV reviews are written, I thought I’d try something different. I might give you the gist of what a show is about, but I will try to avoid spoilers.
What I watched through 2024; why I liked it, and what it made me want to wear, own, or be
LOOT starring Maya Rudolph
Voluminous Garments
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to spend a Euromillions win, and wondering how long it would take me to blow the lot. Although I think I’d make a wonderful millionaire, I have no desire to be a billionaire. You can’t really luck your way into billions, and the main routes to such wealth seem to require being nice to some truly awful people.
Maya Rudolph stars as Molly Wells, a billionaire by marriage (and subsequent divorce). Molly’s very relatable. Just like me, Molly likes napping, having other people do everything for her, and nice stationary. And she is always accompanied by a youthful assistant who can body-double her through any pressing tasks and keep her up to date with what’s au courant. I’m so jealous of her – I’d love to have a junior member of the Ganymedes Club in my service.
Molly has one quality that I don’t relate to though – she is magnetically drawn to very unattractive white men with toxic traits – the very same men that repel me. I guess that’s why Molly is a billionare and I am not. I don’t think the scriptwriters intend that the viewer finds all the romantic interest men repulsive, so maybe it’s only me that does? I do have very high standards.
Anyhoo, being a billionaire Molly has a walk in and twirl around wardrobe set-up, and staff to zip her in and out of things, and she consequently glides around looking all soignée and put together in a variety of brightly printed and voluminous garments. I don’t like all of them – some of them are a bit Per Una – but I do like how big and long they are.
I bought this crane print dress in the picture above because when I saw it in the charity shop I thought, ‘ooh, I can Molly Wells in this’ by which I mean I can look feminine and like I’ve made an effort but – because it’s voluminous – underneath, I can sport a set of aged and frankly manky black thermals that look as though I stole them from a Gold Rush miner.
I watched Loot on Prime Video.
My crane print dress came from the more traditionally presented of the two charity shops in Parkway, Camden and cost £10.00. I gave it to myself for Christmas last year.
Griselda starring Sofia Vergara
Sexy but sensible shoes, Fussy blouses, and Bésame lipstick
The wonderful Nancy Glowinski recommended I watch this show and alerted me that lead actress Sofia Vergara seemed to be wearing a deep chocolately-red Bésame lipstick (along with a false nose) to portray the eponymous Cocaine Matriarch.
I really like Sofia Vergara. She is beautiful with good comic timing – two qualities that draw me to actors and friends. Modern Family is referred to as Gloria in our house, because Vergara is such an excellent scene-stealer.
Griselda is drama, not comedy (false nose not withstanding) and it fairly races along: lovely and pacey and full of great fashion and beauty moments.
‘Dress for the job you want, not the job you have’ say the professional advancement dullards. So, if you’re currently enduring a boring office job, why not liven it up a bit by channelling Griselda in heels and tailored slacks and pussycat bows, and real emeralds if you’ve got them. And who knows, maybe some idling roadman will spot you as you make your weary commute and headhunt you into the Import/Export industry?
Pictured above are my favourite shoes. I found them about 35 years ago in my favourite second-hand clothing shop. They have ‘Capricorn’ printed along the insole and I live in hope that one day I’ll wear them to my dream job: Office Manager with Special Responsibility for Stationary Orders and Assassinations (Super Hilarious Poetic Justice Sub-Division) at SPECTRE.
I watched Griselda on NETFLIX.
My Capricorn shoes were re-heeled and buffed up recently by Sole Heelers: my favourite shoe restoration destination.
Spent starring Michelle de Swarte
Big squashy coats
Spent is a comedy, created by, scripted and starring Michelle de Swarte. I was going through a ‘not paying attention to fashion’ phase when de Swarte was modelling, which I regret as she has a gorgeous face and a wonderful gap between her two front teeth, and I bet she did some great editorial. De Swarte has the quality essential to a proper model: she could put on any old shit and have you thinking it looks fantastic.
de Swarte looks fantastic all the way through Spent, which is about Mia, a model who made big money but spent it all, and has to return to London from New York in the hope of avoiding bankruptcy.
Watching Mia (in big squashy coats) navigate her return to a very realistically portrayed London made me realise that living here requires that you become comfortable with the emotion of disgust and know how to harness the power of emotional disconnection. A hugely relatable show for anyone who’s ever suffered the frustration of being skint but having to put on a front in order to have the chance to earn your way back out of the hole.
Hard relate as well to the absolute stupidity of late stage capitalism that means the rich think it’s acceptable to pay a person in cushions. Â
I watched Spent on BBC iplayer.
My big squashy coat was marked down to about £29 in the Kings Road Zara sale in January 2023
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha starring Shin Min-a, Kim Seon-ho
Fancy little handbags and Dainty little shoes
Gentle reader, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha has changed my aesthetic.
When this show first came to NETFLIX I was so excited. Why? Because I misread the title as Hedgehog Cha CHa Cha and thought the promotional thumbnail showed an enormous, giant hedgehog menacing a small seaside town. How amazing I thought – like Godzilla, but extra spiky with a cute wrinkly nose and little button eyes and a violent grudge against the small, sleepy hamlet where it grew up. I longed to see Cha Cha Cha the hedgehog impale the unfortunate locals upon his quills, and gobble up screaming people as thought they were catfood.
Alas for me, on further investigation, HOMETOWN Cha Cha Cha was actually a rom-com, not a giant monster show. I was crushed and furious and cursed it every time it appeared in ‘suggested for you’. But then, the ‘leaving NETFLIX soon’ banner appeared and I decided to watch it so that I could slag it off more thoroughly.
I was hooked INSTANTLY. I am very much not a rom-com enthusiast. All that Harry Met Sally in Seattle stuff makes me cringe inside out, but Hedgehog Cha Cha Cha manages to be as romantic as you can imagine without making me feel sick. Lead actor Kim Seon-ho plays Hong Du-sik who is an ideal boyfriend. He reads Georges Bataille for pleasure, has a wardrobe leaning heavily to utility/workwear, a beautiful home that he built himself, a touching relationship with all the neighbourhood aunties and a face that’s made to express disinterest, detachment and occasional disdain: the three Ds that delight and motivate those of us who like to work for our conquests.
Hong Du-sik does not wear fancy little handbags and dainty little shoes, but nor did I until I watched this show. I found gem encrusted buckles in particular embarrassing and tacky (unless worn by Dandini or the Marquis of Carabou). The repulsive Carrie Bradshaw’s famous paste-adorned Manolos seemed to me a waste of the Manolo last (my Manolos, which are lower and more interesting than hers, are possibly the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn).Â
But after watching 16 episodes of Hometown Cha Cha Cha, I am a late-life convert to daintiness. Every element of this show is pretty, and the prettiness is done so well. Whereas Carrie Bradshaw looks as though she dresses to subconsciously remind her horrible boyfriends of JonBenét Ramsay, the lead actresses in Hometown Cha Cha Cha look fresh and pretty and all round delightful. This show even made me want to buy an iron to get that crisp, considered look. And a dental nurse’s uniform. I do love workwear.
I watched Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha on Netflix.
My fancy little handbag and dainty little shoes cost £15 apiece (as both are damaged, although not irreparably) at the Choose Love pop-up shop in 2024.Â
Slow Horses starring Gary Oldman
(this is more of a what not to wear)
I was so sulky when everyone started raving about how good Slow Horses is. It is good: very good in fact, but so are the novels by Mick Herron that came out a few years before the TV series and yet I wasn’t able to persuade any of my friends to read them.
Now everyone is all over Jackson Lamb and the goings-on at Slough House and banging on about how Slow Horses is great in a grimly down to earth Le Carré sort of way, and I’m sat here thinking ‘huh. Gary Oldman gets involved and you pay attention, but when I said ‘hey look at this’ it was all yeah, shut up you.’Â
It is a good show though. I didn’t think anyone could do justice to my favourite character Roderick Ho, but Christopher Chung is perfect. I have a terrible weakness for disaster-boys. The more idiotic and full of unjustified self-confidence they are, the more I love them. Think of Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation, the footballer Richarlison, and the tall one from Daisy Chainsaw (who once called my phone at an ungodly hour of the morning and when I answered with an elegant and well-modulated ‘hello’ bellowed “Who the fuck are you?” in a tone so self-righteous, and so full of wounded indignation that I was instantly enchanted, rather than furious as a saner person would have been at having their shut-eye so rudely disturbed).Â
You might be wondering at this point what a kimono has to do with Slow Horses. I have included it because I was likened to Jackson Lamb the other day. I was not wearing a macintosh at the time.
I was slouching in the kitchen having risen reluctantly from my bed, chain-smoking and drinking coffee and catching up with all the world’s outrages on my phone. What was I wearing? A once white bathrobe made of cotton-mimicking polyester fibre that came free with some Sanctuary bath products in the Boots post-Christmas sale several years ago. It is very cosy, but I wear it when I apply fake tan (badly) and I think nothing of using its absorbent sleeves to wipe up coffee spills, or sweep away fag ash and consequently it is stained with a grime so deep-seated that I do indeed look like Jackson Lamb when I wear it.
Apart from the kimono in the picture (that is now too old and frail to be worn on the regular) I own:
- six blue silk dressing gowns in shades ranging from turquoise to navy
- one crocodile green silk ’30s dressing gown with a velvet ribbon tie
- two floral dressing-gowns of the fitted, housewife’s choice variety (one in cotton and one in satin)
- an oversized stiff kimono that is very voluminous
- a fucking peignoir, for heavens’ sake, although I’m not sure where that is right now and I hope I haven’t accidentally thrown it away
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There is no excuse for wearing the filthy bathrobe. I have options, beautiful options. But I’m typing this at five minutes to two in the morning, and guess what I’m wearing? The Jackson Lamb is clearly stronger in me than I care to admit.
I watched Slow Horses on Apple TV
My black kimono was bequeathed to me by an elderly neighbour when I was about ten years old.
4 responses
All sounds fantastic and lovely clothes.
Also love the Telly and the Sofa although not to the exclusion of the Flicks. Sadly I don’t know what any of these things are, maybe a treat in-store if I ever run out of free TV!
Are these comments public? Maybe have to rewrite on your insta as am enjoying waffling
The comments here are public, and please, waffle on! Your waffling is most enjoyable 🙂 Spent should be free to you I think as it is an iplayer show, and I heartily recommend taking full advantage of the one month free trial options to binge-watch the other shows and then cancel the subscription – that’s how I watched most of them! xx
I’ve just found loads of things to watch, found a shared love of blue silk kimonos/dressing gowns) and laughed a lot! Thank you!
Griselda/Sofia is my ultimate fashion! But what of the men! If you’re not wearing a pale blue wide collar suit, with platform heels, and kilos of cocaine! I don’t want to know.
Thank YOU for reading! I’m glad you liked it 🙂 Re the kimonos/dressing-gowns: perhaps it’s a kind of manifestation spell … if one accumulates ENOUGH silk robes in various shades of blue, the universe will then deliver a suitable swain in a pale blue suit with wide lapels? Xx