Wearing my brooches

and appreciating my dressing table.

When I read this piece from Chris Maido it reminded me that I had been intending to find a way to wear my brooches. During the winter I need scarves to fling about myself, so it seemed as though brooches would be rather wasted, but I thought they would work well with my relatively weighty spring wardrobe. Weighty in the sense that the linen is substantial enough to take a brooch, because otherwise the point of wearing the brooches is that they can be seen without the many neck layers of winter (I need my neck to be warm in winter, and am constantly distracted by other people’s exposed necks, even in films and tv - yes, that’s a cute collar or neckline, but aren’t you freezing?

I have about six brooches: two from one or both grandmothers, one of the Georg Jensen ones (the fish) I got from my mother when she started distributing her jewelry last year, the other little one was a gift from my father. I think I bought the two bar ones myself. None of them are recent purchases - I can’t even remember when I got the three I started out with, and the others have been around forever. Probably the one I am most attached to is the fish - I love anything fish related, especially in metals, and “Georg Jensen” is shorthand for “beautiful and highly desirable” in our family. The one I feel least drawn to is the one with the black stone, but I remember loving it when I got it.

I am feeling weirdly at peace with my spring wardrobe. I do wish frequently for a black cardigan, and some kind of little knitted jacket would undoubtedly be useful, but I have to wear what I have, and it’s fine. The key thing for me is having my clothes organised for the week (washed, ironed, ready to put on).

And also, honestly, not having the constant noise of wondering if some other item of clothing would transform my general dissatisfaction with the seasonal weather. Some days it’s a pleasant winter day in the morning and a lovely summer day by the time I’m going home, some days it just rains. Some days I wonder if I should be swapping the duvet out for sheets, and other days I’m pulling an extra cover over me to sleep. I love sunny spring days, because the heat is enjoyable. I love all the new leaves on the trees. I love not having to turn on the ac to heat up or cool down my flat. I love hanging out in my living room (the only room with decent natural light, but notoriously difficult to heat or cool. I am working hard to enjoy spring, and not feeling irritated about the immovable object that is my wardrobe helps a lot.

I started out writing about brooches and that made me think about my dressing table. My garret has sloping ceilings, and there’s nowhere to put a wardrobe in my bedroom apart from as soon as you walk in the door. As I live in a two bedroom flat on my own, I keep my clothes in the smaller, higher-ceilinged room next door. I also keep my makeup and hairdryer in there, so that’s where I get dressed and ready. But for some reason I keep my jewelry and perfume in my bedroom, and I have been using this little desk as a dressing table for a couple of years (before that I used it as a bedside table). It is a tiny desk, and I always imagine some tiny nun sitting at it (I rescued it from the burn pile at the Catholic school where I work). It has a couple of ink clots on the vinyl top, and was full of old stamps and lidless pens when I got it. The drawers stick so it doesn’t work very well for storage, but it’s a perfect size to display my jewelry and perfume.

I remember my mother having a kidney-shaped dressing table before we came to Italy, and of course my grandmother always had one to display her brush and mirror set, with matching cut-glass bowl for safety pins and stuff. I have a memory of my mother sitting at hers applying Pond’s Cold Cream at the flat in London, which is somehow also connected to a memory of my sister (about three at the time) being in bed with chickenpox, consoled with a bottle of lucozade.

My dressing table has a mirror propped up on it, and a cute little stool, but I never think to sit at it. I just love the ritual of coming into my bedroom before I leave the house to apply scent and put on earrings and necklaces. I don’t like costume jewelry, or anything big and statement-y on me. I wear my rings (mainly silver, with a little gold) all the time. I have more earrings and a couple of necklaces somewhere else, but at the moment I’m happy to wear the same few pieces all the time. I don’t buy myself jewelry, so I like thinking about who gave me each piece, and I like the feeling of carrying my loved ones (and some ex-loved ones) with me.

The past almost 10 months of not buying clothes (and the past four and a half months of not buying anything else) have taught me that I really enjoy enjoying my possessions. It’s made me realise how loud that voice was, always asking me if I’d be happier with just one other thing to change my whole wardrobe. And of course, sometimes that one thing did change it all, which is why I love my wardrobe so much, but I am learning to recognise that all these feelings I have about the next perfect thing don’t need to be a constant.

When I started the no-buy I decided to take it month by month, hoping I’d be able to sustain it. As it turned out, the message that I already had enough got through, and so it’s been easier than I thought. I think I imagined I’d go back to normal habits at the end of the year, maybe just with added focus, but I’m not sure that will happen. I do plan to buy a couple of pieces that am feeling the lack of, but I’m don’t mind the idea of that being a temporary blip.

And so back to brooches. I’m enjoying shaking up my linen adding a bit of interest, but I doubt I’m a committed brooch-wearer from now on. What I do like is the confirmation of one of my core beliefs, which is that you should hold on to things you love, even if you haven’t worn them for a while.

So you want to wear a brooch