Un Certain Type de Femme

So here we are in 2012, the inevitable consequence of a years end. This morning at ‘sweat pants o’clock’, I rolled myself out of bed letting gravity do much of the work. I had a determined and erstwhile plan to start and indeed complete my list of resolutions to undertake this year. Whilst some of you are no doubt fully in the swing of things and have decided, laminated and begun to action your chosen endeavours, spare a passing thought for those of us who have yet to plot a course this year and are (as we type), still shuffling through an as yet unconfirmed list of New Year’s resolutions… Anyway, in the malaise of my morning routine, coffee, news, coffee I was stopped in my tracks by a truly wondrous and incandescent beauty… the legendary Grace Kelly in Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”! This happens to be one of my favourite “everything’s going to be OK movies” (along with “Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and “The Wizard of Oz”… Ahem… but I digress).

In this life there are certain types of woman, tribes if you will. I am almost certain that it is impossible to switch from one to another… its simply not done nor permitted. I think it is fair to say that a woman doesn’t really choose the type of woman she becomes; it is I fear a baton we take from our mothers along with a few cultural influences as we go. I strongly suspect Sarah Jessica Parker (SJP, above) to be of ‘my tribe’. We are of the low maintenance / less is more clan. There is a real functionality, a devil may care attitude about her style of dress and yet in my humble opinion she possesses such an individualistic style. It’s this attitude which really defines our shared “tenor”. Conversely, consider the ever lovely Ms Palermo (below), even in “dressed down mode” there is something inherently considered, feminine and polished about her look. I wonder whether this is in fact the result of a long and weighty decision making process, involving the elimination of tens of dozens of outfits and finally culminating in a wardrobe meltdown of epic proportions and a heaped dose of self-loathing… mais perhaps not…