Musings of a 30th something

help my blog friends.. I have a dilemma (as commented upon in sleepers blog). This weekend I am off to see a band, who of late are being hailed as the next ( well one of) big thing. What makes this interesting is that they are friends of a friend of mine, so not only are we guestlisted for the gig, but also for the after show party....

Now while some of you may scoff, to me this is a big deal - a far cry from my usual london lifestyle and while I may consider myself reasonably stylish, I hesitate to describe myself as Hip and Cool... infact the mere fact I use the works Hip and Cool probably gave that away!

Needless to say, I may be moments away from living my very own celebridee dream....my dilemma is (and no apologies for me, for once for being unashamedly girlie) - what is one meant to wear? The after show party is at a club which is " kool" and from the photos on the website, all I think is that they all need to iron their clothes, cut their hair and shave!

Having spent the evening persusing my wardrobe, my conclusion is there comes a time in life when wearing full-on fashion - the kind of entertaining kit you find in the pages of the glossies, worn by teenage Russian models with complicated names and no breasts - starts to look ridiculous if you attempt the look on your own. Pinafores, say. Or culottes. Berets. Braces. Bubble skirts. To make my point, almost as a eulogy for my lost youth, I tried on a rock chick outfit that has been in my closert since University - as I looked at myself in the mirror, it dawned on me that I am getting too old for clothes.

Not all clothes, of course. But the silly, trendee stuff which has been the lifeblood of my wardrobe for nearly three decades. At the age of 30, certain trends are beginning to look wrong. It's a realisation which creeps up slowly, like hair loss or weight gain, until one day the mirror shows you a stranger. I never want to be called mutton dressed as goat!

While fashion pundits are terribly gung-ho these days about the agelessness of clothes, about how the taboos of dress have been broken, and how mother and daughter can now wear the same jeans to the same party where they'll dance to the same tune around the same handbag... the bottom line is that there are still boundaries. Not, perhaps, enforced by a society of strictures and codes, but by the fact that a 30-year-old woman wearing a pork-pie hat in homage to Pete Doherty looks daft. There is, and I say this with a sigh, undoubtedly a time to put away childish things.

But what to wear instead? Turn 30 and you're supposed to instinctively know how to dress your age, just as you're expected to know how to file a tax return and how to produce a tasty coq au vin - and no one, least of all the media, the mags, the designers, the retailers, the icons, is giving much away on the matter.

Perhaps Quentin Crisp was right when he remarked, 'fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.' Once you're old enough to know thyself, you simply have to stop hiding, to start letting go, just as you have already forsaken your intimate knowledge of chart tunes, dance moves (I stopped at the Macarena) street vernacular and who's snogging who in Hollyoaks.

xx

ps: any tips on rock and roll etiquette??