Hoodies

This is not a very elevated post. Just some thoughts about tops/sweaters/jackets with hoods.

Twenty-five years ago on British television we had a series about clothing choices called What Not to Wear, with Trinny Woodhall and Susannah Constantine. Each episode involved Trinny and Susannah advising their hapless volunteer on how to improve her fashion choices to achieve style transformation and attain dazzling chic.. 

I have forgotten almost everything about it except one opinion they repeatedly expressed, which has always stayed with me. They were profoundly opposed to hooded garments (in fashion at the time). 

"What do you think you are," they'd sneer: "a pixie?"

I've got too old to care a flying fig what Trinny and Susannah think now, but at the time I took their advice seriously and tried to apply the principles they recommended to improve my appearance. So for all these years I have studiously avoided hoodies. "What do you think you are — a pixie?" echoed in my mind every time I considered such a thing.

Well, I have graduated.

I think tops with hoods look nice on me. I am nothing like a pixie or any other kind of sprite. I am more of the "oh that this too too solid flesh would melt" Shakespearean kind of a woman. As my previous husband Bernard remarked the first time we were in bed in our birthday suits together, "Well, you're no sylph, are you?"

You see? I remember things. That's a fairly typical characteristic of a novelist. And I tell you what, I'm a damn sight fatter now than I was when I married Bernard.

So, not a pixie; no. 

But there are other aspects to my physical reality worth commenting on, and who knows but there may be some that strike you as relatable.

My south-sliding bust and ample panniculus combine to make a front elevation to which close-fitting garments are not kind. Further, I nowadays have the all too familiar lizard neck of the older woman utterly uninterested in cosmetic surgery, and there is no garment that suits this feature less than a crew-necked top. Well — a boat-neck maybe, that shudderous invention of cruel designers.

So... well I have several polo-shirts (tops with collars like a shirt, but made of stretchy stuff not woven). In the winter I wear roll-neck sweaters and fleece jackets with stand collars. I can't be doing with scarves, I am no fan of extraneous bits of cloth. High collars or roll necks keep the wind out without flapping or tangling or seeking to become one with my lunch in the way that scarves do.

But hoodies — it's not that I want to wear the hood up, you understand. It's not the hood per se. Trinny and Susannah missed the point (and arguably not only that one). It's the neckline the hoodie creates that is so valuable. Less stark than a V-neck. Not floppy and saggy like a cowl neck (I have enough floppiness and sagginess of my own, thank you very much). Skirting, with just a little helpful height, the lizard bit. At the same time, leaving the option of letting in some air, in case the weather is not cold enough to welcome a roll neck with its double thickness and threat of strangulation.

Hoodies, I now think, are brilliant; and I'm mildly annoyed with Trinny and Susannah for putting me off them, and even more with myself for being suckered in to their nonsense.

This is me in a hoodie a month ago.

You see? It creates a kindly neckline. The Lord only knows what it looks like from behind, I have no idea — but not a pixie anyway! And it probably helps break up the round-shouldered aged stoop.

The only thing I dislike about hoodies is the accursed strings. I hate strings. As you can see in that photo, that hoodie had strings but I chopped them off. 

And then this is a sweater with a high collar that does more or less the same thing (in terms of neckline).

And here's another of my hoodie tops, before I even got up in the morning. A night hoodie. So comfy.

Trinny and Susannah. I think they were just... wrong.