Fashionstein
It’s 2013. I am about to take the school stage and sing The Sound of Music, but the audience is sans Yasmin Mayers.
I’m not just angry, I’m disappointed. The person before me (roughly) hits the last note of I Feel Pretty and I make my way to the front. As I hover in front of the microphone the doors fly open. An enthusiastic sorry! is stage-whispered and my mother catches my eye, bursting with pride at her perfectly timed arrival. Everyone pauses politely as she tiptoes with attempted subtlety to an empty seat. Nobody misses the fact that she is wearing a full black-and-gold catsuit with fluffy cuffs underneath a camping anorak with reindeer antlers and walking boots. I open my mouth and sing the wrong line.
7 years on, I am running my 11-year-old brother to school in my very nice pyjamas and Mongolian fur coat and he asks me, with a puzzled expression,
“Don’t you mind looking like that”?
That’s what I always wanted to hiss at mum when I was his age, whilst I fantasized about her forgetting the deely boppers on parents evening.
I’ve long come to accept, and even admire, my mother’s eccentricity; but as a fashion student I’ve never before considered her one of my inspirations. Now, when she opens the door in a Cinderella costume or cooks dinner in a tutu she picked up from Decathlon, I feel grateful that she never supported my younger self’s fervent ambition to appear ‘normal’.
My mother will never grace the cover of Vogue, nor inspire Instagram hysteria regarding just where she finds all her fabulous pieces. ‘Well put together’ are three words you will never hear ascribed to her, at least not in the traditional sense. Groomed, no, but unnervingly buoyant, yes. She so rarely brushes her hair that when she does I do a double take and ask whether she’s been to the salon. (“Oh, thank you! I brushed it,” she replies, beaming). She rotates the same 4 pairs of dubiously shaped sports trousers, their sources ranging from a charity-bag rescue to a hand-me-down (intended for her tweenage son to grow into) and leggings that have been around since before aerobics was cool.
I will often come home to her proudly sporting a bobbly hoodie that I donated to Oxfam six months ago with a look on her face like she’d dug her claws into a one-off piece of Lacroix couture. Of course, she does have her classic ‘evening glamour’ capsule wardrobe consisting of three simple but elegant maxi dresses bought from New Look in 1995 which she occasionally whips out along with a black velvet coat and matching scarf for the odd parents’ meeting or theatre trip. You know she means business when she trots down the stairs in something that doesn’t have a stripe running down its leg.
That isn’t to say my mother doesn’t care about clothes. Quite the opposite – she lusts after certain garments just as much as the next fashion victim. In a room where the walls glitter when you switch off the lights, a black chest lies tucked away in a dark corner. This box contains objects so precious I sometimes think if a fire broke out, she wouldn’t hesitate to save them before me. Presenting, the fancy dress box: a glamorous extension of her P.E kit-meets-cosy-chav wardrobe, complemented by the costume cupboard next to it, i.e. her walk-in accessories closet.
Over the 17 years she’s worked at Whippersnappers (a centre for children’s music classes and parties), she has curated an impressive collection of princess dresses, shimmering fabrics and heaps of eccentric wigs and novelty glasses. This is where I head when I’m scrounging for a costume party outfit, when I need an extra something for an art project or am just in the mood for some mid-week escapism. My personal favourites are the ballerina-size tutu which she often wears whilst making a cup of tea (over a pair of ancient tracksuit bottoms), anime-style cat ears, usually worn whilst shopping at Sainsbury’s, and a pair of diamante-encrusted pumps that are ‘not comfortable enough’ to wear outside but are regularly unearthed for tap dancing in the kitchen.
In our area she is known as Bag Lady. She never drives and can often be spotted traversing the streets laden with groceries and a djembe drum, while wheeling a trolley of party props, invariably dressed as Princess Leia, a magician, or a ladybird. Unknowingly, she is a close follower of Marie Kondo’s philosophy and only ever wears what “sparks joy” (although Ms Kondo would undoubtedly deny all responsibility for this fancy-dress Frankenstein). As a result, the joy spills out of my mother like the bubbles out of the machine at Whippersnappers; much like the proverbial Parisienne, she knows what works for her and she sticks to it.
I never suspected that I would inherit my sartorial impulses from my mum. Yet at first glance, my overflowing, kaleidoscopic wardrobe could easily be mistaken for potential Whippersnappers business-casual. Could the years of cringing at her ‘ruining normal’ dresses with blue wigs have counted for something? Perhaps all these years she’s been schooling me in the art of being casually ridiculous and proudly haphazard. Under her influence I’ve grown out of boring school uniform and into princess dresses and fluorescent tutus. Now, I can appreciate this woman for what she is: a walking fashion unicorn.
Yasmin Mayers has never opened a fashion magazine in her life and doing her hair is definitely not what makes her late. She may not subscribe to the fashion rulebook but her attitude to style is trending right now – she’s been channeling the likes of Matty Bovan and Ryan Lo since before they were born in this rule-breaking realm of “outsider fashion.” She’s less Frankenstein’s monster and more the mad creator, and if that makes her ‘Fashionstein’ then I feel blessed to be the creature she brought to life.
By Sienna Mayers
