I learnt quickly while growing up that appearances do matter. My school teachers seemed eternally suspicious of me, as if waiting to discover some illicit agenda behind my antics that amounted to no worse than getting lost in seminal works in the middle of a lesson, or seeking respite from accountancy lessons in the institute’s . The resulting punishments never seemed to fit the crime.
One day I realised why. A teacher commented that my and eye-wateringly short skirts had already established the brightness of my future (without any actual evidence to back this theory up). The comment had the opposite of its intended effect—I still revel in being difficult based on how I present myself to the world.
Chalk it up to a congenital penchant for challenging authority. In this pursuit, I try to live up to the examples set by the sartorial rebels I admire, from author and designer Miuccia Prada to actor Marlene Dietrich. They are all prime examples of ‘difficult women’ who represent beautiful contradictions in fashion that would perhaps make most people with conventional sensibilities baulk.
As the author explains, they are “brave enough to express the full range of one’s humanity and be ambitious, defiant, incorrigible and slightly badass”. These ‘difficult women’ represent beautiful contradictions in that would make most people with conventional sensibilities baulk Lebowitz’s acerbic wit is matched by her sharply , custom-made on Savile Row by Anderson & Sheppard.