My favourite sacrament in London is the pageantry of a Tuesday evening.
Hundreds of rat boys and brat girls alike scour chain clubs and Simmons bars. I regularly strap on my tragic, superglued kitten heels and head out with my pack of girlfriends to chase a night that will inherently end in a record breaking low Uber rating and a missing pair of Vinted sunglasses.
It is a common misconception that this will be well received and customary on a global scale, however. It is not. I learnt this lesson during a stint living in Milan, where spaghetti straps last December were seen as an act of light treason.
It was the same story in Paris this summer. I might have been going for gold, but as I walked into the Sacré-Cœur party for the annual Fête de la Musique in Paris (I felt there had never been a more fitting time to wear my pink sparkly mini dress paired with DSquared2 kitten heels) I was horrified by the stark reminder that my Brit abroad mentality did not translate. It was a sea of Levi’s 501’s and Miu Miu Bayonetta glasses. I had to keep my emergency jumper on the whole evening and, as such, no Parisian Olympians were secured. Don’t forget to adapt to your surroundings.
When it comes to the office, let me heed some more advice. The Devil Wears Prada returns to our screens next year (and the stage before that), and will no doubt usher in a new wave of office-siren Pinterest boards and the polishing up of dusty LinkedIn profiles country-wide. As an intern, I’ve just now begun to understand what it's like to work in an office. I’ve decided, with Miranda Priestly, in mind, that the character played by Gisele Bündchen is my poster girl for dressing for the job you want! Contemporary Miu Miu and Prada and Jill Sander runways from the Nineties are my aspiration. Polished, neutral in colour, structured and fitted. Might I suggest, for those on internship budgets, Zara, Massimo Dutti and the odd sprinkling of COS is not a bad to place to start while searching for the look.
