Why Getting Dressed Is So Much More Than Just Preventing Nakedness

The time has come for my seasonal wardrobe review where I look at what I've got to get me through the coming season, what I can get rid of, what I need to buy and it's occurred to me that I'm a woman of more than one look and that surely I can't be the only one who has different looks and indeed variations on these looks for each occasion.

There's a myth that floats around Fashion Land that presumes that all women should have a signature look and stick to it. For some women this is perfectly true. The Queen for example. Or Victoria Beckham. But what about the rest of us? Are we about dressing or dressing up?

The times when I have to get dressed and I have time to take on it, I'm very much in the dress up mode. Different outfits do different things. Take going to gigs - if I'm going to one of the Hairy Drummer's gigs then I like to play the rockstar girlfriend look. There's generally a leather jacket involved, skinny-ish jeans and a sexy tee accessorised with tousled hair and heaps of eyeliner. Moss? She has nothing on me. It's different if I'm going as a reviewer though. Then I like to keep it a bit more casual but still sharp. If I'm just going for the hell of it then on with a Threadless tee and the baggy jeans and scrappiest skater trainers.

So far, so generic rock chick. But also nestling in my wardrobe and my heart are a load of vintage (genuine and repro) 50s dresses and skirts for those days when I want to dress up like a film star. And again, these change dependent on the occasion. For work, I go for the pencil skirt approach - it's my equivalent of a power suit. Let's face it, if you can negotiate stairs in a wiggle skirt and heels then you can negotiate anything. But for play, it's petticoats, flowers and ribbons all the way because I want to show that I'm out to have fun and I can be and do like being girly sometimes.

It just goes to show that while we can all have a signature look or variations thereof, it's always worth remembering that getting dressed up is still a lot of fun!