The Big Smoke.

The Big Smoke.

City Girl: Sometimes you can spot a girl from a part of London by what she wears...

We all have these wonderfully eclectic, immovable and completely original stereotypes in our heads, clearly. The Shoreditch and Old Street crowd mix to give us an individual punk, rebel, eccentric and alternative but laid back, 'i just wear what i like' type femme fatale. In contrast we have the Marleybone designer whore, aren't we all a slave to fashion in whatever extremes and measures, or there is the Essex girl, you all have a vivid and complimentary image instantly there right? Perhaps made even more cliché  by the recently regionally educating The Only Way Is Essex. 'Did i get Kirk wrong?... He is not a conscientious hero after all... no?' oh. Anyway; Notting Hill and Portabello gives us a colourful happy hippy type, all smiles. We are in the capital city. Fashion we do do well. We have in our possession an awful lot of inspirational and distinct looks for such a small part of the world. I think i have a much narrower, but all encompassing, typecast of a chic Parisian Madamoiselle or a impeccably groomed Milano bella chica. But in London, wow, what an abundance. Plenty of diverse stereotypes, you cross the road and as with this city's best nature, everything of your environment changes, spontaneously. A bit like walking into Narnia from a wardrobe. It really is that quick a change. It is an enjoyable escapade though. Small worlds within a world. Anyway i digress...

Do we notice these little cliches of characteristic London area ladies because they are just so blindingly obvious, do we pigeonhole due to some inter city postcode code of dress. Some silent fashion laws that demand a 'look', blue steel perhaps?... when you make an entrance into this or that borough. If so i should definitely be told what these are!

Well I'm sure this could genuinely be one unavoidable reason we do notice (what we think we notice) about dames from particular parts of London. But i can't help wonder personally, if we feel we know these stereotypes, because we (as girls) like to take a lot, too much i fear, time to notice what other women look like. Sometimes in a 'what is she wearing... or what is that?' smug natured way. In hindsight totally shameful, us lovely ladies are on the same team after all, but we all do it, perfectly harmlessly in effect. Or somewhat more truthfully and frequently we may be heard to exhale a quietly inverted sigh thinking '...i wish i looked liked her...'

We are too preoccupied with comparisons to ourselves and other women, unfairly to touched up images in magazines and while compulsory but compelling 'people watching' in the street. Hugely favourite pass time of mine. We despair, compare and reassure ourselves daily with clothes, weight issues, hair envy and just about anything we can justify as surely a key to happiness. I doubt a man could tell you what a Hackney girl looks like, a Chelsea chick, Camden gal?... No? weird that. Maybe they could an Essex girl, but that's because it's just made too easy for them really isn't it.

We are all the same, Essex girls you are wonderful, as delightful as any other London lady. And variety is the spice of life, who wants to be the same, but also who wants us all to be predictable. I am inspired daily by a bit of something different, i like to look, and stare... so i think we should keep them all guessing London.

I'm certainly and without question, nonetheless going to continue to sneak a peek and gasp (quietly though, yes we are English. A bit like how we 'tut' when someone annoys us on the tube. We would never comment, oh no, a tut and a prolonged mutter will suffice) But following that diversion i continue... I'm still going to sneakily peek and gasp at the next outrageous outfit, or grrr with the green eyed monster at the next effortlessly but gorgeously styled girl i see stroll breezily past me like something out of a beautifully ethereal editorial Vogue photo shoot. And make an instant decision about where she is from and just about her whole life too. As you do.

But feel free, it's just curiosity. What better curiosity pass time than fashion-curiosity. Honestly.