Bohemian rhapsodies

Velvet's back baby, yeah!

A lot of the WithPockets readership is in Europe at the moment. Some of you live there, but many of you live in Australia but are now in Europe for the summer. I know this because my various social media channels are now wall-to-wall with pictures of linen, random cobblestones, and unsolicited painted toes on sunloungers.

I, sadly, am not in Europe wearing floppy hats and drinking Aperol, I am working in an office and getting the windows double-glazed and the front room carpeted. Sometimes being an adult truly sucks (OK it will be nice when it’s finished. And I’m looking forward to having a house that retains a modicum of heat – and to not being woken up by every 4am bin collection).

Luckily for WithPockets, this means that instead of reading this Northern Hemisphere’s Summer Blockbuster novels in front of the pool, I have plenty of time to scour the new Season’s offerings. And what a retro season it will be: velvet suits and smoky eyes. I remember being a teenager hungrily eyeing up my mother’s Biba velvet dress and Kings Road costume jewellery – who knew that look would come full circle yet again?

So, I may not get my European ‘hot divorcee summer’ but I can have a ‘bohemian winter’ instead (once I’ve moved all the furniture back in place…). Someone please pass the mulled wine and glitter.

WithPockets X

Velvet

When I was in my early twenties, I had a velvet corduroy suit. This very much appealed to me as a pretentious young woman, obsessed with cigarette holders, smoking jackets, and trying to channel Bianca Jagger in Studio 54. With the exception of the actual smoking, these loves and traits have never quite gone away. In the picture below, the suit is already 8 years old. I wore it until it went bald on the elbows and backside (weirdly, I now have quite a similar haircut, which I wasn’t aware of until I started writing this article… so that has also come full circle).

Before the suit, I also had a silver velvet blouse, which I wore to the Wag Club as a teenager and a well-known musician who shall remain nameless burnt a hole in it with a cigarette while gesticulating a bit too widely. Very Studio 54.

I still love a good velvet suit in the winter, and I have a pair of Rachel Antonoff velvet pinstripe palazzo pants (although in Australia by the time it gets cold enough to wear them and I remember to pick them up from the dry cleaners, winter is pretty much over). The original black corduroy velvet suit in the picture is obviously long since unavailable to buy in the shops (given that it would be 25 years old now…) but if you’re looking to match the early 2000’s 70’s revival look, these black flared velvet trousers from Reiss are the closest thing available. And also on sale.

Other velvet suit offerings:

Carla Zampatti Hunter Green Velvet Jacket. This jewel-coloured trouser suit with wide lapels and a gold military button is peak 70’s chic. Worn on its own instead of part of a full trouser suit the jacket would actually be pretty versatile.

M&S x Sienna Miller Velvet wide leg olive green trousers. Once again there is no Instagram evidence of the fact that M&S has managed to crack the zeitgeist and stray from the path of their ‘generic white people at Wimbledon’ vibe – but take it from me, you want to follow this link. This velvet trouser suit is outstanding and would have had pride of place in Camden Market back in the day. Be warned though, as it’s velvet it will need to be dry cleaned (in contrast with all other M&S clothing).

SABA Lea Velvet Blazer in Royal Blue. Much less eye catching than the M&S offering above, this royal blue blazer from SABA is far less shiny but still lovely. Saba even do a vest top in the same fabric, if you like a bit of velvet but you don’t want to commit to the full effect.

Smudgy eyes

Firstly, can I just say that I do not recommend a catwalk kohl eye for work, unless you want to look like you slept in your make up from the night before and might have a heroin habit. Makeup for the catwalk is exaggerated in the same way that makeup for TV interviews is exaggerated.

There are ways and means to achieving a bit of ‘sultry eye’ by day without going the whole way. Start by lining the inside of your top lid (i.e. under the lashes) with a soft pencil. Mecca’s Zoom Liner does the job (and it’s cheap too). I recommend you go for a graphite, espresso or olive instead of a black for the daytime. If you are closer to my age now than you are to the picture of me in the velvet suit from 20 years ago, I do not recommend you line the bottom lashes with a pencil as it will drag your face down. Instead, what you want is a bit of smoke from the corner of your eyelashes up and in.

By far the easiest way of achieving this without looking like a replicant from Blade Runner, is to get yourself a liquid eye shadow like Armani’s eye tint liquid eye shadow (my favourite is the ‘olive’ shade, which would go very nicely indeed with the M&S suit above…) which enables you to build up a ‘smudge’ with a brush or your finger, instead of having to go in heavy with a liquid eyeliner and then blend it away with every cotton tip in the house.

I am not about to become one of those middle-aged women who makes content of themselves wagging their finger at the camera and putting dots all over their face so you’ll just have to go by my description above (or you can check out the YouTubes and Instagram feeds of the million plus middle-aged women who apparently do do this…)

Would you wear a velvet suit to work? Are you brave enough to go full smoky eye in the daytime? Let us know…