New Dress Woes

And suddenly I look up and we are half way through February. The new year, new me campaign has stalled slightly due to the snow: it’s hard to concentrate on eating plates of avocado when my toes and fingers are masquerading as icicles. That being said, I’ve lost maybe 5lbs, and exercise every morning in the unheated conservatory off my kitchen using my Pilates barrel and free weights: it’s amazing how quickly you warm up when you are huffing and puffing like a grampus. (I’d go to the gym opposite but it smells of stale sweat and man. In a wholly revolting, not clean way.)

There was a slight falling off the healthy wagon involving a chocolate éclair & a Chelsea bun this week: it never really occurs to me to eat sweet sticky food, but there they were, winking at me in Fitzbillies’s cabinet of desire (more to come later) and snip snap the deed was done. But there is nothing wrong with indulgence, so long as we don’t flagellate ourselves or label it as ‘naughty’: that’s bad thinking and just creates more problems.

My main problem right now is not to do with excessive Chelsea bun consumption, but  that my, erm, top half is as exuberant as ever, (in my wild imaginings my new régime would have shrunk it all) and I cannot find an evening dress for the BAFTAs on Sunday that is slim enough for my back and legs but large enough around the chest. WHY oh why do dress designers insist on churning on endless iterations of strapless gee-owns?

If I wear a strapless dress, I become so top heavy I look as though I’d topple over in a light breeze. That aside, if you are bosomy, wearing a strapless dress is akin to stapling a post it to your front saying, do, please, talk to my chest not my face.

Splendid.

And that’s quite apart from the remembered trauma of the Louis Vuitton Concours at Hurlingham some ten years ago, as my strapless (unboned) Martine Sitbon dress, unable to cope with the strain, slid down to my waist, to leave me standing in the middle of the dance floor in a black satin basque.

Equally splendid.

And, judging from the enraged response on my Twitter feed this morning when I bemoaned the lack of sleeves for women on evening dresses, I am not alone. Even if my new year, new me campaign succeeds,  I’m still going to want sleeves on my dresses.

PLEASE someone make a dress I can wear without flashing my assets.