To want to Dress like Londoners

[TheSuze]

I have found myself getting more and more frumpy since i moved out 18 years ago. Whenever I visit the capital everyone including people of my age (mid 40s) looks sleek, expensive and classy in style.

Aibu to want to dress like Londoners, Parisians and New Yorkers.

My impression of dressing is a considerable effort goes into a 'done/undone' look.
Plus less cars so maybe that is why people seems to be slimmer.

A Girl's Guide to Looking Like You Live in London

North/South/East/West

www.vice.com/en_uk/read/a-girls-guide-to-looking-like-you-live-in-london

Ooh what's the Oxford style BengalCatMum? I'm interested. I only ever travel to Oxford from Manchester for a day or two for work so can't pick up on it but I love regional trends. Sorry slightly off topic OP.

There was a really fascinating thread about similar recently. Wish I could remember what it was called to link.

Just get a black outfit and put a zillionty buttons on it, me old china.

I know what you mean OP. I live on the outskirts and when I go into central London it does strike me how many people look like those people they used to take photos of in the street for magazines. People are younger and slimmer than average which probably helps. And the walking in a rush can add certain chicness. I once saw a (perhaps German) woman on the tube wearing a pair of oversized Deirdre Barlow glasses from the 80s. She looked great. I think that outside of London this look would have been harder to pull off somehow.

Exlondoner now living in a little village in home counties. I used to be cool with a withering look. Now i dress like kate middletons mum and speak to everyone. Im only 35. London folk are skinnier i think and have cool accessories. And are totally unfazed by the things that nonlondoners would gawp at

However, holidaying on the Costa Blanca, I felt like style fucking personified

Mmm, after doning my tin hat, think I know what the Op means. I don't think I have ever seen anyone I work with in track pants and a vest with a grotty bra showing and we dress very casually...

I remember when I didn't live in London. I came here and did see that people dressed more fabulously. It was just so boring and uniform where I was. I really remember being on the tube and thinking 'wow, she looks amazing, wow, he looks amazing'. It was more than just being thin, it was that people were being creative and inspiring about what they wore. One girl I saw was wearing a black outfit with pink accessories.....every pink was a slightly different shade. I remember staring at her in awe - it sounds gross but looked so fantastic. You'd never find it anywhere else.

I spend about half my time in London and half in the North. The thing that strikes me about how women look isn't clothes- it is weight. There are considerably more obese people in the North.

I know what you mean and I think it's a numbers thing, and the fact that nobody drives. If you think you might see 200+ people every day before you've even got to work, that's a lot of data to put into the next time you get dressed or go clothes shopping. And because there's so many of them and they're probably disproportionately young some of those 200 are bound to look pretty good.

When I first started commuting into central London I started seeing a lot of nice bags and shoes that went with outfits (not expensive ones, just not the scruffy old things I was chucking on every day) and I started dressing with more care and shopping differently, not thinking I "had" to or anything, it just happened naturally with all the new data.

Maybe the way to replicate that is work out when the commute rush hour is in your nearest big town and get on the train when they do!

I think there might be a difference, but not of scruffiness, just taste.

When we visit friends in the Midlands and North, there is a certain type of hair dye and make up which a lot of the women have, which I don't see down here. Even DH noticed.

Not better, not worse, just different. And obviously it could just be particular to the towns we visited. No criticism intended, but it is a noticeable difference.

I try to be smart but end up scruffy. I just don't have 'it'.

Sanity I assure you that you aren't the only person in North London ker-azy enough to wear colours I live in proper North London and really don't see a sea of people dressed for a funeral.

I think that Londoners have a very relaxed style & some of that is practical - commuting, walking and going straight from desk to evening activities all leads to that. It's often very individualistic, often quite creative, and at the same time terribly tribal - North London luvvies, Dalston hipsters, Sloaney ponies etc.

I'm just not sure I'd call it stylish.

BengalCatMum thanks for that, yes I have seen Oxford colleagues dress a bit like that for smart casual come to think of it. That's the men. I couldn't define the women's dress style really but definitely know what you mean about the men.

There was a thread about this a few months ago on S&B. I was flamed by a particularly chippy poster when I observed that Londoners dress up much, much less than the residents of other big cities, especially in the north - but it's true. I am consistently underdressed now that I live in the Midlands but I cannot leave behind my London instincts - I would feel ludicrous going to the pub with a full blow-dry, HD brows, dress and heels but that's de rigeur around here.

For the benefit of the pp who said people look more expensively- dressed in London "because things are expensive in London"- er no, clothes in Debenhams, M and S, Primark, any high street chain cost exactly the same nationwide! Perhaps what you mean is "there are more expensive clothes on sale in London than elsewhere in the country"?

That's as may be, but most off us probably have to buy more cheap clothes than you because our rents are so high!

Gok wan is an arrogant twat whose obsessed with women's bodies. Wierdo.

Scruffy people everywhere op. Even in Paris and London and every place in the world.

jessie, I think that poster meant exactly what they said - prices for all sorts of things are high in London, and it accustoms you to spending out.

London rents are depressing, but some areas are cheaper than both the cities I've lived in during the last few years, and I think some Londoners are so insulated in their little bubble, they forget that.

Places do have their own style, including London.

The further North you go, the more people 'dress up' - suit type attire for business; full-on slap, shimmer and heels for the evening.

Londoners are thinner and look fitter. I reckon it's all the walking. Londoners dress to within an inch of down, for business and evenings. If you went to a central London pub in your tight dress, heels and full face, everyone would assume you were going to a gala dinner or something. Or from out of town You get much more fashion in London, too - I think it's easy to pick up emerging trends just by walking around, and it informs your style.

Where I live in the sticks now, people are noticeably fatter and less fit. More people go around in shapeless clothes of greige. Young women put on very tight, low-cut outfits with heels and thick makeup for the evening.

I'm now shapeless & greige! I miss London. I lived in Brighton for a bit; they have a slightly boho style there, which was fun.

I think it's a combination of:
*the average Londoner being younger and thinner than the average for the UK as a whole (as much as it isn't really okay to say it in a non anonymous setting, younger and thinner generally looks better in most clothing styles)

*London probably having a higher proportion of people who work in the arts/creative industries (tends to come with stylish and/or alternative fashion sense)

*Possibly (not sure on this one) the average Londoner being more affluent than the UK average so having more money to spend on stylish clothes.

Having said all that (and therefore joined in with the comparing/othering) I'm not sure this kind of thread is a good idea. Without intending it to happen (I imagine) the thread is starting to give a picture of London being the place of class, money and good dressing (even if it's slobby/casual good dressing!) and the North being the place of obesity and WAG type dressing. I know lots of other places have been mentioned too but there is a sense of 'the North' as some kind of homogenous mass which it so very obviously isn't. Dramatic I know, but it is this kind of stereotyping and thinking which probably contributed to Brexit!

I know what you mean, Manic. Of course not all the people in any place are the same. And there are other considerations - my provincial town's economically depressed and has always had poor transport links. Ambitious younger people leave, so we have fewer of them. Less ambitious locals stay, are not well off, and aren't subject to many outside influences. But that sums up the differences between big cities and towns like this.

Most of the rest is cultural. I've lived in Birmingham & Newcastle: both places where dressing up is much, much more of a thing than further south. It's not a shallow stereotype, it's a genuine regional characteristic. And I imagine the young women in my town get their inspiration from celebs on TV - where else would they get it? They don't come into contact with many women unlike themselves.

On that note - this area voted Brexit and is strong on UKIP. People fear what they don't know, I think.

YANBU, dress however you like. If it makes you feel good then go for it.

My Dsis lives in London, I live in the back of beyond deep in the countryside ( nearest shop 6 miles, nearest neighbour about a mile and a bit as the crow flies).
Whenever I visit London and see all the fashionable types I mainly feel bad for them. It must be exhausting all that agonising over outfits and what's in fashion at the moment. The desperate need for peer approval over something as ridiculous as your bloody shoes. Really sad