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Happy Talk

The key to liberation is fewer clothes worn on rotation

Christine Manby has discovered that living out of a suitcase is a luxury – choosing what to wear is simple and she’s found more time for the things that matter

Sunday 15 March 2020 14:42 GMT
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Illustration by Tom Ford
Illustration by Tom Ford

I’ve been living out of a suitcase”. When you hear that phrase, it’s generally couched in tones of complaint, on the lips of a travelling salesman – “If it’s Thursday, it must be the Holiday Inn Lancaster” – or a rock god trying hard to convince us that it’s really not all that much fun on world tour. It conjures images of a wash-bag leaking shower gel on to rumpled shirts and a week’s worth of underpants. But for me, living out of a suitcase, as I have been quite a bit recently, can be both an interesting challenge and a relief.

It’s the old joke. A woman looks into a wardrobe heaving with clothes and announces: “I’ve got absolutely nothing to wear.” As soon as I started earning money, I started buying clothes I didn’t need as I embarked upon the endless quest for that one item that would make me a more attractive version of myself. I spent the first ever fee I made from writing on a black denim jacket from Clockhouse at C&A, sure at the time it would transform me from suburban schoolgirl scribbler to a junior Julie Burchill. That denim jacket never quite looked right. It’s since been superseded by at least a dozen other denim jackets that also failed to hit the mark. I never looked cool enough to work at the NME. I never really looked cool enough to work at the Magnet Kitchen Showroom, which was where I had a Saturday job.

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