This article is taken from the December-January 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
No one needs new clothes for 2024’s festive onslaught because of the three Ps. For which read: the planet (obv); poverty — does anyone actually have any money any more? I know I don’t; and the patriarchy, because it’s always the patriarchy, amirite?
But, also — as I will keep droning on about month after mofoin’ month — because fashion has staggered to a halt. Want to win chic this Christmas? Then, pull out an ancient tux and sport it haughtily sans shirt.
That said, if for some reason you are yet to acquire one of Jigsaw’s razor-sharp Ashby Velvet Blazers (£240, jigsaw-oline.com) with its matching, bootcut Mason Velvet Trouser (£160), then just fucking do it, okay? This is the third year of this duo being the Yuletide hill I die on. Front darted, satin-trimmed, they’re as close to 70s Yves Saint Laurent/90s Tom Ford as you’ll get with change from £5k.
You can sport this combo to each and every bash from mid-November to Epiphany, then every day until late March, plus every successive year for the next 50, and still be the coolest bitch in every room.
Jigsaw has even come up with an Oversize Sequin Clutch (£120) with fabulous, fat paillettes to go with each of this year’s incarnations. Only you get the scarlet, because I shall be purchasing my third Ashby/Mason duo in the sublimely sophisticated midnight.
If you really twisted my arm, and were seeking to stand out from the tinselled masses, I might recommend investing in Me & Em’s Forever Shawl Collar Tux Blazer in ivory (£350, meandem.com), and either teaming it with black — à la a cool, cross-dressing, non-binary Weimar waiter — or going full, sexy Mr del Monte by donning it with the ivory Forever Relaxed Tux Man Pant (£250), but omitting the Textured Tailored Tux Vest (£250). Scorchio — yet insouciantly so.
Assuming you are already suited and booted, it may be cheering to opt for a refresher piece by way of festive armour. NRBY’s Zoe Silk-satin Pintuck Shirt in ivory (£190, nrbyclothing.com) is winning: a sensuously shiny, bib-fronted, dress shirt with dashing mother of pearl buttons.
Or, if you must coruscate, I like the look of Cefinn’s Cecile Sequin Blouse (£240), punchily-shouldered sparkles on an easy-to-wear jersey base. I’m cravin’ navy so you go for gold.
Or opt for a fuck-you-very-much accessory. I’ve discovered that the best way I can appear at any event — wedding, christening or government inquiry — is in a Victoria Grant titfer (victoriagrant.com/shop-online).
Everyone immediately informs me that I’m the best-dressed individual of all time, such that I am not required to boast any sort of personality. They’re an introvert’s wet dream.
Or, if you’re feeling thrustingly fashion forward, stray lower and indulge not in a head, but a neck piece. For throats are the erogenous zone of the moment, hence my advocating those shirtless, exposed-clavicle lewks above.
Either reveal the neck, or make a feature of it via strategic adornment. A single strand of pearls feels newly current, but, for carousing, go large.
In a spirit of investigative journalism, I purchased And Other Stories’s Rhinestone Statement Necklace (£77, stories.com), a collar-cum-dancing-diamanté vest, suspended from the shoulders, as a one-stop means to register relaxed glamour.
I got it home to realise that two fronds were missing. By the time I returned it, two more were AWOL. So how’s about the glass, cotton and wood electric Blue Coral Necklace (now £24, shop.royalacademy.org.uk) on sale at the Royal Academy, with its expansive, décolleté reach?
Ribbon, ruffles and Pierrot collars are also quite the thang. The latter — together with pom-pom-slippers and ringmistress pants — are part of a guise fashion folk are referring to as “soft circus”. Hard circus presumably involving tigers and pay-per-view bearded broads.
Not unrelatedly, I finally acquired the late-Tudor ruff of my lifelong dreams, sustainably made in Azerbaijan, in the form of Azima Musayeva’s Ada White Collar (£200, wolfandbadger.com). London-based Musayeva specialises in handcrafted, limited-edition accessories, particularly collars and cuffs. I scored the last white incarnation, but other options abound. Or check out the neck oeuvre of Czech Mimi Lan Nguyen, aka La Femme Mimi, also on Wolf & Badger.
Whilst we’re clowning about, I have long craved the circuscore-meets-Renaissance nonpareil that is Moschino’s Faux Pearl-studded Black Rabbit Fur Cape (£595, hardlyeverwornit.com) online at HEWI. COME ON, Santa: give us it. Arse, I’ve talked myself round. Turns out that consumerism is a need after all, and I’m late-stage capitalism’s crack whore.
