Inside Style - Sick Bed Chic

Inside Style by Annmarie O'Connor 

as featured in The Dubliner - January 20th

Pyjama chic - SS/11
Above, from left: Spring 2011 runway looks from Karen Walker, Vena Cava, Suno, Band of Outsiders. Photos courtesy of the designers.
Image courtesy of Refinery29.com

There’s nothing stylish about being sick. Once claimed by the winter lurgy, even the idea of looking good induces a sense of nausea. Sure, Victorian literature may have drip fed us images of consumptive heroines, pink-cheeked and febrile, dressed in layers of tulle but the reality is much divorced from that of those wacky Brontës.

This I know. For the past week I’ve been laid out in my Dunnes fleece PJs and snowflake robe vowing to kill the spore-sprayer who bequeathed me with such a vile dose. Let’s face it.  There’s no way of sexing up jim jams; especially when you’re sporting an attendant case of unkempt roots and abject jaundice. 

At least there’s the prescient comfort of being alone, in bed, without being forced into public glare...until those critical supplies of Lemsip and Lucozade dry up. Cue:  the epic journey to the corner shop dressed in two fur coats, three snoods, a Cossack hat and a redundant slick of MAC Russian Red seeping into large dehydrated crags that were once my lips.

This is when I start to feel sorry for small children and those with underlying heart conditions. They shouldn’t feel forced to witness this hobbling creature from the deep stocking up on fluids, however low her electrolytes may be.  Even my adopted stray cat, Mr. Scruff, has been noticeably absent at the back door.  I however take no responsibility for the recent rash of birds dropping from the sky. That’s simply an insult too much.

Thankfully, I appear to be on the mend and to celebrate I’ve dusted down my new pair of Anne-Sofie Back trousers which have been waiting in my wardrobe to fulfil their manifest destiny. As cosmic spite would have it, I’m probably the only person to have gain weighted after enduring local shame and a liquid diet for over seven days.  Looks like the closest thing I’ll be getting to Swedish avant-garde is an odd glance into that random-looking Ikea mirror in the front hall.

Although I may still be a little soft around the post-Christmas edges, at least I have my health back. Now it’s just a question of bringing myself to wear a tracksuit and MBTs while these mince pie saddle bags shift.  Sigh. I guess my fashionable new year still awaits...