MadFashionBitch

She insists on flying to Milan to buy shoes but all she wears are the no brand trainers she got for 50 pence at a car boot. She is allergic to maps and never remembers street names; she finds those tiny obscure shops in New York by pure instinct. She has a priceless collection of magazines with half the pages torn out. She gets up at 5am to go to the flower market and her roof terrace is like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon but all of her house plants are dead. She loves lace and embroidery and appliqué but her Mum gave up trying to teach her to sew long ago. She never wears hats but she’s got hundreds. At parties she is always 4 hours late or one week early. She doesn’t know where the Post Office is yet she managed to get a pink cooker shipped back from Tuscon Arizona. She was a regular at Wigan and Peterborough but her rare Northern Soul records got lost in some else’s divorce settlement. Her favourite place in California is Fresno because of the thrift shops. You have to go to Paris to get her perfume. Her car is older than her and has a name, but she can’t remember where she parked him. She says “it’s sunny behind the clouds” but it snowed in Mexico on Easter Sunday. In movies she always notices the wallpaper and what the extras were wearing. She cried when Mary J Blige was on Top of the Pops. Her fashion students think she’s a soft touch; they haven’t seen her at a jumble sale. The modernist chaise in her bedroom is hidden under a pile of clothes and the 2 cupboards in the spare room and 3 in the basement are bursting. She’s got nothing to wear, permanently. On Fridays she always has fish; rock, chips and peas and a bottle of chablis. Her favourite dresses have been loved so much the silk is thread-bare and the beading falls off them like tears. She has a wardrobe full of dreams.

[her shop is at 67 Columbia Road, London E2 7RG ]