I have only once been on a cruise, and that was long ago. It was 1958, the summer of the sack. The sack was a dress that hung straight from the shoulders, ignoring the waist, and was pulled into a hem or tight band just below the knee. Although 1958 was the year when the sack became a general fashion, it first appeared in haute couture the previous year. I remember the Italian couturière Simonetta at parties in Rome wearing the sack in high Roman fashion, as to the manner born. Indeed, it was she who gave it birth.
But by the time the sack reached England, home, and Harrods, its disadvantages as an everyday fashion became apparent. You could not sit down without first hitching up your dress well above the knee, nor get in or out of your car, nor walk upstairs. And that is where we get back to cruising - and ships' companion ways. Cruise passengers at that time tended to be middle-aged and over fed. To see them struggling up companion ways with high-hitched skirts and creeping down sideways like crabs, was a sight for cynical eyes.
Since the year of the sack, the average age of cruise passengers has fallen dramatically, while the total numbers have risen year by year. Nearly all big stores and fashion shops now have cruisewear departments open all the year round. And fashion itself has become so liberated and wear-when-you-will that, swimwear and suntops apart, anything you buy for a cruise has plenty of uses afterwards. Moreover, it so happens that this year's fashions in everyday things seem peculiarly appropriate for cruising. There are exceptions, of course. Jeans rolled up at the ankle as worn now just right. But not those thick soled wooden clogs. Clogs on a companion way would be more disastrous than the sack. Low-heeled sandals, espadrilles, and good deck shoes are what you need. Dunlop's "Trainer" shoes, red or navy with white, are ideal and only about £1; or Clark's new range of "Popons" with serrated crêpe soles, beautifully light and flexible. There is a particularly good lace-up version in navy leather and white canvas, with cushioned inside sole.
The fashion for blazers this year fits in well with a cruising holiday: but on windy decks and gangways, the all-round pleated skirts that often go with them can blow up like an umbrella turning inside out. A good point about the skirt with the striped blazer in our picture is that it is only pleated in front.
The current craze for clothes with a “sailor" influence needs, in my opinion, to be played down when you get where the real sailors are. It was not I who pinned on those anchor emblems to the caps and jersey blouse. The belted jacket is only remotely "sailor inspired," and could in no sense be called a parody. Rather it is a follow-through from Saint Laurent's "topper," an invaluable garment to wear with pants, with skirts, with dresses - and has the virtue of good pockets, so that you do not need to carry a handbag around all day.
Our travel editor says the mistake most first-time cruisers make is not to have a really thick sweater and some kind of warm coat, since evenings can be cold, and even daytimes chilly. For the rest, take a jersey or linen-type pants, a variety of tops, and the shorts of last summer would not come amiss. The form for evenings is casual. Something short and something long, perhaps a pair of silk pants and a few evening tops - everything in light, uncreasable fabrics.
I have been thinking in terms of keeping costs down but if money is no object, the crème de la crème of cruisewear - the cruise de la cruise - is by Tiktiner of Cannes, one of the Côte d'Azure group of designers. Selfridges opened a Tiktiner boutique in their French Quarter on the second floor this winter. Fine voile shirt-tailed cover-ups and tunics, fine voile shirt-waisters, perfect silk and linen pants and beautiful silk print dresses, seal-smooth swimsuits in stretch satin . . . here you will discover that the best looking cruisewear is the most simple, but in subtle fabrics.
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