How I do dressy now

First, I need to do a U-Turn on a few things.

After insisting I don’t use AI, I was informed that a carousel I posted on Instagram last week used music from AI artist Riiya. I honestly don’t spend too much time thinking about the audio I use on an Instagram post, I limit my time on the app as much as possible, giving myself just enough time to post and get out before a clickbait article on Macaulay Culkin’s career or the benefits of a tongue scraper get me and drag me under. I used to carefully select a track that felt like me, summed up my eclectic music taste - from DJ Luck to TLC to Ini Kamoze to Billy Ocean - nowadays I click on a trending sample, nod to myself ‘good enough’ and click share.

But it seems I can’t even do that without being subjected, ignorantly, to AI (even after being warned by ’s post on accidentally vibing to an AI singer). After a kind reader informed me, I clicked the artist’s profile to find a gorgeous girl dancing and promoting her cool Afrobeats music. Seemed normal. Until I scrolled further and realised there’s no speaking and no personality I could pinpoint - one day she’s stepping off a private jet, then walking down what looks like a surburban street in North America, another wearing an arran jumper in front of a christmas tree in a cabin in the woods. No one is in the background, the pictures are perfectly curated and have an almost cartoon-like feel. No captions, just ‘download my track’ or ‘out now’. The artist is smiling the same sweet smile in every image, moving almost in slow-motion, yet her music is asking ‘where did all my money go’ which, to me, might suggest a quirky personality or at least some banter/hot takes. Instead, it’s simply a vapid stare. This, on its own, does not denote AI, as Chris suggested ‘a lot of people on the internet don’t have a personality’ but the more I delved, the more red flags appeared. According to Spotify, she launched her career in 2025 and has 39 albums. 39! A further online search confirms she is, in fact, an AI artist but nothing in her bio states as such, nor in her Spotify description. If I have to mention that I worked with a brand two years ago on a top I purchased, surely there needs to be rules in place for AI? I now feel very old and not with it and my gut is telling me to only refer to artists I can vouch for as a real human (ie only artists played on Heart 80s), which is kind of sad, as it’s hard enough to be discovered as an up and coming artist. Is this it now?Is this the start of my distrust of anything new?

Or maybe it’s okay to like music that is simply that: just music? I’m a people person, I invest in their toil, their slog. Most of my Substack subscriptions belong to writers I like but also to people I value, whose work I want to continue to exist. It might not always be ‘useful’ to me but I wish for them to thrive outside of the Instagram algorithm, to create something on their own terms and, as cheesy as it sounds, be happy? To allow them to not always compete with AI or justify why they should write or why their work matters. Perhaps, set against the new AI backdrop, this is naive at best.

My second correction is from my statement a few newsletters back announcing a shortage of Hay storage tins available secondhand. Explicitly these ones, which I have been using for years and have since been discontinued:

Because I found one for 50p at a charity shop last week! It’s a bit discoloured but I am delighted with it, special shout out to Chris who dug it out amidst a shelf of mismatched crockery (I was too busy scouring the kids book to notice - and scored a bundle of Percy Jackson comics!).

This week I am swooning over Copenhagen Fashion Week fodder. Skall Studio’s SS27 collection:

It obviously led to a late night Vinted scroll where I bought some Skall Studio trousers for £40. Definitely not a impulse purchase…..(!)

9 somewhat dressy outfit ideas

I don’t go out much in the evening anymore, if at all. Occasionally I’ll have a work event, a 40th or a holiday dinner I use as an excuse to wear my fancier clothes but it’s all still very relaxed. At the last big birthday I attended, most women wore bermudas, cotton vests and cross-body bags, everything has become low-key now. Gone are dress-codes of our youth where we’d queue for hours to get into a bar, be overjoyed no one asked for ID only to be refused entry when one of the group dared to wear trainers or shorts. Chris and I once had to leave a hotel restaurant in Mallorca because the staff wouldn’t allow his (chino!) shorts to dinner and insisted he could only dine if he wore trousers from their lost property (surely the shorts would’ve been a better option?!).

This era of relaxed dressing is a welcome one for me: I own only a few pairs of heels (more for nostalgia than serious wearing), I don’t really own evening specific clothes plus I am usually travelling on public transport which lends to a more relaxed aesthetic in general. With that in mind, here are the types of outfits I would wear if I were to leave my kitchen past 6pm….

Mostly black

PROs: all black is an instant fancifier. You automatically look smarter even if the materials aren’t luxe. The maxi skirt brings any outfit up a notch and the flat sandals bring it back to nonchalance.

CONs: you might get stuck on an escalator, be sure to always lift your skirt on stairs. The lining of this waistcoat is polyester, so I am still sweating underneath.

So here is where I re-introduce my JUST ONE THING approach. I try not to overthink a smart outfit, I have the confidence I can mix it up with just one thing. Ideas include:

Colourful accessories (in one tone/colour works well)

Chunky jewellery - could be an oversized necklace or a great pair of earrings

Bold lip (I will forever be a fan of a simple outfit, bright lip)

A statement piece - this could be a dress with an interesting detail (then I keep the accessories simple) or just a bright top

Same look with metallic accessories.

Trust me, no one except you cares that you’ve worn this outfit before.

Monochrome

And then I used the monochrome as a base and added one more thing in the form of red accents:

Statement heels

The infrequency with which I bring out a pair of heels is a statement in itself.

Bold colour

A reader recently asked what happened to this blouse - I still have it! It’s the only yellow item of clothing I own so it’ll stay for the forseeable. I appreciate how it is the outfit, so I keep everything else pared-back.

From the J Crew school of dressing: a tee can make anything feel relaxed.

All of these pieces are also highly interchangeable, I am now inspired to try this red tee with my white maxi or the blue stripe shirt with these trousers and a red lip.

The key is in the fancifiers, which have the ability to transform any plain outfit into something more interesting and occasion adjacent. Here are some ideas:

This with a white shirt and trousers/denim shorts.

I’ve had so many compliments on this necklace (mine was a PR gift), the mixed metals really stand out (I wear this shell pendant*).

And finally, Camp Bestival - our first festival as a family.

The setting was amazing on so many levels, so thought out and child-friendly, I walked around that first evening in awe of the space they had created - secret woodland avenues, the tiniest cinema, a DJ in a toilet booth, circus tricks for kids to enjoy and a range of unicycles, tandem bikes and just odd bikes all ready to be picked up and played with. The toilets were clean and the food offering decent. But we ended up coming home early.

Chris and I did look at each other at one point and ask ‘are we just…miserable people?’. Everyone around us seemed to be having the best time but I do believe there is such a thing as too much choice. Behind every corner was another crafting workshop, a kids karaoke tent, Blippi on stage, then you trip over the hundreds of trolleys queueing for a Bluey meet and greet. All this was glorious but meant we kind of ended up not doing very much at all. Neither of our childen, understandably, wanted to see a music act, they were only mildly interested in the free activities and even less interested in queueing so we kind of mooched about and ended up going on funfair rides, none of which were free/cheap. Meals were £14 for anything - even loaded fries - and considering it was a child friendly festival there were no mention of kids meals on the menus. Occasionally I would ask if they offered a child’s portion and was met with a hushed reply of ‘yes we can do a £6 plate’). I think you are either a festival family or you’re not, we saw so many groups all dressed up having a whale of a time but our best moments were back at the campsite, reading a book or playing with our neighbouring tent buddies and I think it hit us that actually, our kids love a simpler mix of camping and playing with friends. Rather than leave after breakfast on Sunday, as originally intended (we needed to get back for work on Monday), we packed and left Saturday evening. We woke up smug in our beds on Sunday, had a gorgeous restful day before our busy week and reminded ourselves it’s okay not to stay somewhere that’s not completely right just because you’ve spent the money (and with £14.50 breakfast waffles, we actually saved money by coming home). One day we might return if there’s a band they’re into or when they can enjoy a bit more freedom but for now, we’ve closed the door on big festivals and will look into something more lowkey.

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PS no big Film Club chat this month because I realised as much as I love watching films, I loathe writing reviews. So this is to say I adored Rye Lane (on BBC), it was even better and funnier viewing on my second watch (I think I leaned into its quirks and style of comedy more, and I even didn’t mind the weird fisheye lens angles) and I enjoyed seeing a beautiful onscreen relationship between two young black people, on their own London odyssey in beautiful South London (made me miss it!).

I’m going to take a break from the film club because I just invested in 3 months of Sky cinema and have a long list of newer films to get my teeth into, primarily This Is Spinal Tap 2, which has already caused me to well up twice seeing Rob Reiner on screen.