El­sa Wrench

Guardian re­porter Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford could not be guilty of the sins at­trib­uted to her by the Sport Min­is­ter, in par­tic­u­lar that she flies to Mi­a­mi fre­quent­ly to buy match­ing shoes and hand­bags.

Be­cause it is a con­di­tion of every Guardian em­ploy­ee's con­tract that she must read my col­umn every week and ad­here to my ad­vice. And if Ms Gumbs-San­di­ford has been pay­ing at­ten­tion, she would know that I have con­demned matchy-matchy and so would nev­er waste a trip to Mi­a­mi, New York or any­where else to buy match­ing ac­ces­sories.

Giv­en that Ms Gumbs-San­di­ford (what a Dick­en­sian name!) has not been strung up by her heels by the ed­i­tor in chief, it is a very rea­son­able in­fer­ence that she has been obey­ing her con­tract and has a shoe­box full of my columns right next to the au­to­graphed pic­ture of me and light­ed can­dle.

Matchy-matchy is for fash­ion am­a­teurs who are so afraid of com­bin­ing colours, pat­terns and tex­tures that they stick to bor­ing.

If Ms Gumbs-San­di­ford has in fact been breach­ing the matchy-matchy rule, I shall send her a warn­ing no­tice and that should suf­fice. I have a very low rate of re­cidi­vism among my fol­low­ers.

Now, be­fore some pedan­tic fo­gey blows a gas­ket, yes, it is true that while I ab­hor matchy-matchy, I al­so turn my face against black shoes and brown hand­bags and vice ver­sa. Yeah, yeah, brown and black are both neu­trals and can live to­geth­er in har­mo­ny, but there are ex­cep­tions to the neu­tral rule and that is one of them. It just looks wrong. Un­less, of course the whole out­fit it­self is a de­lib­er­ate study in brown-black.

Yes, lit­tle rab­bit, fash­ion can be com­plex.

My friend Jay, not a fo­gey by any means, but rather some­one who just loves to tweak my nose, sent me a fash­ion klax­on from the New York col­lec­tions in Feb­ru­ary, where matchy-matchy got matchy-match­i­er. DKNY showed a pink-tinged leop­ard sweater worn with a leop­ard skirt, leop­ard bag and leop­ard shoes. Brazil­ian de­sign­er Alexan­dre Her­ch­cov­itch sent out mod­els in teal, tan­ger­ine and elec­tric blue with hair paint­ed to match. And Adele ap­peared at the Gram­mys in a vo­lu­mi­nous flo­ral car­pet with match­ing flo­ral pointy-toed shoes.

Yeah, try that in re­al life.

Run­way shows are a kind of fan­ta­sy, a fic­tion for ex­hi­bi­tion­ists. They are meant to be out­ra­geous and counter in­tel­li­gence. Celebri­ties get hall pass­es and are al­lowed to be sil­ly every now and then. Even Giu­liana Ran­cic of the Fash­ion Po­lice thought the flo­ral shoes on Adele were too much, and by the time the Os­cars rolled out the red car­pet, the Sky­fall singer had re­treat­ed to what she does best–el­e­gant­ly black.

Right now, I am scour­ing my on­line shops for a bright flo­ral jack­et to throw over my black-and-white jer­sey pol­ka dot shirt dress, which will be worn with elec­tric blue shoes. A stripey navy linen skirt is long­ing for a pink silk pais­ley blouse and, if I am lucky, a mo­tor­cy­cle den­im jack­et with lots of zip­pers.

Who wants to match when they can be a glam­orous­ly con­trar­i­an mix mas­ter?

"It's not about go­ing to a par­ty, it's about life as a par­ty," said wrap star Di­ane von F�rsten­berg back­stage at New York Fash­ion Week.

Ms Gumbs-San­di­ford, please en­joy the par­ty. If you have any mixol­o­gy ques­tions (or queries on ex­or­cis­ing un­found­ed ru­mours about your­self) you can find me at wrenchel­sa@hot­mail.com.

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