Game For A Serious Sartorial Overhaul: Meet The Experimentalist

Game For A Serious Sartorial Overhaul: Meet The Experimentalist

Alexandra Jones is The Experimentalist - the girl who'll be finding out how to wear a trend and road-testing it every week for MyDaily. And here's why...

Change is a funny thing. It rarely exists in a vacuum; people do not (when sober) just wake up and decide to move house or become a base jumper or go out with Spencer from Made In Chelsea. There is almost always some prompt, because change is an effect, and as Aristotle mused many moons ago, an effect needs a cause.

Earlier this year, I decided to make a change. I decided to throw away almost all my clothes and replace them with shiny new clothes. A few days later my boyfriend found me rabidly stuffing skirts and trousers and whatnot into bin liners, his question - after I'd explained what I was doing - was "why are you unhappy?" He meant, "why are you unhappy with what you wear?" But as soon as he said it, I knew it wasn't really the clothes. They were just things - stuff. It was what they had come to stand for that was the problem.

I realised that I had become what my nana had always feared: slovenly. Or rather, I had regressed into slovenliness. I had gone back to being that 15-year-old who gets told off for walking around school with their shirt un-tucked, their top button undone and their tie stupidly small. At least when you're at school it's more a statement of rebellion: you're sticking it to the man (well, to the teachers).

When you're a grown-up it's just a bit awkward. What do you do with an adult who can't - to quote Dizzee - fix up, look sharp? You certainly don't give them a promotion.

And that was the sticking point. I wanted a promotion...or at least for my bosses to want to give me a promotion. I wanted to be a proper-card-carrying grown-up who was taken seriously in meetings and who under no circumstances would be asked if they were "OK" by a tramp (I was hungover, it was hot, I was sitting on the pavement at Borough Market waiting for friends and yes, a tramp came and asked me if I was OK, so there you have my ultimate low).

It's like this character in this film I saw (evidently not a very memorable film) said "don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want". And I certainly don't want any job that would make a tramp take pity on me.

At first the changes trickled in, a pencil skirt here, a new pair of brogues there but as trickles sometimes do, my sartorial overhaul has turned into a bit of a flood.

And to help me paddle through MyWardrobe have kindly offered to lend me some stuff so, fashion neophyte that I am, I might be able to carve out a "look" for myself. A sort of tester, if you will, but better than my usual "tester" which is to wear something once and take it back if it looks crap. I'll be trying a new trend each week and reporting on how it goes down...keep your eyes peeled.

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