The First Jumper
Prodigy, grunge and timeless elegance in Italia 90'
It’s after school and I’m walking with my friend and her mum, there’s a few of us actually, she’s taken us to get gelato. Everyone at school today was talking about their weight, except I have no idea what mine is, what’s a good or bad one to be, but I get the sense that lower is better.
We’re sitting on a bench in the cobbled piazza chatting all kinds of nonsense as you do when you’re 7, ice cream dripping down the cone onto our hands, when the girls start comparing their weight. As my turn rolls around I blurt out a random number, a quick average of what I heard my friends say. At this point I have no idea my childlike state is about to be abruptly confronted, as this time her mom chimes in “thats probably the weight of one of your legs”.
The problem with my body is that I was born in Italy in the late 80’s, a brutal landscape for a chubby little (half foreign) girl. I grew up with Monica Bellucci as the national beauty standard, 90-60-90 drilled into me like Pythagorus number, Dolce & Gabbana ads, and the constant commentary on the fact that my body was too large.
Developing a fashion sense was a luxury not afforded to me as after all I didn’t have many choices, cute clothes just didn’t come in my size. So I spent my time developing a taste in music. I would spend my afternoons watching Mtv and The Box, and whilst I was on the Spice Girls/Backstreet Boys side of the 90’s, skipping the video wasn’t an option so I watched a hell of a lot of Pearl Jam, Nirvana and to my horror Prodigy, music videos. I still remember the genuine fear, but also intrigue I felt at hearing Firestarter for the first time, the intro sounding like a warning bell, and Keith Flint flickering on the screen.
The rage in that music allured me, it was a voice of sanity that contrasted the physical reality of timeless elegance and pop music, I lived in. It unconsciously spoke to an inner world, I hadn’t yet acknowledged.
I wanted to join the Miss Sixty / Phard / Fornarina army but I didn’t get in. So I absorbed the punk, the grunge, the weird, because finally, this was a fashion statement I could make. Oversized jumpers and baggy jeans to counter the exposed midriff & very low rise flared jeans trend.
I don’t remember the exact moment I found THE jumper, it was just presented to me, at the right time, like a piece of armour is made when the warrior is ready. It was greyish green, not dissimilar to the colour of Kurt Cobain’s cardigan, a polyester number about 3-4 sizes too big. Even though there was no silhouette to it, I distinctly remember standing in front of the mirror recognising that henceforth this would be my shape, non existent.
My father hated it, my South African grandma hated it so much she in fact refused to wash it (she lived with us). I would one day find her intentionally hiding it at the back of the linen cupboard.
My summers were spent mostly with my Zia (my fathers sister), a little Italian old lady that was born during the scarcity of the war, and spent the rest of her life cooking to much food to remind herself that those days are thankfully behind her. So I would inevitably come back home with a few extra kilos at the end of each summer, even though our whole relationship was built on the tension of her overfeeding me whilst taking me shopping and telling me that I couldn’t pull off half the things she made me try on (she had no kids of her own and I was the first born daughter).
Im 37 now and I still carry the internal scar of her telling me I have “fat knees” in front of the shop keeper, every time I pull a skirt over my thighs.
As brutal as it was, she was protecting me, because she was also large and a spinster, and understood the weight of living against what society dictates.
She was also my favourite person in my world, and I never packed the jumper when I went to stay with her because she would let me get dressed up in her fur coats, the vintage 50’s Christian Dior sunglasses, she would smear on her coral coloured lipstick, spritz me with River Gauche and let me prance around the house in her little old lady heels, like an old Italian diva.
But at the end of each summer, the uniform returned.
I was wearing the jumper the day I kissed somebody for the first time, at school, and I was also wearing it the next day when I heard the chorus of whispers that he only did it because they dared him to kiss a fat girl.
I was wearing that jumper when my father told me nobody would ever love me if I didn’t lose weight.
Yet somehow the world that told me I wasn’t enough by being too much, made me exactly who I am.
I was born a contradiction, being half Italian & half South African, meant I was always half foreign. So the skill I learned most proficiently was the ability to fused two worlds. I learned the rigour of tailoring, the timelessness of colour combinations and Italian elegance, and I blended it with oversized shapes, distressed textures and a fuck off attitude.
I started working in fashion when I was 19, but I spent most of that time feeling like an outsider. My peers spent their younger years participating and refining their taste, while I was locked out because of my body.
But here’s the thing there’s a distinction between being able to get dressed and developing your own style.
Knowing your shape, learning what works for it, is something that can be learned, like rules. It can be honed through repetition and time. It can be studied and explained. Developing a sense of style, is pulling from different influences and mixing them coherently, and it requires you to acknowledge your self and your history. You can’t create something new without breaking those rules.
I have no idea what happened to the jumper, but I know that if I had it now, Id know exactly how to style it.