My jumpsuit is attacking me!

SEND HELP.

So I need something to wear for a thing, and being short of funds I decide to play it clever. Instead of looking for something new I decide to go shopping in my wardrobe.

It’s a simple yet brilliant concept. You simply rummage through its inner depths, rediscover much-loved items and voila!

A whole new(ish) outfit for zero cost.

Plus no sweating around town, realising with dismay that everything is a combination of puffed sleeves and smocking, and maxi-length, which is no use whatsoever when you are five foot two-and-a-half (where did that extra half inch go?).

Anyway, no matter because my wardrobe excavations reveal a fantastic prize! A black halter-neck jumpsuit, bought two years ago and worn only a couple of times.

I love it. It is a bit tricky to get into, I recall - but when I’d tried it on in the changing room (in the central Glasgow Oliver Bonas store), they’d been so helpful. They really are so cheery and friendly in there.

‘Just step into it like trousers,’ the young woman had said.

And that worked fine! Instead of panicking at the array of straps and dangly bits, I’d told myself, ‘Relax, it’s just like trousers.’ It worked even when I wore it for a party in London last summer and the helpful shop person was not on hand. Of course I could put on a jumpsuit without help!

But now something has gone wrong.

Now the ‘step into it like trousers’ technique is not working at all.

The legs are fine - as in, my legs are in the legs - but the top half (all straps and holes and gaping bits) makes no sense. My head is trapped in a hole. My arm is bent double, painfully, and a boob is sticking out of the side.

WHAT’S GOING ON?

There are buttons that weren’t here before. Where do they go? Is it on back to front? Where’s the halter neck and the straps that cross at the back?

I manage to escape from the thing and examine it, trying to figure out what happened. Is it twisted? Knotted? Is it gaslighting me?

I try again. It’s on me, yes - but now it’s trying to choke me and my other boob is sticking out of an opening that should not be there!

Help! I yell. HELP!!!

Jimmy comes running through to the bedroom. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s fighting me!’

He helps me out of it, looking tense and concerned as if I’d fallen into a ravine, and suggests ‘starting again in a logical way’. As if he has any expertise on the jumpsuit front. It’s an outfit I need, not logic!

On my third attempt he looks at me, frowning, as if it’s performance art that he doesn’t understand. Either that, or a monkey writhing in a pillowcase.

‘That doesn’t look right,’ he says.

‘I know that!’

‘Is it inside out? Or upside down? Did something happen to it in the wash?’

So many questions! All I know is that it’s not fit for purpose. Is there a government body I can complain to?

‘You’ve done something to it,’ he says, clearly wearying of the topic now and edging towards the door.

‘What could I have done? It’s been hanging in my wardrobe for the past year!’

‘You’ve pulled on something that you shouldn’t.’

Story of my life.

Then I have a brainwave. There are instructions for everything on YouTube: how to unblock a toilet, crochet a tea cosy, remove a ring from a swollen finger. I can’t be the only person with this particular problem. Maybe I need special tools?

Alas, there is nothing on YouTube about getting into a halter neck jumpsuit.

‘I’m taking it back to the shop,’ I announce, patience all run out.

‘But you’ve worn it,’ Jimmy points out. ‘And isn’t it quite old—’

‘Not to return it. To get them to de-tangle it for me.’

It occurs to me, as I approach the shop later that afternoon, that the younger me would never have done this. I’d have been far too embarrassed. Instead, I’d have bundled up the faulty item (I’m now convinced it’s the jumpsuit that’s at fault) in a carrier bag and stuffed it into the bottom of my wardrobe and never looked it again.

Now, though, I march in brazenly. A very nice man comes over to see if I need help. Yes, Sir, I certainly do!

He doesn’t laugh or mock me or tell me to be logical. He doesn’t accuse me of doing something to it. Instead, he just looks thoughtful for a moment, then he twiddles about with it, putting a strap here, another strap there. He beckons over a colleague to bring a hanger and within a single minute it is hanging perfectly like this.

‘Shall we pin it for you?’ he asks.

‘No, no, it’s fine! You’re a genius. Thank you so much!’

Honestly, I bound out of the shop on a total high. Isn’t it brilliant when a problem is so easily resolved?

Yet when the event comes around I decide I don’t want to wear the jumpsuit after all. It wasn’t really about that. It was about not letting it beat me - about the conquest really.

Now it’s hanging beautifully in my wardrobe but you know what?

I don’t even want to look at it.

Love,

Fiona xx

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