Hello and welcome to 2017, the year where everything changes! Please take your shoes off before walking on our very white carpet.
When we say ‘everything changes’, it’s implied that means for the better, isn’t it? Not promised, of course, but implied. Because crossing an arbitrary, second-wide line of time from one year to the next means that the slate is wiped clean! The world’s hit a hard reset. The colossal Magna Doodle clusterfuck of 2016 is shaken away until all is pure and fresh and lovely and David Bowie’s alive again.
Everything will be better in 2017. Or, ok, if not strictly ‘everything’, maybe your wardrobe will! That’s a manageable dream. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the year that your personal style blooms like a cactus flower in the desert. The year that the high street and your wallet and the laws of fabric physics all work together in harmony to make you look more YOU than you’ve ever been.
While 2016-You never actually left the house in her crushed velvet kick flares, 2017-You will not only wear them, but manage to make them work with the camo print jacket and fur-lined loafers you bought on a mulled wine Zara binge in late November.
You’ll understand what shoes to wear with culottes, and what constitutes a ‘day’ sequin. You’ll be able to say “mm yar, that’s so Vetements” in conversation, and have it make sense. You’ll know how to pronounce Vetements.
This is the year you'll work out exactly where the line lies between 'high-fashion folksy' and 'going to a The Mamas and the Papas tribute night’, and stay the correct side of it at all times. It’s the year of buying one really well-cut grey coat instead of five satin bomber jackets. Of shirts that don’t gape, and mom jeans that don’t give you thrush. It’s the year you’ll buy a chic but sensible backpack that fits all your stuff in it, instead of pretending a Specsavers tote bag is part of your personal brand.
2017 -you will have a civilised conversation when the sales assistant in Whistles asks if you need any help, rather than yelping “I’MFINEI’MJUSTLOOKING”, lobbing a pair of £20 lurex socks on the floor to create a distraction and running away.
You’ll iron, and not with your hair straighteners. You’ll be the woman who throws away her laddered tights and magically has a fresh pair in her bag, instead of putting the holey ones back in the drawer to scream wretchedly over when you’re running late in three days’ time. You might even use one of those laundry bags for delicates – that’s just how sorted 2017-You is going to be.
This might even be the year that you find (*whisper it) *The Bra. The dream bra, which elevates your tits both literally and metaphorically, feels like gossamer angel wings and also somehow costs £18.99. And when summer arrives you’ll discover with surprise and delight that it’s also the year fashion worked out how to make a backless dress with secret underwiring and room for a spare Solero.
2017 - you will remember to cut all the pointless hanging loops out of her dresses as soon as you buy them, rather than noticing them dangling limply from her armpit only when it is too late and you’re in all the brochure photos, or have finished giving the TED Talk.
You’ll find one perfect, killer outfit to wear to weddings, and coolly wear it to all of them. It’ll look perfectly appropriate and yet somehow different at each wedding, through a magical combination of weather, emotions and clutch bags. 2017-You has a lot of good clutch bags.
You’ll also have ‘formal’ pyjamas without egg down them and a ‘casual’ tuxedo jacket, and be able to do artful layering without everyone assuming you have flu. You’ll stumble across the one great ‘hero piece’ in a suburban Marks and Spencer two weeks before it’s all over the national press, and then everyone will ask if it’s Gucci and you’ll shrug and say 'oh this? I just thought it was sweet.'
2017 - you will know exactly what the difference is between the fashion puffa jacket and the puffa jacket your Dad wears to do his Sunday morning car boot. You’ll just know.
And it’s not just you! This could be the year the shops get their act together too. There could be skirt lengths that hit the sweet spot between ‘jaunty arse hat’ and ‘Mrs Doubtfire’. There might be dresses with sleeves AND sex appeal. The high street could stop trying to make chartreuse happen. It might finally get over the exposed zip!
Maybe, even if everything that actually matters is still a shitshow, 2017 will be the year that your wardrobe becomes the utopian pleasuredome you’ve always hoped for.
I mean, it won’t be. Clearly. But it’s January still, and we have to be allowed to dream.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.