1. A fun Christmas slogan top
‘Dear Santa, I’ve been good.’ Or, ‘Naughty or nice?’ Or, ‘But baby it’s cold outside!’ Or, ‘Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!’ Or even, ‘Kissing the guys for mince pies!’ We’ve all seen them while we’re scrolling through Etsy, ASOS and the like. Something a bit suggestive as well fun and stylish. Just the sort of gal you want be during this festive season – guzzling sickly sweet granny liquers and having a laugh and having a newly-relaxed attitude to snogging people you work with. Only problem is, you have to possess a large amount of confidence to wear this slogan top with panache because otherwise it won’t stand up to much scrutiny. ‘I don’t know why I bought it,’ you’ll mutter as you blush. ‘It was only, like, five quid.’ Then you’ll take it off, stuff it into the bottom of your bag, never to be worn again.
**2. It will be all tights on the night **
Nothing kills the chicness of a jewel coloured miniskirt or a silk dress like a pair of black tights. As you hoik the thick black microfibers up over your stems, dust spraying the air as you go, you are never more aware of how the glamour of ‘the Christmas party season’ doesn’t apply to your life. So instead, you decide to forgo the tight. Who really needs them anyway? The outfit looks so much better with bare legs and besides, you will spend most of the night either inside a bus or inside the venue. Right?! Wrong. Your outfit looks great, but you spend the evening absolutely freezing, teeth chattering, legs as goosepimply as the seasonal turkey. Everyone feels the need to come up to you and bellow; ‘AREN’T YOU FREEZING, WEARING NO TIGHTS?!?!?!’
3. ‘The Ultimate Party Heel’
What goes through your head: there’s no time more appropriate to dig out those shoes I can’t walk in than during December, what with all the drinks parties and the nights out and the house parties and New Year’s Eve. I know last time I wore them I ended up crying, because it felt like someone had poured acid onto the balls of my feet after walking from my house to the bus stop, but maybe I was just being dramatic. Everyone else wears high heels during December and they’re fine! I’ll be fine. Reality: you wear the shoes for five minutes at the party before having to find a seat. You then take them off because you feel like it’s a bit insane, having to spend an entire party seated and people bend down to talk you, like a Victorian grandmother. You throw the heels to one side and spend the rest of the night barefoot. You wake up with no shoes and no recollection of how you got home. You do an embarrassing Facebook status like this, ‘Hey guys, if anyone was at Max and Jake’s party last night, did you see a pair of Kurt Geiger stilettos? Size 7? Pls DM me thanks xx.’
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**4. The £13,000 knit **
You watch a warm romantic comedy with a festive backdrop set in an expensive and clean-looking world. You realize they all have one thing in common: luxurious knitwear. From Cameron Diaz’s many cream cashmere jumpers in The Holiday to one of the three thousand polonecks in Love Actually, you notice expensive knitwear to be a common thing. Convinced this is not only your new grown-up look for winter but also the item of clothing that might secure you lifestyle accoutrements such as a cottage in Surrey, Jude Law as a boyfriend or Hugh Grant as prime minister, you invest an obscene amount of money on a roll neck from Joseph. You will never really enjoy wearing it because you will feel so precious about it snagging and one loose thread probably costs £1.
**5. Red lipstick **
You may have been unconvinced of it before, but if you’re not going to wear red lipstick in the run-up to Christmas, when will you? You are familiar with the big players (Ruby Woo, Russian Red etc) and although they’ve let you down previously, now’s the time you’re really going to nail it. Unfortunately, although momentarily convinced you are a siren at home and on the tube journey to the party, the minute you arrive you realise the error of your ways. Every time you see someone they say something like, ‘Oooh… you’ve…er….put on the ritz haven’t you!’ and gesture at your mouth. You wash it off in the loo.
**6. A nice outfit for Christmas day **
You read a glossy, high-end magazine that gives you different outfit options for Christmas Day. You momentarily forget that Christmas Day in your house is basically spent behaving like a teenager, lying on the sofa getting drunk with your siblings and trying to duck out of peeling potatoes. You keep the outfit on until 1pm when Gone With The Wind is on Film4 and you change into some old tracksuit bottoms and your dad’s jumper.
**7. Any lux fabric at all **
You invest in an item of clothing in a ‘lux’ fabric to celebrate festivities. A lurex cardigan, perhaps. Maybe a sequin shirt. You reluctantly wear it through December, furiously aware of how little you’ll wear it come January because you feel like a drag queen. You don’t even know how to pronounce the word ‘luxe’.
**8. New underwear **
‘Tis the season to get lucky falalalalalalalala! Certain of the high yield of flings single people have in the run-up to Christmas, you invest in a new matching underwear set. Unfortunately, you’ve forgotten about the universally acknowledged rule of probability: new pants = no shag. So instead of tempting fate, you do as all clever people do. Wear your holey, graying Marks & Sparks knickers every night you go out, so luck will be on your side. THEN, if you pull, go into the loo and change into the nice new set at the bottom of your handbag. Tada!
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Follow Dolly on Twitter @dollyalderton
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.