As a student at Christchurch University, it was general knowledge that French and Italian women were obsessed with sex, clothes and food with garlic in it.

My mother wore Chanel-inspired gowns for her piano recitals, gifts from her much travelled rich sister-in-law.

My mother said that dressing like Margaret and Elizabeth in the palace in London was bad taste.

At art school, Russell Clark introduced us to that great paint user, Max Beckmann.

Hilarious self-portrait! My favourite “Hello Sailor”.

How very clever of Graham Brazier to call his group, Hello Sailor.

Beckmann said the working class man should present himself with panache, confident in his meaningful style. Yes, right on Max! That’s where style comes from!

In 1957, working as a waitress at Harry’s, I noted that young Māori women were flouting a new look: tight black skirts, Chanel length, short but more flattering and realistic than the thigh-high that was to follow with Mary Quant.

The jackets were stunning. They started life as expensive items in stores like Smith and Caughey’s which many could never afford, so they did those jackets a service! Put some real life into them, some meaningful style.

The jackets were transformed with informative bits of treasured stuff. Festooned with style, sleeves and hoods added colours; contrasting superbly and totally disguising any look they once might have belonged to.

Hoop earrings and black stockings, black flat pumps. In Wellington in the ‘50s, they had the look!

That was, for me, the uniform when I was running the first espresso bar in Wellington. Jacket off - a tight black top and my added bit, black boots. A streetwise version of Chanel’s little black dress. The same thing, every day. It caught on!

When Māori women who invented the look presented, the dummies only saw what they expected to see. When a pākehā took it on - visible! Acceptable to the status quo.

What is amazing is how often women have flouted the rules, invented new and outrageous ways of presenting themselves. Give them an inch and they would take a mile. Then back down would come the controls.

Throughout history, only the top 3% could wear certain colours or materials. What a worker wore defined their occupation. Now, at least you can take it off when you leave the building.

Off that particular hook, she needs to flout her sexuality, her creativity in a meaningful way. Carmen’s creativity in her presentation informs her fellow workers at the tobacco factory who she is.

Our protagonist could go to the Salvation Army, Tatty’s; however Tatty’s is too expensive now for those on the minimum wage!

Don’t support those corporations, ripping off our women designers, who fill up our retail stores with copies and pollute the environment. Instead, think up clever ways to reuse what is already here.

Think what it is you personally want to say: what sort of person you want to grow into and what sort of world you want to live in.

This sounds a bit diffident when, as Max Beckmann implies: it’s how you wear what you have put together that makes for the magic ingredient here. You wear the clothes, the clothes don’t wear you!

Maybe you don’t have anything to say of course, or you are simply stating allegiance to some particular group.

All clothing is political however, and that is a political stance. It implies you support the status quo and are content to allow the group you aspire to to dictate whatever your choices are.

All social uprisings have been expressed in what you wear.

From Beau Brummell to Joséphine Bonaparte, Byron to Oscar Wilde and Vanessa Bell, Mihingarangi Forbes, and of course to the very committed socialist Frida Kahlo and then to brilliant Lorde! Their names are myriad.

We women must join the performance and do our strut on the stage for our own survival, just as they did and are still doing!”

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