Leg(ging)less in Berlin

(A story in 2 parts. Part 1)

Londoners know two things: Abstract anger and leggings. The former needs little further said. If you’ve ever ridden the tube at rush hour, you know what I mean. I don’t hate it. I kind of love it. It’s intrinsic to the workings of The Big Smoke and somewhat endearing; a blood vessel in the thigh of the city I love and call home. However... The leggings. We can talk about the leggings. You cannot brush past a hipster in topshop without being in a two foot radius of a legging clad beast. It’s been this way for some time now. I’m not judging it. I am part of it. I wear leggings. I understand the love of leggings, the damn near need. If only all leg wear gave one such comfort, such freedom, looked so good tucked into riding boots. However, love, freedom and comfort can lead one into a false sense of security and for a while there I believed that leggings were a universal (read: first world, vogue reading) fact. However, after arriving in Berlin and travelling no more than the distance than the airport to my apartment a horrific internal line of questioning made itself known:
“Holy God, have leggings not arrived in Berlin? or, have they arrived and left? Am I wearing work out gear in public right now? Is this more or less ridiculous than when Edie Sedgewick wore her ballet get ups to bars in NYC in the 60s?” after a mild panic attack on the S-bahn, I look down at my outfit and think, Fuck Edie. This is a good look.

In any case, the question has continued to plague me: Where are the leggings? What are girls wearing instead? There are a lot of leg covering variations but no consistent through and through replacement. I have been on the lookout as I need a new pair. My black leggings, trusted companions I bought in SA for R30 has a homeless sized hole in the left leg of them (amongst other smaller holey friends) and frankly, no amount of darning can repair them to the state of public showing. They are beyond help. So I’ve been looking for some new ones, to no avail. After a while (as in, from my arrival to now) I have given up the leggings charade, thinking I should move on. My plan to move on went like this.
1) I need some good thick tights for winter. Something more aggressive than the old opaque black staples. Something REALLY wintery. Something..... Woolly. Maybe a grey pair. I don’t know. Why not?
2) To go with my hot new/grannyesque tights, I need a black skirt.
After I arrived here I realised that my somewhat new but wholly beloved high waisted brass buttoned black mini skirt was accidently packed away in some godforsaken black hole of a cupboard somewhere in south London. Thus, to survive winter in Berlin I needed a new one. And the more I thought about it the more I thought that a regular black skirt simply wouldn’t cut the mustard. What I needed to go with my wardrobe was.... was... was... a Black. Leather. Mini. Skirt.
Okay, before I get into the debacle of buying said skirt, let me give you a quick rundown of how I stand, clothing wise. Three years ago I was one of the glorious 8% of females who owned and wore more than 108 pairs of shoes. I had more clothes than I can even pretend to be embarrassed about. I loved my wardrobe. I fucking loved it. I had pink silk shirts, gold lurex dresses, polka dot poodle skirts I bought in Italy and kept ‘just in case’ I ever found the occasion to wear them. Platforms from the nineties, vintage 50s pumps, grey mohair gloves that reached my elbows and filled me with pure, unadulterated joy.... I OWNED ALL OF THESE THINGS.
However, time and life has moved on. I no longer have the space or money to store such frivolous wonders. So, as time has gone on, I’ve shed more and more of my so called crap and am now the not quite so proud owner of less than 40 pairs of shoes. It pains me. I know that I am a shallow bitch and that people in Africa are starving, but still it pains me. The machete I’ve had to take to my shoe collection pains me more than I can ever fully tell you. I digress. When it comes time for me to move place to place (as I do) my wardrobe decisions are made somewhat easier by my condensed wardrobe. I have two good pairs of jeans. One, a dark blue pair tapered to the ankle, the other, a light blue stone wash ripped to shreds. I wear wife beaters. They are my go to top of choice. I own one black cardigan (a hand me down from Shelley that neither I nor her are ever sure that she in fact handed down, but still, two years and several notches down the colour black scale later, I continue to wear) and it goes with very wife beater I own. I have a few shirts I’m partial to.
My outfits, generally, go something like this:
jeans/leggings + wifebeater/ shirt + good shoes + beret/russian bear hunting hat/sack of eggs knitted hat + scarf.

Scarves are one of the reasons I love winter. It is my firm belief that any outfit can be made massively more appealing with the addition of a hat and scarf. A regular old combination of blue jeans and a white wife beater can be transformed with the addition of a scarf. Hermes was the god of travellers. Later, the fashion failsafe of the basically clothed everywhere. I rest my case.

In any case, I sometimes get a little bored of my repertoire. Especially considering that I count myself, if not groundbreaking (although I still hold that I was the girl who brought deck shoes back to Battersea) somewhat stylish. I arrived in Berlin with almost NO CLOTHES: some wife beaters, two pairs of jeans, a pair of leggings, white brogues, white plimsolls, black platform high heels, pink heels, black riding boots, my trusty leather jacket that belonged to a succession of Sharp aunts until arriving on my willing back in 1999. My meagre selection of clothes is supplemented with lots of fantastic hats and scarves. And that’s always been okay for me. Until I arrived in Berlin and my leggings are no longer acceptable to wear in public and it gold cold and wintery and I thought, “Goddamn, I need some woolly tights and a LEATHER MINI SKIRT”

As it turns out, woolly tights are easy enough to come across in Berlin. Unlike leggings. And the skirt.... Well, the debacle of the leather mini skirt will follow. For now, just know, if you’re coming to visit, buy your leggings in London. They are, as we say in the classics, “not so much in this town.”