{"id":6372,"date":"2019-03-17T18:49:19","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T18:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6372"},"modified":"2019-03-17T18:49:20","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T18:49:20","slug":"good-to-be-grey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=6372","title":{"rendered":"Good to be grey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Anyone for grey?\/damesnet<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2018You\ncan never be too rich or too thin,\u2019 advised Wallis Simpson, the scheming\nAmerican divorcee who snatched a prince of the realm from us. To which I would\nadd \u2018\u2026 or have too many grey polo necks.\u2019 I realised this as my hand headed unconsciously\nfor a rather splendid grey Donegal jumper in a new (to me) charity shop in a\npart of town I\u2019d never been to before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ndid ask myself \u2018Do I really need another one?\u2019, honest, and I did do a quick\nmental audit of the grey polo necks (GPNs) in particular, and grey knitwear in\ngeneral, already in my wardrobe and came to the conclusion that I didn\u2019t have\nanything quite like this one. It joined my collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ngreat thing about grey is that it isn\u2019t black. If I didn\u2019t have grey in my\nwardrobe I would probably head out the door most days looking like a\nMediterranean widow \u2013 though of course in the niceties of Victorian etiquette\ngrey constitutes half-mourning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nbecause it isn\u2019t black, grey is subject to any number of exciting variations of\ntone and texture: pale grey, dark grey (I\u2019m valiantly resisting a famous novel\ntitle here), marl, flat colour, flecked \u2013 as in my newest trophy.  Perhaps that\u2019s what gives grey knitwear its\nhanger appeal: you can instantly see the softness, or the detail of the stitch\n\u2013 and imagine it settling round you like a cosy invisibility cloak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose that, as a long-time civil servant, I am inevitably drawn to grey \u2013 everyone knows that we are grey men and women, and grey is the colour of compromise. Dare I suggest that we need a bit of grey knitted thinking at the moment, instead of intransigent blue-sky pie-in-the-sky thinking? (In fact, where is the grey man of politics now, when we need him to see off a few \u2018bastards\u2019?) But I digress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s\nlovely just to retreat into a snug GPN and merge with your surroundings, hidden\nin plain sight, but the beauty of grey is that it doesn\u2019t have to be that way,\nas it\u2019s the perfect foil to really bright, zingy colours: cyclamen, lime,\norange. If you\u2019re into bling, silver looks brilliant on grey. And here\u2019s an\nup-to-the-minute fashion tip from the dames (well, from The Pool in January\n2018): apparently it\u2019s de rigueur to have half your hair tucked into the collar\n\u2013 presumably the bottom half. Remember, you heard it here last. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My\ncollection to date is illustrated in the photo above, with secondhand stuff on\nmy right hand and new stuff on the left. I think I may now claim that these\ngarments haven\u2019t just been bought, they have been carefully curated over years.\n(Shove off, Marie Kondo \u2013 my guest spot at the V & A cannot be far off.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as if all this were not proof of the intrinsic elegance of the GPN, consider this: when the four founding dames met up for their works Christmas lunch some years ago, we all arrived wearing GPNs of very different descriptions, entirely without prior consultation. I rest my case. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You just can’t have too much grey knitwear . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,63,67,55],"tags":[191,190],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6372"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6382,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6372\/revisions\/6382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}