Dress Sense
Do You Remember The First Time?













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How was it the first time you went out dressed? Did you cack yer kecks the first time you told your partner about your little secret? What about the first time you tried make-up? Did you end up looking as bad as Marilyn Manson? TVs have a lot of First Time Experiences, and boy do they know how to milk them. So come on, share your first time with us. I'll go first....
















From Dress Sense Issue 1 Summer 2000.

Okay, this is an account of the first time I walked the fair streets of the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire dressed as a bird.

I had cross dressed for years but my twenty fifth birthday had passed and I still had not set foot outside the door in my finery, until my girlfriend persuaded me to take a brief stroll around the block at about 10.30 pm on a spring night in 1996.

I was not dressed inappropriately. I just wore a three quarter length coat over a simple top and skirt, nothing which would draw attention to me - which is a tad amusing, because a substantial part of what makes these first steps out exciting is that somebody might see you, and, moreover, read you.

Anyway, all evening I had experienced no problems walking around the house in my heels (which were nothing dramatic) but as soon as I stepped out on to the pavement the ground beneath my feet assumed the bouyancy of a bouncy castle castle. I felt as though I was walking like Mr Soft, that Soft Mints TV advert character who gave people nightmares back in the 1980s and was later immortalised by Noel Gallgher in "Sahkermaker". Everything about me felt conspicuous, exposed: each breeze made my wig feel as though it was flapping away from my head like a bird and my skirt as if it had blown open like an umbrella. Was this how girls felt when they stepped out in to the windy English night, or was I just a fucking nutter?

My girlfriend, I think, did not know whether to laugh or cry as she told me, over and over, to settle down. And then, horror of horrors, a figure was spotted in the distance walking towards us. As if fucking cars driving past had not been badefuckingnough, here was some cheeky swine walking as bold as brass on our pavement, and, what's more, in out direction.

If I had planned my reaction, I would now give myself a comedy award. Alas, it was pure instinct, drawn from a well of base cowardice. Immediately I turned around, and fell over. I then got up with the intention of walking back towards home. Fortunately my girlfriend hooked me back towards her with her mind and demanded that we walk on.

As the figure approached, it would be fair to say that I was shitting bricks, even though the person in question was an eldery man with a stick, and was clearly coming home from the Working Men's Club that lay in ruins at the bottom of the road. His clogs, whippet and the chips falling from his shoulder made a right racket, but I tried not to let the noise scare me.

Anyway, he looked straight at us, the brassnecked bleeder, as old people do, usually whilst smiling, and when we at last prepared to cross paths, he doffed his cap and said, "Goodnight, ladies". "Goodnight," trilled my girlfriend. "Ralph!" said I, vomiting over a hedge on to a tortoise.

We reached the cemetery, which loomed over the lives of the neighbourhood like a giant bat, decided to make a swif exit, fearing a goth attack, and returned home, without incident. There were no other trespassers on our pavement.

So yes, that was a pathetic first attempt at 'walking out', but in my defence, the following weekend we went to Conisbrough Castle - a decision which proved our madness, especially as it was a Bank Holiday and the beautiful castle, which inspired Sir Walter Scott to write "Ivanhoe", was hosting a 'medievel pageant'. It all went off without a hitch, however. The next weekend we visited the Meadowhall shopping centre where I tried on a dress in Principles (there were some horrible feet on display beneath the changing room curtains) and then did a full grocery shop in Sainsbury's. Piece of piss.

It's been all glamour since, starting with the Les Femmes evenings in Sheffield's Queers & Brothels Quarter (they were so crap, however, that I soon gave them up for the Planet nightclub) and including a mindboggling television appearance. Most of the time I flounce around in ball gowns while drinking flagons of Old Gut Rot ale and snaffling trays of Ferrero Rocher at ambassador's receptions around the world. I remember one do in Old Scrotum, Barnsley, very fondly.

So, do you remember YOUR first time?



From Dress Sense Issue 4, Summer 2001

Camera Shy.

I can remember precisely the moment in question. W C Grace had just strolled out of the pavilion to bat, my grandmother (soon to be deceased) had gone into labour and Margaret Thatcher was butt fucking a steelworker with a strap-on during Prime Minister's Question Time. She did the same thing, later that evening, on Robin Day's "Question Time".

I walked out of Klick on Bridgegate, clutching the little wallet which would contain all that I had ever hoped to see: me as a girl. I mused for a second, thinking that Me As A Girl would be a good song title for The Fall, and then tore into the wad of photies like Charlie ripping open the candy bar that might gain him entry to the Chocolate Factory.

I was sitting on a bench in the middle of town, looking around me, as if spies were hiding in bins and behind pigeons, thinking, "I really should wait until I get home to looks at these, but...." But what? Well, any TV who has led a frustrated life for any amount of time will tell you, when presented with the chance to see oneself, in female mode, they will grasp the opportunity even if they're in the middle of a war zone.

So, I drew the first photograph from the wallet, gently, as if my fingers were tweezers, and slowly, I was revealed. The butterfly was spreading its wings....

And I was horrified. Within a minute I had ripped up 23 of the 24 prints and thrown them in one of the bins that a spy might have been hiding in. I looked shite. Like Herman Munster in a frock. I was posing with all the grace of a scarecrow and I had more double chins than Fred Elliot. In short, I looked like my worst idea of a transvestite.

Apart from one picture, that is, in which I thought I caught myself very well, and which I slipped into the inside pocket of my jacket as if it were, well... a candy bar with a golden wrapper.

Let's face it, for the average roll of film, assuming 24 exp, you only get back about five good ones, even when you're an experienced TV. So when it's your first time, one decent snap is a good result, really.

The problem is that one's first pictures of oneself are always a shock, and amateur photographers do not possess the skills or the filter lenses to soften the blow. And the trouble is, we get carried away with ourselves, don't we? Quite understandably, I might add.

Taking your first film to the local Klick or Max Spielmann or whatever is exciting because, at long last, you know you are going to be able to see what you look like. And, let's be honest, because you have fantasies about beautiful girls in the labs seeing your snaps and fainting away in awe at the images of enigmatic beauty before them.

"Who is this strange, enticing creature?" purrs Nicole, a student from France who is working in the Rotherham Klick during the summer vacation, "I would like to have sex with this wonder of nature, even though I cannot work out its gender."

So it's always going to be an anticlimax when you take out the snaps and you see yourself caught in the glare of a flash bulb, outwitted by the self timer, wearing an ace dress but smiling like a retard and stooping like a shit shoveller.

But, ay, there's the rub. We often react too harshly to our photos, fresh out of the lab like cooked meat out of a vacuum pack. It has been said that if you write something, you should put your draft in a drawer for a couple of months, during which time it will either rot or ripen.

Similarly, try not to be too dismissive of your pictures when you first see them. Put them all in a drawer, and do the sorting when you have given them some time.

Of all the pictures which have been taken of me, either by myself or other people, I think the majority have been shite. But it has always been worth developing a film because the good ones really have been good. That's ace, int it? That's punk. Fuck being average consistently: let's be fantastic every now and then.

Besides, the bad ones let you know where you have been going wrong. They will ensure you neve stand like THAT again, that you will never try and smile lile Smiley Smiley Carol Smilie again, that you will never wear THAT colour again....

The main point being, hey, we're all human, aren't we? We make mistakes. And we haven't all got the money to get our photies taken at professional studios every week, and anyway, who would want to? Is it really the zenith of TV ambition to have one's picture taken as an air hostess, a 'tart', or Cher? Are we really all Matthew Kelly's children, dreaming of being a crap celebrity as we sit at the work bench making chug nuts?

Listen, why would anybody, male or female, want to be Susanna Hoffs for the night? Fucking get a grip and be yourself. It will at least be original, and in most cases, better than the crap you're despearte to imitate anyway.

Stay beautiful.