Noelle McCarthy: Home style

Picture / Brett Phipps

What to wear in this funny, in-between weather? The first day of summer was yesterday, but the wind and rain didn't get the memo. For the first time in my adult life, I'm wearing socks and sandals, deploying geography-teacher chic against the thin, persistent wind that bites my ankles.

It doesn't help that I'm living out of a suitcase and most of my wardrobe's still in storage. Three dresses, I'm reduced to. One old (black, silk, versatile, beloved), two new. I bought the new ones two days after I got back to Auckland, an immediate, necessary indulgence. I bought them so I would feel like I was home again.

I did not grow up in New Zealand but this is where I learned how to dress myself properly. Auckland is where I got the first pair of good shoes I've ever owned, the first expensive handbag. It's also where I got stung to the tune of $700 for a fake Marc Jacobs 'Stam' bag on Trade Me, but hey, you can't win 'em all.

I prefer to remember the highlights. A green Kate Sylvester dress with a fringed neckline I wore when my hair was briefly, disastrously platinum. A red Miss Crabb kimono. A pink Zambesi cocktail dress with a belled skirt. A pair of wide-leg pleated pants I got for a dollar at a garage sale in Piha. My clothes. My city. Every time I leave Auckland, I have to bring some of it with me. Made in New Zealand. That applies to me as much as my wardrobe. If anyone ever asks about something I'm wearing, I show the label off proudly.

In other countries, I can be a hesitant shopper. I was in France for five months and I bought one dress in total. I wasn't being careful on purpose, rather I didn't quite trust my own judgment. I was intimidated by those French girls, with their long dark hair, their neat Comptoir Des Cotonniers jackets, their tasteful silver bracelets. I would never want to dress like that, but being so far outside the fashion mainstream was enough to faze me.

In France they take "les fautes de gout" - style mistakes - seriously. Here in New Zealand, where getting dressed is a high-enjoyment, low-risk enterprise, there's a playfulness available to women that the French could do with. In any case, it's what I know and I love it. Even when the weathers funny, I'm a lot more confident getting dressed in Auckland. I love having a roster of tried-and-tested good-score op shops, I love knowing when the new season drop-offs are coming. It makes me smile, now that I'm home, seeing French girls wandering along Ponsonby Rd or looking at a map on Queen St. I can pick them as tourists in an instant, in their immaculate jeans and Petit Bateau T-shirts.

- VIVA