My Life As A Perpetual Clothes-Ruiner (And The Kit You Need If You’re One Too)

There are two types of people in life. There are the clothes-preservers – those who manage to wear things carefully, take them off carefully, store them carefully and generally breeze through life with creases in all the right places and no egg down their top. They are the ones who can buy £300 Chanel sunglasses and actually call them ‘an investment’, confident they won’t sit on them or leave them on the bus before the week is out. They’re the people 15 denier tights were made for. The ones who wear white trousers on their period, then casually order meatballs at lunch.

And then, there are people like me: the clothes-ruiners.

We have the best of intentions, but the snaggiest of nails. We spill. We tear. We bust zips. We do DIY seamstress jobs with superglue and kitchen scissors, five minutes after we should have left the house. We forget to cut off the hanging hoops, but always lose the spare buttons. We look down towards the end of a formal evening and notice a stain we can trace back to a lunch two weeks ago (mm, meatballs). We follow washing instructions to the letter and still end up with a dress only a doll can wear.

Ever since I put my heel through the chiffon hem of my high school prom dress before I'd even arrived at the venue, I've known my fate is sealed. I will buy beautiful things, and I will accidentally fuck them up.

But there's hope! Here's the essential kit you need on standby if you're a clothes-ruiner too.