The trouble with wearing jackets to work is that an awful lot of jackets are dry-clean only (or are labelled as dry-clean only, at least). And while I have a fairly cavalier attitude to washing instructions, good jackets (by which I mostly mean my two Jigsaw jackets) don’t come cheap (even massively reduced in the sale) and I’m loath to risk ruining them, especially as I may not be as lucky looking for replacements in the sale as I was finding the originals. And dry cleaning may remove surface dirt, but it doesn’t deal with water-based stains such as, not to put too fine a point on it, sweat. To be honest, I’m not entirely convinced about the surface dirt, as I never really seem to be able to detect any noticeable change in clothes when they come back from the cleaners apart from the fact that they’ve been hung on a wire hanger inside a plastic bag, but I’m prepared to give that the benefit of the doubt; the inability to deal with sweat, however, is undeniable (and apparently backed up by Science). And I try to walk to work, which tends to result in a healthy glow by the time I arrive in the office; the end result is that my jackets eventually reach the stage where I start to feel nervous about wearing them to work in case the underarms smell bad enough for other people to notice.
I don’t want to stop wearing jackets – I feel more professional in them and I think they suit me. And I don’t want to stop walking to work, because it’s the only form of exercise I’m ever going to get around. So I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is to have a ‘walking cardigan’ as well as walking shoes, and carry my jackets to work in my backpack along with my work shoes/boots and my packed lunch. So much for walking to work being exercise that doesn’t need preparation or special clothing!
Shawl – Galathea
Jacket – Jigsaw
Dress – East
Boots – Gabor
Still, today’s jacket seems to have coped with being folded up in my backpack for an hour, and indeed with my attempts at cleaning it by dunking the underarm regions in a basin of warm water and Soak while attempting to keep the rest of it dry. It would probably wash OK, really…
I used to get really annoyed with being a train commuter (plus walk to station) as I seemed to be lugging vast quantities of stuff with me – packed lunch, jacket, work shoes etc!
It’s years since I was last in a position to drive to work, and on the whole I prefer public transport as that gives me time to read/knit, but walking does add a whole other level of stuff to be carried!