I let my fashion blogger friend give me a wardrobe makeover

As easy as £123


I’m not exactly what you’d call fashionable. In fact, I’m barely what you’d call presentable. I am of the stock of men who consider cutting their own hair to be cost effective and a black T-shirt to be smart casual – so long as it doesn’t have too many stains.

So, it hardly came as a surprise when my ultra-chic, high-flying fashion blogger friend Albertine demanded to drag me into town and dress me up like some sort of pale, weak-jawed Ken doll, only shorter.

The first hurdle was jeans. I have some lovely Armani ones my aunt bought me for Christmas a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, they have a massive hole in the crotch, so I’ve been wearing comfortable, baggy numbers for a month or two.

The repulsion Albertine held for these is usually reserved for child murderers and human trafficking, so clearly they had to go. It took a little while to work out what size I was – since the last time I went shopping was Sixth Form, and sadly, most of those clothes still fit, as it turns out.

But I eventually crammed into a pair of Topman’s spray-on skinny jeans, a concept which had me worried for the breathability of Leftie and Rightie.

As it turned out, results were positive, and we had our first buy of the day.

Our foray into the reasonably-priced H&M proved equally fruitful as I needed a nice pair of shoes to cover up that questionable hole in my sock you can see from the picture above. 

My old shoes were ones I was quite fond of, as my girlfriend had forced me into buying them so I’d stop wearing trainers to Arena, but these new ones went well with the freshly bought jeans, and so we continued to work from the ground up.

We also picked up a nice, light blue V-neck which my housemate immediately complained he had. However, it clearly suits me better.

By this point, I had a complete set of clothes, but Albertine’s relentless dedication to me not wearing one shirt every day for the rest of my life meant we weren’t quite done. We made a trip to my personal favourite clothing store- River Island.

Here we found many, many clothes that didn’t suit me even slightly. But I came out to show Albertine one of the shirts I was trying on and a guy mistook me for an employee and started handing me clothes, so I must have been fairly convincing.

Despite my initial misgivings that Albertine was going to turn me into a hipster – and despite a couple of attempts to do so with wavy shirts and some interesting colour coordination, I actually came away with some compliments from friends and some clothing envy from my more attractive mates, so all in all I’d call it a success.

Apart from the fact it cost me £123 to buy what was essentially one or two outfits.

This. This is what could go wrong.

Albertine: I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Rob’s wardrobe, and when he turned up in the above outfit a little part of me died inside. I knew I had a difficult task ahead of me, but after a quick colour matching session, we were away. Luckily, Rob understands that I’m a very controlling person, so took a back-seat when it came to choosing clothing and watched the magic happen.

Since our shopping trip, lots of people have commented on how good Rob’s looking and a few people have even asked me to help them with their boyfriend’s dodgy wardrobes.

I think I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.