Last Updated:
12:01am GMT 05/03/2008
Flaubert's flamboyant heroine was hooked on spending and oblivious to debt. If that rings alarm bells, it's time to recession-proof your wardrobe and make-do and mend, says Hannah Betts
As recession gives every appearance of being the latest retro trend, a new female role model has emerged - and it isn't Kate or Kylie or any of the glossy sorority to whom we allegedly aspire. No, it is flighty, credit-crazed Madame Bovary, the original sex and shopping poster girl.
Even those who have never relished Flaubert's prose will be familiar with the novel's narrative: the fantasist doctor's wife who endeavours to spend and swoon her way out of the tedium of bourgeois provincial life.
Where Emma Bovary pored over 19th-century fashion manuals, so we enjoy a weekly Grazia fix. Where Emma had the ball at the Château La Vaubyessard to slaver over, and rakish landowner Rodolphe Boulanger, so we have WAG nuptials and David "Birkin bestower" Beckham.
While Emma piled up luxury loot care of moneylender Lheureux, so we have any number of institutions clamouring to subsidise our habit. It seems that there are many of us who might, with Flaubert, declare: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi". Twenty-first century Bovarys are legion.
Louise Brittain, the head of personal insolvencies at the accountants Baker Tilly, argues that countless women are suffering from "Madame Bovary syndrome".
"Modern-day Madame Bovarys are used to looking good and going out, and if they can't afford to pay for it now, they won't worry because credit has been so normalised and easy to get," she says. "As well as this, the bar has been raised on what women expect to spend on socialising and their appearance, and this leaves many women in their twenties and thirties not thinking twice about overspending."
A survey by Co-operative Insurance suggests that the average 30-year-old woman blows £253 a month on grooming, be it scent, slap or gym memberships. The Advertising Standards Authority recently condemned a mailing from Shop Direct Financial Services that played on the Bovary-esque neurosis that "Mr Right could be long gone" should its punters trouble to save for that new outfit.
Meanwhile, studies over the last two years have revealed that women shoulder significantly more debt than men, and tend to amass it in secret - with implications for suicide statistics. And with banks finally cutting back on credit card largesse, this raises the terrifying prospect of women following Flaubert's heroine into self-destruction rather than learning to make-do and mend. Sound familiar?
How did we get to such a n exorbitantly prettified pass? Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw must hold up a YSL-cuffed hand to her role in our downfall. Everything else may have conspired to let Carrie down - men, work, even those friends - but she could always fall back on her clothes. Bradshaw may have pleaded poverty, but she did so in $600 heels.
With Carrie, Miranda and the gang came the notion of shopping as entitlement: "I shop, therefore I am", or, as the L'Orèal girls say, "Because I'm worth it". With it also came the perverse situation of adult women - who were finally enjoying the careers that their mothers and grandmothers wished they could have - opting to treat their wages as "pin money", the funding for a stream of baubles, Burberry and beads. Thus, although we have the example of Coleen McLoughlin to prove that an "It" bag doth not an "It" girl make, we still feel this bulimic compulsion to gorge. Bad day? - new bag! Insipid husband? - fascinating frock! Meaningless existence? At least it comes exquisitely accessorised.
In fact, for a more compelling analogy to elucidate our collective consumer craving, we must look not to Madame Bovary but to Edith Wharton's Lily Bart, protagonist of The House of Mirth.
Where Emma boasts a parvenu, footballer's-wife-style hedonism, Lily is more PLU (People Like Us), spending to fit in socially, under the illusion that she is exercising connoisseurship and because she feels it is her due. Where Emma is inspired by a delusional, socially aspirant zeal, so Lily is self-knowing, spending as a form of currency within the class into which she was born. Emma, like a good WAG, is spending her spouse's capital, but Lily is the more tragic because - like us - she is squandering her own.
Emma wants things. Lily goes further and knows herself to be a thing: "superfine human merchandise". We would do well to avoid her fate.
HOW TO LOOK TOP DOLLAR WHEN ON YOUR UPPERS
• Swot up on catwalk reports to determine your concession to each season's style. Right now, this might mean feathers, florals or stripes.
• Clever accessorising allows an outfit to transcend its humble origins: sunglasses (Dorothy Perkins, £10; 0845 121 4515), bags, shoes, the odd, well-placed Hermès scarf (2008's India-themed designs, above, are destined to become classic, £192).
• Establish which names and pieces are worth investing in while you can still afford to. A McQueen pencil skirt (£240,
Net-A-Porter.com) is likely to yield more wear than a Moschino rah-rah (£290).
• Identify where the high-street giants excel. Viz: Dorothy Perkins for cruise wear; River Island for heels (£44.99; 020 8991 4759); Topshop for jackets and paste; Zara for Prada and Chanel "tributes".
• Love your high-street clothes with the same abandon that the wealthy lavish upon their couture. Only buy when you are besotted; cherish favourite pieces (it is a myth that such purchases cannot endure).
• Bespoke creations need not be extortionate. A cocktail hat made to your specifications will obviate the need for a new evening dress. While a bespoke Mulberry Bayswater is the cunning girl's Birkin (from £800; 020 7491 3900).
• Halve the price of that Chanel jacket: consider joint-custody arrangements with a same-sized friend.
• Cherish the clothes you already own: update them with new buttons and trims. And learn to sew.
(
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/m...fbovary105.xml)
Beware Madame Bovary syndrome
ban on everything, need to do some major downsizing. 
