Ski Slopes; A Middle Class Guide For Girls

Skiing isn't just for the elite anymore... and with all this snow about, middle-class skiers are itching to get on the slopes. For some it's an opportunity to show off their style as much as their freestyle. We asked our resident winter-sports expert, to talk us though some of the people you should look out for.

 

Heidi High Street

Will she actually like skiing? It’s middle of the road Heidi High Street’s first time on the slopes and she’s not so sure. Will she get a headache / vertigo/ a nosebleed up there? Do they have Starbucks, Monsoon and Jigsaw in the Alps? She certainly isn’t prepared to take a risk and invest in any expensive kit, so, some cheap and cheerful improvising using wintry-ish stuff from her existing, urban wardrobe will have to do  – a puffa from Uniqlo, a fleece from Gap, snowboardy ski pants from TK Maxx , gloves from H&M. Result? She feels poor and unfashionable next to the Siberian Ruskis and Dollygarchs. Slow, ungainly and silly watching all the superfast Shouty Charlottes and Mo-Girls from the blue runs and nursery slopes. And, worst of all, really bloody cold. Heidi High Street will be back in St Lucia next winter.  

 

The Siberian Ruski

The hatchet faced, billionaire dollygarch loves skiing because, “well, ljubimaja, everything - gold, platinum, diamonds, Prada, D&G, champagne, my Porsche Cayenne - goes with white, doesn’t it?” Our unsmiling Siberian Ruski doesn’t do boring stuff like practicality, flexibility and insulation, aspiring to look like an expensive Alpine hooker and favouring the Darth Vader-in-the-Dolomites Chanel outfits (in leather!) as worn by that wonderful attention-seeking gonk Victoria Beckham. (That’s including Chanel Skis costing a barmy £1,325 - four times the price of pro skis for ten times the naffness.)

 

 

Like her winter fashion icons Paris Hilton and Ivanka Trump our white trash, turbo Ruski skis only the pistes immediately adjacent to the upmarket resort centre (Courchevel and St Moritz, mostly) worried about the lack of sushi bars, photographers and plastic surgeons if she ventures above the tree line. A coldly grotesque creature (think sex-changed Sigue Sigue Sputnik singer who has married into serious money or the offspring of Rosa Klebb and a Bratz doll) she is not the natural winter sports type. Her hair extensions freeze to the inside her fur hat, her great big, non sports-specific Dior sunglasses remain welded to her face (she resembles a Touche Eclat’d panda if she takes them off) and the temperature freezes up the Botox in her forehead. Which, at least, negates the need for a crash helmet

 

Shouty Chalet Girl Charlotte

Girls like sturdy, Sloaney Charl colonise the rowdier Alpine resorts (Val D’Isere, Meribel, Zermatt etc) with their braying, boozing, boy chasing and bad clothes. They aren’t trying to be fashionable, pursuing instead a desired effect of blue-blooded, “born-to-it” insouciance.

  

Mismatched clobber in primary colours from any of the Fulham Road-based ski outfits (White Stuff, Fat Face etc) is appropriated from the chalet company’s lost property box, pilfered off boyfriends or blagged from visiting gear reps and teamed with the odd, intentionally contrapuntal accessory – a Kensington school sweatshirt, say, a mudjahadeen scarf or a tweed cap. Her sartorial ski icon is the equally sturdy and no nonsense Kate Middleton, but after a few Vodka Red Bulls Charlotte can start to get all Boujis on the black runs, reverting to Princess Beatrice territory with the perennially unfunny “Chelsea Yeti” look of silly hat (“hilarious” false dreadlocks protruding from a wooly Rasta Hat anyone?) and a daft, Wookie-inspired fleece. Deep down she thinks boys who ski in shorts or dinner jackets are a rairly bloody good laugh, actually.  Shouty Chalet Girl Charlotte’s natural winter habitat is any branch of Dick’s Tea Bar. Drinking the boys under the table, probably.  

 

High Fashionista

Her desire is be even cooler than the ice cubes in that Yakutsk temperature cocktail you’ve just ordered from the outdoor ice bar.  That means transferring her brutally snooty, cruelly discriminating fashionista ways from Shoreditch studio pad to vertiginous Chamonix chalet. But while her “on trend” style makes her look rather groovy, she is also regarded by the sneering, bonafide ski fraternity as the archetypal “all the gear, no idea” sort. That is to say, there might be Vexed Generation, Stella McCartney for Adidas, bits of Moncler for Balenciaga and/or Wanatabe and this season's "must-have" Ugg ear-muffs in her Prada kit bag, but she can’t ski for toffee. Hangs out at places like The Clubhouse in Chamonix and the Coco Club in Verbier. Or anywhere she can get five bars of signal strength on her iPhone.   

 

Mo-Girl

Mo-girls are happiest in amongst the moguls. Skiing to aggressive Winter Olympiad standards from 9am until 4.30pm, thighs pumping like pistons. 

Mo-girl is more haute route than haute couture and adheres to the strict, three garment thermal/fleece/windproof system as practiced by such adventurous, pro labels as Peak Performance, Schoffel, JCC for Rossignol and, if she’s feeling extra flush, Arc’teryx or Patagonia (so expensive, it’s nicknamed “Patagucci”). Her skis are twin tipped, 4X4 “fat boys” by Armada that regularly take her off-piste, so, accordingly, she’s avalanche trained, carries a collapsible snow shovel in her rucksack, knows how to use a GPS and actually reads the technical jargon on her jacket label. Find her in hardcore Les Gets or Chamonix. She’s in bed by ten, up next day at 8am. Après ski is for wimps. You mo-girl!

"Aggers, for goodness sake stop it!": a Naughtie moment from back in 1991

 For us, James' Naughtie's c-word slip on the Today programme, and his "coughing" afterwards, brought back fond memories of another on-air, middle-class giggling fit from many years ago - and seemed a good excuse to revisit it. Never gets old, somehow. Spellman

Secret middle-class perils; the weird restaurant bully

The restaurant I work at has sublime views of the ocean, plentiful fresh fish and customers who usually leave happy. Unfortunately, there is a small number of said customers who are hell bent on getting their money’s worth out of us waiting staff. After seven years, these types are easy to spot, and usually have a glint in their eye, ready to really take advantage of their position, and mine.

 

This is a customer only satisfied through making me sweat. It’s an undiscussed aspect of the service culture; the horrid little man who for some reason gets a power-kick out of paying for your services and knowing that he can make you do what he asks.

 

Horrid Little Man is usually small, always in loafers and always accompanied by his adoring wife who always drinks campari and soda (yes, they’re usually old). He thinks that the waiting staff are playthings that come with the package of eating-out; slaves whose energy he can max out to his hearts content within the two hours he’s on our premises.

 

The perpetual glint in his eye suggests his relentless complaints have no substance whatsoever, but he’s compelled to create them. “Never mind, look how much he’s spent so far” my boss always says. Great; I don’t own the restaurant and I don’t care. 

 

When the difficult biddies bring along another biddie couple - it gets even more painful. Four of them walked in the other week. Horrid Little Man – the ringleader - set a precedent and from then on I was doomed, as competitive complaining ensued. The wives’ chairs had to be changed twice, I walked a small marathon back and forth to the bar, they accidently-on-purpose forgot what they’d ordered, and I somehow had to create a cappuccino which exactly matched the description “piping hot but not too hot”. Unaware I am to be shared with other diners, I was even asked to pop to the bar next door to get some cigarettes from the machine but I put my foot down. They were pissed by then. For the foursomes personal entertainment I was later expected to recite my life story, answering dozens of silly questions.

 

Racking up a £200 bill at our restaurant does not warrant slave driving behaviour, nor does it give you the right to treat us waitresses like your maid, your PA or just something that’s crawled out from under a rock. Money might be power in some walks of life but we’re just paid to serve food. 

PADDED FOR IT! ALL HAIL THE ICE-COLD WEATHER FELLA!

These days, something strange happens to the dress sense of a certain kind of British man once the temperature drops below 5°C; as if driven into a freezing fever by the chill, he suddenly begins a sort of Winter theme-dressing.  Never a hat-wearer, he will suddenly sport brightly-coloured, woolen Aztec earflap hats; not much of skier, he will don Polyamide cargo pants and the sort of obscure-American-brand hiking boots. Padded gauntlets, fleece jackets, gilets, and even snood-like garments also feature, as do bulky, fancily-knotted scarves and those fleece headbands, as he struggles into work or bunks off to go sledging in the park.

It could be that this chap – we call him ice-cold weather fella - has a thing about Bear Grylls, and it could be that he loves the armour-like feeling of all that bulky outerwear. However, I like to think he reveals a truth about the British male, namely that in his gilet-ed heart, he really prefers cold weather to warm. It requires much better equipment, you see, and you don’t have to worry about fashion or aesthetics because it’s all about utility. They are rather fetching, to be honest; ice cold weather fella, with his stubble and ruddy complexion, often looks happier than  he does in cargo pants and Birkenstocks in the summer months. Let it snow, and let the fella wear his fleece with pride! 

THE FRIDAY QUESTION: WHAT WILL THE MIDDLE CLASSES GIVE EACH OTHER THIS CHRISTMAS?

It’s that time of year again; the time of year when that cliché “it’s that time of year again” rears its ugly head. The time of year when we know we should be making a list, checking it twice, scouring the Presents for Men catalogue and wondering whether one’s sister really does mean it when she says that all she really, really wants for Christmas is ‘a spot of babysitting’ in the new year.

Most people will be leaving their Christmas shopping until the last minute, striding onto the high street a few days before the big day and laying themselves bare to this year’s heavily marketed Christmas products. In past years, these have included digital photo frames, the latest Jamie/Nigella/Nigel/Gordon publication, the latest Box Set of the latest series, and the latest generation of video game console.

essential BroraThe middle classes (especially the upper middle class) are perhaps more likely to give each theatre tickets over tickets to a West End show, or something home-made, like chutneys and jams rather than shop-bought treats, but  this is not to say that the upper middle classes don’t have their stock suppliers when it comes to Christmas presents. These include cashmere purveyor Brora, a raft of family-run sites like Pedlar’s, Cox and Cox and Plumo that sell products featuring the dreaded and exhausted KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON slogan, and of course Presents for Men (“terribly useful products like wellie bags for the car” even though no upperclass shopper would touch the section they call “Upmarket Gifts”).

really interestingNor that the middle are classes immune to the marketing of products targeted at them, considered and careful consumers that they are. So what will the middle classes put under their non-drop Nordmann Fir this year? Will it be The History of the World in 100 Objects (“have you been listening to it on Radio 4? So interesting”) or the second Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty (“you can now buy zaatar in Waitrose you know”), or the box set of Downton Abbey? Tell us what your true middle class love will probably give to you this year.