I followed her for about 2 blocks. All those years of binge watching Poirot finally bearing fruit.
She turned once or twice but I gazed into the tobacconist and then darted into a public urinal, but as she reached for her house keys I knew I needed to make my move.
‘Excuse me’ I muttered mild manneredly. She looked perplexed as if there was absolutely nothing I could have needed from her. Not this 30 something mother of 2 in a grey onesie, a Peppa pig thumb plaster and a bag full of M&S Mac’n’cheese.
‘Yes’ she huffed.
‘Um, well this is a little embarrassing but, where is your white tank from.? It’s 90’s Kate Moss meets Sienna Miller ‘Layer Cake’ and it’s perfect!’.
‘Vintage’.
I have spent 20 years looking for the perfect white tank.
It all started at a Black Eyed Peas concert where I spotted a girl grinding to ‘My Humps’ in one that could have only be sewn by the Gods. I’d had one too many Bacardi Breezers to locate her after I fell over trying to body roll to ‘my lovely lady lumps’.
The week after, I paced the local Westfield. It was the divine yet inconvenient time before a Google search could solve 97% of your yearning life questions. The leg work would need to be done manually.
I was 16, with the concentration of a canary and the budget for a paper bag of red frogs. But I persevered.
I began at the top because surely something that looked as ethereal as that would be expensive. I’d lay-by it with coins and plead my case to my Mum who had been putting up with my fashion shit since 7 years old.
But, no success.
I skeptically descended to a moderate price range but everything was either too too tapered, not tapered enough, my belly button looked like a murky lagoon, straps too thick, ridged edging, cropped, a 97% stretch rate, dry clean only, aggressively ribbed, too sheer, too square, pinched at the edges or made my nipples look like they were being forced through a strainer.
It seems there was a time before the fast fashion giants existed. Where you couldn’t pop into Zara and have 157 of the same singlet available for $7 with every rebuttal you have, they serve with a minor innovation.
Perhaps it was a nicer time, specifically for the environment, but predominately for us where the pursuit for an items was almost as exciting as the relentless search for the perfect teenage boyfriend who had the solid trifector of a lowered Toyota, minimal cheek acne and good choice in shoes.
Like most things in life, simple is usually best. We often try to overcomplicate much of everything but the pursuit for this tank for me was much more than just about curating an effortless outfit. It was about looking like others that I strived to be.
The white tank really being a metaphor for life.
Perhaps we are constantly searching for something that we think looks better on everyone else… be it on our bodies or our lives.
The crispness suggests their life is in order.
The perfectly perched breasts mean no dependants or a 99% bounce back rate.
Thin straps only a perfectly sculpted shoulders could entertain.
The spotless underarm rim indicating no need for several layers of Bondi Sands.
The acute effortlessness only reserved for those born with embedded chicness.
Maybe it’s more.
It highlights the parts of our body as women we often try to avoid. The hand awkwardly covering the protruding stomach because we’re bleeding, bloated, cramping, binge eaten an entire packet of slightly salty slight sweet popcorn because Marissa just died and Ryan is hovering over her lifeless body in a very sexy biker jacket.
We want to recognise this vulnerability of ours but we haven’t lived through enough quite yet to see it for what it is.
The white tank carries us through every journey of life. As a teenager rolling from bed with only a pool party to attend. As a 20 something where it carries you from a wholesome park picnic to a sordid nightclub romp. As a mum with a clip-able strap to whip out a boob at any urgent moment. In all seasons of weather and life it’s the epitome of easy, uncomplicated and assumably achievable.
And the reason you continually come back to it, searching for it’s latest model, the improved trim is because regardless of our age or mental state, it’s so easy to make it look different each time fitting with whoever we are that week, day, minute.
Perhaps it’s also the perfect bridge between who we are and who we want to be.
As a teenager I just wanted to mimic my friends. In my 20’s I wanted to look like I wasn’t trying as desperately hard as I actually was.
And as a Mum I lost my confidence in every way, I knew I didn’t want to dress as I did before, that girl was gone but I also wasn’t ready to be Diane Keaton in ‘Father of the Bride’. I wanted a tank that was a half way house. And this was the beginning of the journey of rebuilding my personality and style.
To me it’s less about said style and more about the value you have within yourself.
If you have a problem in life you break it down to its simplest form, stripping it bare and then rebuilding. The tank is the bottom line.
You have fought through enough style innovations throughout the years and each happy, sad, traumatic event, your clothes have reflected each and every one.
With all of these different eras and literally wearing your heart on your sleeve, it also allows us to surrender to that moment.
It’s your own little evolutionary journey guided by what we choose to cover our private parts, reflecting how we are influenced, how we’ve grown, softened, hardened by those around us and who we allow in.
And how often we can be so many different people all at once. Different personalities within you competing, hiding, shying away.
But the white tank I have sought for so many years I realised is available to me everywhere. Instead of berating myself in different ones, I am accepting of how it sits on me and the things I didn’t like about it used to be the things I didn’t like about me.
I want to celebrate all the elements of life that have made me see the tank for what it is, a covering that I can keep as bare as it comes or layer it with the personality that has shone through that week. The personality that I have relied on to get me through the hard times and the good and that I allow myself in all my acceptance to shine regardless of the consequences.
I watch my daughter now, playing.
She wears a white tank with a scattering of multicoloured hearts.
Her little baby belly peeping from the bottom, a nipple showing from the side she pulled at to scratch the remnants of a glitter fairy tattoo.
The journey for her is just beginning and the fears & insecurities I have fought to overcome are re-surfacing like a second life.
I can’t protect her from it all and I’ve come far enough to know that this fear is equal parts terrifying as it is groundbreaking.
And even when it stretches, shrinks, turns a little greyish she will have me to remind her that this reliable little companion and it’s successors may witness the worst but will always be succeeded by the very, very best.