Mammary mia! Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine return with a

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Sep 8, 2002 | by Words Vicky Allan

Bosom Buddies

IT'S all gone tits up. First thing on a Friday and the one with "no tits" breezes through the door and tells me that the one with "big tits" isn't coming. It's like Morecambe without the Wise, Saunders without the French, Kermit without Miss Piggy; no it shouldn't happen, not Trinny without Susannah. "Did no one tell you?" says Trinny. "Someone should have told you. She's gone to the country for the weekend."

It's a crushing blow. Not just because the cup, or rather cups, are suddenly half empty, but because Trinny is 38 years old, 5ft 9ins, skinny, flat-stomached, flat-chested, and despite her attempts to look like a dejected dog in their latest book, What Not To Wear, which ties in neatly with their new television series of the same name, appears to be able to carry off wearing any old moth-eaten sack with style. Going shopping with "just" Trinny is going to be one of those first-former-meets-headgirl experiences where I trail round after her supposedly large, but to me very bony, ectomorphic behind, pursued by an unshakeable green cloud of envy. As Susannah herself confesses (when I do eventually get to speak to her, but more of that later), "Women aspire to being Trinny, but they relate to being me."

I know what she means. I am Susannah. Opening What Not to Wear, I know all too intimately her "big tits", "flabby tummy" and "big arms", those underarms, that, in her own words, "hang as dramatically as the Gardens of Babylon". I'm there with her in every picture: in the high-neck, sleeveless tops that make her "tits look like balloons semi-filled with water", the puff, elasticated sleeves, which create "two very fat sausages", the skin-clinging top whose "front view of rippling flab, dribbling down one's side is enough to make Samson want to remain blind". The double-act may have collapsed, but I'm on hand, all 38-28-whatever-I-am (I've never measured), to stand-in.

Trinny is apologetic. She orders a fruit salad and packet of fags and a decaf latte. "It's my fault," she keeps saying. Not that I'd normally comment on this, but she's wearing the full clothing hierarchy: Prada coat, a dress from Portobello market, trousers from Jigsaw and trainers from LA. And, by the way, we are, she has decided, going to TopShop - this is because I've been double-booked with a friend from the States called Amanda, who she's offered to teach about her favourite topic, the British High Street. My faith in Trinny and Susannah is collapsing. I'm starting to wonder if the whole "gone to the country" story is a bit suspect. They both simply forgot. Susannah is probably, at this moment, slobbing about at home in fluted-sleeve, v-necked pyjamas, champagne glass in hand.

Matters get worse at we descend the TopShop escalator. Not only is Trinny's friend Amanda not Susannah, but she's a size six, about half the width of me and twice as tall. Two washboard stomachs, two pancake chests, two Trinnies, and no, comforting, uddery, motherly, Susannah-y flesh.

"Go on then," I say. "Sock it to me. Where am I going wrong?"

"Okay, you've got quite big tits," Trinny says, sizing up my grey lacy polo-neck and trousers. "But you cover them. Your tits are really too big to wear too many roundnecks. You're hourglass, you've got a flat bum, you've got a waist and you've got tits. You're quite like Susannah in proportions."

I knew it. Put me in a box-jacket, and I too would look like a Nazi berfrau (see page 18, What Not to Wear). "The trousers are fine, a bit tired. You can wear side-pockets because you haven't got saddlebags." She leans forward and hoiks up my trousers, like she's assessing some filly at a horse fair. "Quite good legs," she murmurs.

This is typical Trinny. "Ruthless and honest," she says. "I don't think our show's actually rude." Others might disagree. "I'd rather eat my own hair than shop with these two again," said Jeremy Clarkson, who was lured onto their show after they picked him out as one of the "world's worst-dressed men".

Meanwhile, Trinny proudly boasts that women make dramatic changes after the show - some have even separated from their partners, though it's not clear if this is because they've finally learned to be themselves or turned into narcissistic, free-spending shopaholics. You could call it fashion fascism, but the girls know the sad truth - that even the least "lookist" of us, even those who cling lovingly to tapered trousers and VPLs (T&S's "worst crimes"), long to look better.

Secretly, I like her brutality. I like it much better when she bitches than when she's tactful. Better, when she's telling me I've got a flabby belly, than when she's subtly handing me a floaty top, which I know, from What Not To Wear, means she thinks I've got the arms of an Amazon.

One of Trinny and Susannah's great tricks is that despite their poshness, they manage to make out they're just like us. A common theory is that their success boils down to the British need to be told about taste by posh people. "Oh I think that's bollocks," says Susannah. "Posh does not equal style. Really, God, that's just ridiculous. Posh equals tradition. Anyone can achieve style. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from."