We looked at the clothes the people wore in the offices in which we temped. How did they do it? We wondered and studied. The trouser suits and spike heels, the shirts with crisp fronts and high collars, the handbags with tooled flaps and brass fastenings, coats of tweed that buttoned down the front. And the hair: straight and flat as paper, cut so that it swung cleanly around the cheeks. How to achieve these things when we had no iron, no fixed abode, no regular salary, nothing in our suitcases but creased clothes that weren’t right for our new life?
