Why do we long to be Nazis and tarts?

02 December 2009

As the fancy-dress party season begins again, Leah McLaren wonders why the British are never more themselves than when they’re pretending to be someone else

There is a popular urban legend about a British couple in New York who attended a black tie gala dressed as a pair of pumpkins. Turns out they had misinterpreted the host’s instruction to ‘dress fancy,’ as an invitation for fancy dress — something Americans only do once a year on Halloween. Did they burst into tears and run home? Not a chance. Being Brits, they put on brave faces, pulled their orange foam bellies up to the bar, and proceeded to get shamelessly drunk as the Manhattan glitterati swirled around them.

It might sound like a ludicrous story, but having experienced the cultural flip side, I believe it.

Shortly after arriving in London from Canada I was invited to a fancy dress party at the home of a glamorous and highly respectable west London party-planner whom I did not, at the time, know well. It was just before Christmas, the social season when costume parties are as common as hot cider and twinkly lights. The theme of the event, I was later told, was ‘I Can’t Believe You’re Wearing That’, but I got my wires crossed and assumed ‘fancy’ meant, well, nice. Or to put it in more crassly North American terms: fashionable, upmarket, classy.

I turned up at the smart Kensington flat in a silk cocktail dress and heels. In my hand was a clutch which contained my keys and lip gloss — I’d agonised for ages over whether to go with the sheer pink or sheer beige. Soon after I knocked on the door I realised I’d made a terrible mistake. The young woman who opened it had her tits out. And I don’t mean a plunging neckline. I mean her tits were literally out. If you didn’t count the targets painted on her nipples in red lipstick (and let me tell you, I didn’t), she was completely topless.

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