Once a woman of fashion, always a woman of fashion, right? I'm beginning to doubt that. I'm just not getting it any more. Fashion hurts, and not in a good way. Plus, the headlock it has on my brain is loosening. This is slightly worrying. Because, next stop? Pants with elastic waistbands. And I've been reading Vogue since I was 14. I can still drum up opinions on every designer working today. I own Galliano. I own Christian Lacroix. I have a basement full of vintage pieces. I have an Hermes Birkin bag (it's fake, but it's a good fake). Not that I use any of it where I live today, in deep country. But even now, I prowl the island like a mangy lioness, waiting for the new American Vogue. From store to store to store I scour, until it's finally displayed. I've never taken a ferry to pick up American Vogue a couple of days early, but it's just possible that someday I will. In fact, one of the few times I doubted whether I had the strength to live in the country was when I realized American Vogue would always arrive late. This has to be a sickness.

I know the fashion world is in mourning, but, personally, I'm pleased Tom Ford has hung up his scissors. I've bought only one thing from Gucci -- a pair of $900 black stiletto boots (half- price, but still, a lot of money for a pair of boots that hurt so much I felt like an extra in The Story of O). I've retired them to the fashion museum in my crawl space. And, last year, I spent three hours in the Gucci store on Bay Street with two Gucci-mad women friends. It felt like a year and a day, and I almost bought a $1,300 black sweater that made me look like a thousand-dollar hooker, before I slapped some sense into myself.

Once a woman of fashion, always a woman of fashion, right? I'm beginning to doubt that. I'm just not getting it any more. Fashion hurts, and not in a good way. Plus, the headlock it has on my brain is loosening. This is slightly worrying. Because, next stop? Pants with elastic waistbands. And I've been reading Vogue since I was 14. I can still drum up opinions on every designer working today. I own Galliano. I own Christian Lacroix. I have a basement full of vintage pieces. I have an Hermes Birkin bag (it's fake, but it's a good fake). Not that I use any of it where I live today, in deep country. But even now, I prowl the island like a mangy lioness, waiting for the new American Vogue. From store to store to store I scour, until it's finally displayed. I've never taken a ferry to pick up American Vogue a couple of days early, but it's just possible that someday I will. In fact, one of the few times I doubted whether I had the strength to live in the country was when I realized American Vogue would always arrive late. This has to be a sickness.

Besides, my favourite sweater is a navy-blue cashmere cardigan with holes in it, which I've owned since 1986. I don't like to put on anything else. I do try. Sort of. Well, actually, I don't. I bulk- order yoga pants from the (forgive me) Victoria's Secret catalogue. And I have a pair of extremely odd, square-toed, fur-lined, Diesel mules, with huge rubber soles, and I haven't been able to put anything else on my feet for two years.

Beyond pathetic, for a woman who used to buy sample-sized pieces from designers' showrooms four months in advance of the season. I cut up my Holt Renfrew card last month. I've been shopping at Holt's since I was 13. I even had a personal shopper there for a couple of years -- which was, how do I put this? Expensive. Cutting up my Holt's card makes me very nervous.

Because, if you don't try, you're on the path to being one of those scary ladies who wears full skirts with moon cut-outs on them, and folky jackets from places like Nicaragua when it was still communist, and kids mock you.

The solution? The uniform.

The most fashionable friend I ever had was a uniform freak. She had a distinct philosophy of dressing and closets that ran the entire length of her very large bedroom. The closet doors were mirrored top to bottom and inside hung the most extraordinary clothing. She never threw anything out. Every dress and jacket had its own bag, its own lavender and cedar sachet, its own padded satin hanger. She always, as a policy, dressed slightly ahead of the day. In other words, mornings, she dressed for a lunch party; during the day, she looked as if she were going out to an art gallery opening, at night, full-blown dress-up. But always the same thing, with almost no variation. She found the three or four pieces of the season (usually, something she already owned), pulled them out, found the right shoe or boot, then wore them to death. She always looked absolutely perfect, pulled together, on top of things. And she never wasted a thought on clothes -- they were there every morning when she woke up. She pulled them on, and that was that.

In the evening, it took her four hours to dress, and she'd emerge like Botticelli's Venus on her shell.

So I took a few moments, and channelled her. Imagined the mirrored closets, the utter simplicity and rigour of her thinking, the wrought-iron headboard of her giant canopied bed (the wrought iron forming a treble and bass clef), the full, blowsy, red-velvet drapes.

"Elegance is refusal, elegance is refusal," went my mantra.

And then I found the key. First of all, forget the fluttery, weirdly hemmed silliness and all the clashing colours, insane prints and off-the-shoulder blousons. Repeat after me: mutton dressed as lamb. Paint spatters? OK for 25-year-olds ... just. Kinderwhore dresses in blush pink that look like negligees from the '50s? Not a good idea for anyone, even teenagers. Christian Dior's drawstring track pants with billowing inserts for $3,500? Just how silly are you?

But the cropped pants are divine, fitted narrow or full. I have a few of those in the crawl space. And so are the knee-length full skirts. I have two. From 1990. Gorgeous. The shrunken jacket? If you still have a waistline, it's simply wonderful.

Which brings us to the definitive piece of the season, guaranteed to bring any woman to her knees, her gold card maxed out. That tie- dye Prada dress, khaki and army green. Hippie warrior woman, but dressed, armoured, lithe and free. In every season, there is one piece that defines precisely where women are, right now. It is fashion's great gift. Add those Prada bleed-edged cashmere sweaters and I'm weeping with desire.

There is lots of athletic clothing, too, which is basically what I wear all the time. Dior track suits in deep shiny navy with white stripes. Finally, my utter favourites: the feather-light, school- marm clothes, with a little lingerie touch here and there. No bondage, no stilettos, no constriction, anywhere in sight.

Still a woman of fashion, after all.