The Class Mother at our eldest son’s New School is kind enough to invite me to coffee to meet some of the other mothers. It’s at the Hong Kong Country Club and I grow slightly anxious about what to wear.
The Club plays a significant part in Hong Kong life. As new arrivals we were often asked, which club are you going to join? along with other essentials such as where are you from? What does your husband do? Where are you living? And which school are the children going to? Five questions and they’ve got you sussed.
My husband regards us both as distinctly unclubby people, shades of Groucho Marx here, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” So from day one we sat on the fence and decided to wait and see how and when, and indeed if, we thought we’d use a Hong Kong club before we attempted to join. Which, with the benefit of hindsight, has turned out to be a Good Thing.
Many of Hong Kong’s clubs date from colonial times and were formed to provide sporting, social and recreational facilities for their members: the Hong Kong Golf Club, the Hong Kong Football Club, the Cricket Club, the Ladies’ Recreation Club, the Hong Kong Jockey Club to name but a few. On the whole they own large (for Hong Kong) grounds which include sport’s pitches, swimming pools, tennis courts, gyms, bars and restaurants as well as air hockey, table tennis, media rooms and playgrounds for the children. Facilities are well-used at weekends and the club restaurants tend to be packed on Sundays when Hong Kong’s maids have their day off and there is no one to do the home cooking. There is also a long waiting list, a hefty joining fee and a monthly membership subscription. You get the picture.
The last time I was invited to a club it was a school social do at the Hong Kong Jockey Club. I read the dress code which instructed guests that neither jeans, sandals, nor shorts were considered appropriate and selected a neat pair of Joseph trousers and a new cashmere top believing myself to be the embodiment of smart casual dressing. I could hardly have been more wrong.
Everyone else was dressed to the nines for a three course dinner in a private member’s room. I thought we were here to gamble and yell at the horses, I muttered to my Friend, noting as I did that she was wearing the same elegant DVF dress I had helped her select for her 40th birthday party. The Chinese women all looked immaculate in their neat black outfits. One looks at them and thinks, it could be M&S, it could be Chanel. I rather suspect the latter, but their chic dressing appears to be second nature. By comparison I looked as though I was in slacks and a sweater. In fact everyone but me seemed to have got the message that early evening finery was the order of the day. When my husband arrived straight from work he was of course in a suit and looked very much the part. My humiliation was complete
This time I am determined not to be wrong footed. I play tennis on Thursday mornings, not at a club but at the public HK Tennis Centre, and after this I dash home for a shower, put on a Burberry shirtwaister dress which I consider smart but conservative, slap on some makeup (rare occurrence) and introduce my hair to a comb (rarer still). At the last minute I put on some jewellery. Just after 10.30am I am to be observed sitting outside the main entrance to the Hong Kong Country Club, a picture of elegant sophistication.
The Class Mother wanders up and greets me. She is in her tennis kit. She leads me to a table by the pool where a group of mothers are all, without exception, in either jeans or sportswear. They have all finished their coffee for it transpires I have muddled the time and am half an hour late.
What a great impression I have made; late, overdressed and clearly trying too hard.
I have yet to decide which is worse, being underdressed or overdressed. Perhaps it’s as well we’re leaving.
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4 comments:
Poor you, I just hate those situations. Sometimes you wonder if it's part of a whole conspiracy NOT being told what to wear, to see if you guess /gauage it right
Yuk. Horrid situation. In similar moments here, I just make sue I get into the conversation quickly, and that automatically plays my trump card: my cute accent. No-one can match that, and I like to think that if I look scruffy, under-dressed, under-made-up, under-coiffed, then they will all think "that must be appropriate wear in England - how strange, but how quaint, how cute" and forgive me.
At least you won't have to worry about blending in when you return to London.
WV is 'mizerano', which I'm sure must be 'I commiserate' in some language or other.
The only way to survive is to phone a few allies (and you'll find you're not so on your own as you think) and find out what they're wearing, and decide on a common dress code. Then at least there are 3 or 4 of you over or under dressed.
I've gotten a thick skin and decided if they care only about how I'm dressed they're not really worth me caring about.
I tend to err on the side of over-dressed, and have often gone to lunches or dinners with some of my husband's wealthiest clients only to find their wives / daughters in jeans. Very very designer jeans, but jeans. You can't win.
Oh dear. Although I am sure you carried it off with aplomb. Reminds me of when I turned up once for a drink in a bar with some fellow journos fully dressed in a suit and full make up - everyone else was in jeans as I hadn't got the message that the posh PR dinner had been called off.
We belonged to the Ladies Recreation Club and I spent a good deal of my childhood there. It was a lovely place, although when I went back a few years ago had been totally overshadowed by tall buildings. The Country Club in my day was very much for snobs - I went there a couple of times with friends and didn't like it. Then I remember the Shek O club opened and all the social climbers transferred their membership there. I wonder if that one still exists?
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