My biggest regret: Why did I listen to all those oppressive, terrible fashion rules?

At 32 years old, while getting dressed one very normal morning and already in my comfiest black trousers, I noticed my favourite navy sweater on the bed and I shuddered. I realised, in that moment, that it was not in fact a scientific truth that these colours – navy and black – could not be worn together as I had somehow believed since I read it in a magazine, age 18. Next to the article, there had been photographs of celebrities wearing these colours together in public, giant red crosses slashed across their grotesque choice of outfit to highlight the disgusting faux-pas.

Never, the article said, never wear navy with black. The message was written with such confidence, as if this rule was akin to “never put your fingers in a plug socket” or “never masturbate after chopping chillies”.

For the first time in my life, I put on the navy sweater with the black trousers and the sky remained sun-filled; vultures did not swoop to peck out my heart; God did not punish me for the sin of awkward colour coordination; no wolf cubs howled as I passed; no children, petrified by my choice of outerwear, sobbed behind their mothers’ legs. I wondered what other opinions, spoken as if ancient proverbs, I had been following for the last three decades of my life. Do not wear horizontal stripes if you are apple-shaped? Always compare your body with a piece of fruit? Always moisturise your knees to avoid knee-sag? Always put your tongue to the roof of your mouth to avoid a double chin in photographs? Always love him less than he loves you? (Sorry Grandma, I have never managed that one.)

I thought of all the advice I had swallowed for years, unquestioned. All the precious time I had spent worrying, letting these ridiculous proclamations take up brain space. I had learned so many “rules”, largely from over-confident “beauty magazine” articles and their advertising sponsors. There were so many things I had not enjoyed as much as I should have: years spent thinking about whether my outfit matched while I was out dancing, or whether my body was the right fruit shape while having sex, or if my hair was silky enough for anyone to really love me. Such a terrible, terrible waste of my time and mind.

A week after the navy and black rebellion, I gazed through a shop window at a summer dress patterned with peaches. Peaches are my favourite and I treat myself to one new dress each summer. My boyfriend offered to buy it for my birthday and I turned to him, as if a perfectly programmed robot, and said thank you, but my legs are too short for maxidresses – and then I suddenly burst into tears.

The realisation you have been following pointless, terrible rules is overwhelming when it hits. I have put my tongue to the top of my mouth in every family photograph ever taken. My biggest regret is not questioning advice I have been given, especially when it comes from those with the loudest of voices. I was recently sent an article, thanks to my algorithm I suppose, on what dresses to wear at age 30. No, I thought. No more. I am done with all this.