You only get about 20 chances to have the best New Year’s Eve of your life and for at least five of those you were probably wearing a tutu and a nautical belt. Let me take the pressure off 2014/2015 with a quick and easy problem solving exercise which will save you from yourself while helping you track down your crush and not get hypothermia while doing it. If guides aren’t your thing fine just please remember to have dinner and if you leave a pizza in your fridge for breakfast tomorrow you will love yourself more than any semi-handsome stranger in a suit jacket ever would.
The problem: You can’t be near your phone but you need to know which party to go to next/you NEED Google maps to ensure you don’t spend the countdown on the overground or on a dark empty street in Peckham…
Being single on NYE and owning a means of contacting every boy you’ve ever made eye contact with is a recipe for disaster. Whether you full on call up your ex’s with the weird whine-smirk voice you put on to mask the fact you might cry yourself to death if somebody doesn’t cuddle you in the next 25 minutes or simply text your sexy boss “x” at midnight, your stomach will flip with cringe for the next two weeks. Why welcome in 2015 with a feeling of horror and despair? You’ve done that enough times. Be pro-active. This goes for FB chat too btw.
The solution: Just before you leave the pre-dinner of all the colours of WKD mixed together with a Haribo party mix, get everyone to drop their phones in a bag and then go around the room drawing a phone out at random. This is now your phone and I hope for your sake it doesn’t have a pink princess mirror cover on it. Whatever it’s wearing, the most important thing is that it does not contain the number of any of your ex’s (and if it does wtf whoever’s phone you have sounds like a bitch) but it will show you the quickest route from Clapton to Bow at 5am. It also means that when you’re deathly hungover the next day you have the smug pleasure of going through all the booty calls you “ignored” from the night before because you were having too much fun and not in fact trying the McRib on your own at the 24 hour Kings Cross Mcdonalds. Fun. Fun!
The problem: You want to wear something that will look good in all the polaroids people will be wasting tonight, but it’s minus two degrees and you have the flu…
Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to welcome in the new year looking better than they ever ever have in a well filtered instagram on the account of their friend who has the most followers? New Year’s Eve is the night when girls who’ve gone bra-less for the last 364 days suddenly find themselves desperately searching for nipple covers and gel inserts in John Lewis, or setting foot in Superdrug, or seriously considering not wearing knickers. Quite fun. On the other hand it’s absolutely freezing, you’re ill and in reality you’re just going to sit in someone’s kitchen for 8 hours watching Celine Dion videos. It’s a tricky one.
The solution: While draping yourself in organic marabou and shearling to stave off the cold while maintaining your appropriately 70s/80s outfit would work, it’s probably worth offering up something a bit more practical for those among us who aren’t Bay Garnett. I reckon for 2015, thermals are chic and you should wear them under everything. Thermals weirdly make your boobs look great (espesh in red), they keep your knees warm and bonus you can wear them to sleep in when you end up having to bed down on someone’s beer soaked carpet at 7am tomorrow morning. Also they squash up really tiny if you need to shove them in a handbag for that fateful “hey I’m going to dance on this table” moment”.
The problem: You fancy someone but you don’t know which party they’re going to and you don’t have a phone because step 1…
First of all congratulations on having the least severe problem of the night. You a) still somehow manage to fancy someone after living through the past year of self-loathing and horror and b) know of at least two parties that are happening that you could feasibly slip into via somebody’s lips. While I am both annoyed and jealous I realise you are up against some problems of your own. How do you track someone down when you’ve only exchanged three texts and didn’t get drunk enough at dinner to ask them where they were going?
The solution: You’ll have to professionally party-hop. This runs the risk of leaving you stranded at the chime of midnight with only a bus driver and some tourists to share your finest Cava with, but if you succeed your prize is a snog so perfect you get a stomach ache (or was that the Cava?) and have to go and sit in the bathroom for 15 mins while your head spins with ecstasy. To facilitate the hopping find a core gang of friends preferably all in the same boat, agree to split all your Ubers, and turn London upside down in search of your much deserved Lauren Conrad moment. The upside to this technique is even if you don’t find them you’ll probably find someone else who looks great in a long coat and is more than happy to taste your glitter lipgloss for fifteen minutes while everybody else shouts along to a Nightcore remix of Auld Lang Syne.
If you take one piece of advice from me before strapping on those sassy shoes (heels and thermals very Gwen Stefani) and flouncing out the door, make it this: go on a pilgrimage to a chemist right now. Buy Alka Seltzer, paracetamol, full fat coke and strepsils/cough syrup if you’re actually ill. Put a big bottle of water, a clean T-shirt, a chocolate bar and a phone charger next to your bed. Wake up on New Year’s Day 2015 and whisper “Thank fuck” as opposed to “oh fuck” or “oh my god I’m so thirsty but I can’t get up because I’m totally naked and I can’t remember who’s lying next to me”. Roll over and go back to sleep. See you next year!
Credits
Text Bertie Brandes
Photography Terry Richardson
[The Agyness Deyn Issue, May 08]