As Fashion Passes You By…
This is not a post about Clem Snide, I just thought the album title was highly appropriate and I love the artwork. What this post is really about is that precise moment you see the fashion train about to leave the station and instead of running to jump on before the doors close you give a wry smile, slow to a stroll and calmly watch it pull away and head off into the distance. Ah well.
Most people aren’t all that fashionable between the ages of say, ooh, about one and perhaps eighty-five anyway, but I am referring more to that point at which you suddenly realise that fashion is for the Yoof and you are no longer young enough. Most of us, especially the indie types likely to be reading this, rejected large portions of the current fashion all the way through our youth anyway, either for reasons of modesty, taste, curmudgeonly refusal to join in, indifference, or myriad other reasons. Famous one-line smart arse Oscar Wilde did, after all, brilliantly say that “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
But even as kids, not being fashionable was a choice we made based on what the cool people were wearing – it was a current choice. This 80s revivalism is actually rehashing fashions I already rejected nearly twenty years ago. So suddenly, for the first time in my life, they are reviving fashions which I didn’t even like the first time around. And that, my dear readers, is when you know that fashion has passed you by one final, irretrievable time.
Ben Folds – There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You
Billy Bragg – The Busy Girl Buys Beauty
Squirrel Nut Zippers – Flight of the Passing Fancy
And one more thing: Song, by Toad will NEVER wear skinny jeans. Ever. Unlike virtually 98% of the people who do wear them I am well aware of the fact that I am the wrong build and my arse is far too big and I would just look like a total prat. Do you wear skinny jeans? If the answer is yes, please be aware of the fact that there is an empirically undeniable 98.3% chance that they make your arse look either too big or just not there at all and your legs look like carrots. None of these are flattering. You’re welcome, just thought you should know.
Pulp – Pencil Skirt Now these are sexy.
The Clash – Just the Right Profile
Oh, but apparently skinny jeans were (are?) being replaced by high-waisted pants (because heaven knows those were flattering) and/or wide-legged pants (ditto). Kate Moss has been seen in high-waisted pants, you know.
aack! not the dreaded high-waisted pant! seriously, i won’t wear them ever again–one decade was enough.
i find myself to be at the stage where i reject certain clothes because they are, as you say, for the yoof, and then there’re all the clothes i reject because they’re grandma clothes, and god knows i ain’t there yet! :0
Bring back parachute pants now…dammit!!
I look at all the ultra-bright, Klaxons-style block colours and just shudder.
And, ladies, why can’t women have a normal waistline for Christ’s sake? Low slung jeans made pretty much even the anorexics look fat, and really high ones make everyone look like Yoda. Please, designers, just go all the way around the arse and then bloody well stop.
Actually, the 80s revival has produced a few real horrors – from the minute it started I have been angling for the 90s revival, although without the dreadlocks and with more baths. And no Ned’s Atomic Dustbin either.
You know what I hate? Crocs. I mean, really. Unless you’re gardening, just don’t do it.
Yes, they are definitely something that wouldn’t be fashionable if they weren’t so fashionable – i.e. never just on looks alone. Ludicrous things.
The thing that really gets me is that now there are croc shops with little dinky thingies you can buy to put in the holes…
Croc shops? I think Croc shops make me want to slam my knob in a door.
i’m extremely pleased fashion has got silly again. for far to long your young people have looked dull and safe and not too different from their folks. if your dads not shouting ‘ you’re not going out looking like that’ then you’re doing it wrong.
at my age it’s all about style. and i’m very keen on a skinny jean – although i do prefer the term cigarette pants.
x
Someone has just said ‘at my age’ to me. I am going to go and curl up in a corner and cry for my deceased youth.
I am just NOT THAT OLD people, goddammit!
Even the Yoof can see that skinny jeans are un-flattering… Especially on skinny boy-men who have the bodies of 10-year-old girls. (Whoever decided manorexia was sexy should be force-fed chocolate.) I’m all for a 90′s revival – combat trousers and bandanas anyone?
Vicky vs Ally – Toad Ladies’ Yoof stand-off – brilliant, skinny jeans or not!