Victim on the run from style police

I had a final glance in the mirror as I headed out the front door, braced for admiring glances.

With a chequered flat cap on backwards and a leather jacket with an eagle on the back, I knew I was pushing the fashion boundaries, but I hadn’t expected the outfit to still get mentioned years later amid fits of giggles.

“Do you remember when he came out in that spread eagle jacket?” my friends still ask each other with nauseating fondness, “What a geek!”

Then there were those white jeans I borrowed off my brother. They were too tight but surely no one would notice. They did. And when they’re laughing about the jacket I know my friends are only moments away from recalling the time I wore “my mum’s white jeans”.

Being a fashion victim, I am constantly on the run from the fashion police. I’m a slave to the style and pride myself on anticipating the latest trends.

Stripy things, things with buttons on, clogs, I was there from the start, with all three but I must admit even I didn’t predicted that trend where things were supposed to match. Overnight, my entire wardrobe was obsolete.

If you are going to be fashionable then individuality isn’t really achievable. You need to wear what everyone else is wearing and make sure it’s the young and chic and not the recently retired. Like a fashion-conscious sheep, you’ve got to graze while modelling the latest craze. In this dress you’re in, in that dress you’re popping out. Your trousers are up, my pants are down.

Celebrities tend the lead the way these days. Beckham’s hair, Colleen’s bags, Kate’s shoes and Amy’s tattoos. Mixed together, that’s some combination.

As a general rule, fashions keep coming round again, much like the vegetable Chinese dish on the Lazy Susan, but my personal fashion favourite may have gone for ever.

Everyone had a shell suit in the early Nineties, literally everyone. Whole families had them and swished in unison. Elderly couple’s swished hand in hand in their matching purple suits with luminous green flashes. You don’t get tracksuits like that anymore which is why it’s lucky I’ve kept all mine.

Being at the forefront of fashion can be a risky business and my motto is if you feel good, you’re probably looking good. Just don’t be offended when people say, “What have you come as?”




Next week . . . the Art of Having Faith