I have just put my holiday hat away to hibernate for the winter. Using all
the skills of a Blue Peter presenter I stored it in a box at the back of my
wardrobe making sure that there was enough air circulation to ensure it
emerges undamaged next year ready for the baking heat of a British summer.
Whilst completing this important process I found a couple of items that
have managed to avoid Mrs M's regular clothes cull. She does one of these
quite regularly, spurred on by some charity or other that has kindly
dropped a bin liner through our door.
I often wonder whether it is our need to follow fashion rather than our
support for the concerned charity that drives such action.
Here, however, I had found some clothes that had avoided the cull.
Firstly there were my old jogging bottoms circa 1988. Made of shiny
material with two long stripes running up each leg, they included the
helpful feature of a small zip near each ankle so that you could take them
off without removing your footwear.
I have worn them very occasionally during the intervening years but I have
to confess they don’t offer the same comfort they did when I was in my
twenties.
I tried them on and posed for my wife, holding in my stomach, and hoping
to look at least a little sportsman like. Mrs M seemed more amused than
impressed.
‘It would work if you had a moustache and a curly perm’ she offered.
‘I think there is still a little life in them’ I replied. At this point my
bride’s laughter subsided to be replaced with a slight look of fear at the
thought that I might actually wear them outdoors.
‘Don’t worry’ I said hoping to offer comfort ‘I will wait until they come
back in fashion’
I said this in certain knowledge that, apart from the cod piece and the
Bay City Roller tartan trousers, everything else does seem to return to the
forefront again.
Just as I have managed to afford some small framed, branded reading
glasses, it seems that the old style large specs are making a come back;
think Deirdre Barlow and Richard Whitely.
We have seen a few celebrities wearing such items recently on TV and
commented how ridiculous they look.
Most people react like this when, in truth, it is not long before the
irresistible need to conform overtakes them and they start wearing what
they once ridiculed.
The second item I found during my holiday hat hibernation ritual was a
shirt on which the collar and cuffs are a different colour to the main
body.
I tried to model this for my wife too but ended up feeling a little
depressed as I tried to fasten the buttons and failed.
‘If I had managed to fasten them’ I said pushing through my sadness ‘I
think I could have pulled it off’.
‘If you had managed to fasten them' commented Mrs M 'we would have had to
cut it off with the scissors’ Then she rolled her eyes in a way that has
never gone out of fashion.
Dedicated Follower of Fashion
Faded Jeans
For several months my wife and daughters have been expressing the view that I am in desperate need of a style makeover. The sight of me once again turning up for an event in T-shirt and denim must have been too much for them.
Anyway after an overdose of Trinny and Susannah terrorising fashion victims on TV, the Molineaux females decided to take me on a serious shopping expedition. After driving for what felt like several lunch times we arrived at the temple to mammon and found refuge in an outlet where the beverages end in a vowel and cost more than my last pair of jeans.
Suitably energized by cappuccinos and skinny lattes we set off in search of fabric designed for slimmer waistlines than mine.
I chose what appeared to be acceptable items for a man of my age and headed for the unisex changing rooms to see if any of them would make me look thinner; knowing only too well that the mirrors provided are designed to flatter.
I was stopped on my journey by daughter number one wishing to inspect my find. One by one she held each item of clothing up to the other members of our party and they all joined in the laughter.
After enjoying themselves at my expense they lead me away to another section of the store to be shown the type of trousers that I apparently ‘really liked’.
I muttered and moaned but still found myself trying them on and then coming out of the closet (in the old sense of the phrase), to do my own version of a fashion show. After telling me that I looked fantastic and that they made me look years younger they were kind enough to ask me what I thought of them.
‘Call me old fashioned’, I said ‘But I like the notion that I can FADE my own denim ‘after’ I have bought the jeans’. They looked at me as if my two score years and seven had afforded me no right to an opinion.
Not to be defeated the girls encouraged, or should that be harangued, me to try on the second pair of their selection. I emerged this time with several areas of flesh showing as the jeans in question were ripped in at least three places and both the pockets and the hems were frayed making them look like the pair that I had thrown away just two weeks earlier.
‘It is the fashion’, said my youngest ‘Everybody is wearing them’.
I tried once again to voice my objections.
‘Call me old fashioned’, I said ‘But I like the notion that I can RIP my own denim ‘after’ I have bought the jeans’.
This time my wife agreed with my complaint; pointing out to the girls that they were trying too hard to make me look younger.
We left the store without making a purchase only to enter another, seemingly identical, shop. It seemed to me that, even though I was the central figure of the day, I wasn’t really needed.
I made my escape and found a gadget store; joining all the other husbands who I presume had run away from similar shopping treats, I imagined owning a remote control spitfire and a walkie talkie watch.
My mobile phone rang and interrupted my enjoyment of a plasma ball; it was my wife complaining that I wasn’t putting as much effort in the day as they were.
When I arrived at the department store the females were loaded up with enough clothes to kit out an army.
You might think that I would have been daunted by this sight but I had a cunning plan; I was ready to agree to eight out of the first ten items I tried on whatever they looked like. It seemed the path of least resistance and would speed our journey to lunch.
It is for this reason that I sit here writing wearing brand new faded and a pink T-shirt. You might think that I am defeated but I take comfort in the fact that I refused to by the ‘man bag’ that they insisted were all the rage these days.
