Fashionless Fashion

First Published in the Mudhutter Football Express Issue 13 August 2007

No matter which way you carve it up fashion is important to all of us. Even the scruffiest bastard mincing around your local area has at the very least a slight interest in their own sartorial elegance. I mean, there are choices to be made aren’t there? And with those choices comes a common acceptance of how you’ll be perceived. I’m sure even the most vehement anti-fashionlists (yeah I know the word doesn’t exist) would concede that they would end up looking a tad foolish by denying that their selection of attire didn’t say something of how they wanted to be viewed.

Now years ago I would have been in the “I don’t strictly adhere to fashion” brigade, but that has definitely changed. A strange thing happened to me recently and I suddenly found myself spending an inordinate amount of time in High Street department stores. I even ended up with a store card and found myself getting over aroused at the thought of looking right smart in my new clobber. It’s a funny thing when you have kids, but you feel duty bound to look half presentable. If not for yourself then at least for the kids, you don’t want your little Johnnies pals telling him that his Dad looks like he hangs around the bus station bogs do you? In fact there’s a definite element of competitiveness between parents. What you used to wear for a night out you find yourself wearing to do the school run. The school pick up is the new night out, Monday at 3:30pm is Saturday evening on the tiles.

There’s been some cracking fashions over the years and by and large there is an ideology attached to them. Take the Nazi’s and their Nazi Chic. Now I’m in no way condoning the atrocities’ of the 2nd World War, but you have to doff your cap to these lads and lasses, they didn‘t half scrub up well.. Especially the SS dressed in black from head to toe, now that was a sexy fashion. Their actions, although not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, were at least pro-active in trying to achieve their Aryan race dream.

To be fair the Germans aren’t all bad, who can honestly say they didn’t want to go there to be a brickie or a chippie after the first series of Auf Wierdersehen Pet? God bless Pat Roach, aka Bomber, not a terrorist Bomber I hasten to add, Bomber was his nickname, although I bet he could have turned his hand to Bombing. After all he went from wrestling at teatime on World of Sport, to acting. There would have been some mess if Pat had been a Suicide Bomber, he was, shall we say, a big unit, blood and snot everywhere.

Anyway back to the article. The fashion of the Nazi period has never completely died, take the Punks. Now as anyone worth their salt knows the Punks weren’t exclusively or even in the majority a movement about Nazism, they were about freedom of thought, kicking against authority, anarchy and being an individual. They did however take on at least part of the Nazi fashion in the form of the swastika, and didn’t they wear it well! Along with the swastika, they dressed to shock with their dyed Mohicans, chains and safety pins. Every component of their ideology and presentation were again trying to move things forward, trying to say something, trying to affect a change.

Whilst we’re on the subject of Nazis and Punks, what about those Adolf Hitler European Tour t-shirts in the early eighties? Not very politically correct, but very very funny.

From the hippies who championed sexual liberation, peace and love, psychedelic drugs and Eastern Religions whilst wearing ill fitting and over elaborate clothing. To the baggie trousered devotees of the second summer of love standing on the terraces pilled off their tits. The fashion and ideologies behind those movements went hand in hand, and all of them believed that they could make things better. Some of course were misguided, some, like the Nazi’s were just plain evil, but all of them had beliefs and hopes for what they envisaged to be a better future.

And so to the crux of the matter, the Chavs. I’m not sure that’s what this set of scum are called nowadays, but they’re the ones you see dressed in black tracksuits. As much as I championed the youth of Wigan a while back in ‘Memories of a Teenage Disco Dancer’, I can only pour equal amounts of disdain on this set of trash.

First things first, the black tracksuits. What’s the fucking script with black tracksuits? I know they’re supposed to form part of their identity but please, is that the best they can do? They look awful, there’s nothing redeeming about a black fucking tracksuit. Is the hood up meant to instil fear and intimidation into the hearts and minds of us, the unsuspecting public? Oooooh I’m shitting myself! And what would one find under their hood? A cap! A cap under your fucking hood! Is the weather forecast so bad that you need two pieces of headwear to keep you dry if it pisses it down? Or is it the dick under the hood is so ugly that it’s face is double bagged and hidden? As if that part of the image isn’t bad enough what do these pillocks wear on their feet? Shoes! Shoes with a tracksuit! Who thought that one up, because someone obviously did and it doesn’t end there. Have you seen what they do with their tracksuit bottoms? They tuck them into their socks! Fuck me fucking furiously, tracksuit bottoms tucked into your socks and then finished off with a smashing pair of shoes!

Now you’re talking, now you’re ready to show us what master plan you and your ill educated white homies are going to foist upon us dried up old hippies, punks and baggies. Go on hit us with it whilst you stand their cupping your balls down the front of your black fucking tracksuit bottoms!

Silence. . . .. . . . . . . . . . .zilch, nothing, zero, nought, absolutely fuck all.

They don’t have an informed opinion about anything. They have no industry, no aspirations to define a change and no sense of accountability for their actions or the consequences to themselves or the world they live in. They just want to drive about in the cars (usually blue Citroën Saxo’s) that Mum and Dad are paying for on the drip, smoking psychosis inducing cannabis and then when it all goes wrong blame everyone else and let the rest of us pick up the bill.

They don’t seem to stand for anything except apathy, the occasional mugging and a complete lack of manners. All of which aren’t designed to send a resounding message of positive youthful defiance to us elder statesmen.

Why do they all think they’re black as well? A black dude being a black dude is unbeatable in the cool stakes, but when some brain dead, scrawny white lad who is so pale you could read him like a fucking road map with his veiny blue body, starts wearing a black tracksuit and flicking his wrist shouting “respec” then I can‘t help but become a little cynical. Ali G isn’t real you thick bastards.

But as bad as their lack of a philosophy is, in pushing forward their generation, it’s their lack of a decent fashion which is totally unforgivable. “Clothes maketh the man” they say. But for the subscribers of fashionless fashion “Clothes maketh the twat”, and empty headed ones at that!