The Style Vortex’s Guide to People Who Are Seemingly Condemned to Never Be Stylish - Number 1: Paul Weller
I think it’s fair to say that where
style is concerned it’s far worse to try too hard than to not try at all. I
mean, surely it’s better to go out in jeans and a t-shirt than hit the town
wearing luminous trousers, a Steps t-shirt, a shell suit jacket and yellow
wellington boots just because The Face told you they were all the in thing that
week? So for this, the first in a planned series of Style Vortex Guides to
People Who Are Seemingly Condemned to Never Be Stylish I’d like to look at how
this applies to king of the faux-mods and inventor of retro, Paul Weller.
For much of his career Weller lifted
both his fashion and music sensibilitiesfrom an earlier era, whether he was stealing
the look and sound of the mid ‘60s during his Jam years (The Who’s Union Jack
suits and the Beatles’ riffs) or borrowing wholesale from the late ‘60s and
early ‘70s during his early solo career (John Lennon glasses and Traffic/Blind
Faith sound). However, in the 1980s he not only adopted a soul-lite sound that
gave him all the edginess of Sade, but then proceeded to jump on pretty much
every terrible fashion bandwagon of the era; it was a classic case of trying
too hard, with the end result being that he sported a catalogue of atrocious
looks that made him the number one contender for Fashion Victim of the Decade.
And considering that this was the 1980s, famously The Decade That Style Forgot,
that’s some achievement. And the name of the band he led for much of this
period? The Style Council! Has a band ever been so woefully misnamed?!
If you’re going to slavishly follow
everything the style magazines tell you to do then historically there was no
worse time to do it then during the 1980s, but that didn’t stop Weller and his
equally sartorially hapless bandmate from committing a never-ending range of
sartorial crimes. At various points these included wearing chunky knits and
roll necks (making them look like the presenter of the Fast Show’s Jazz Club a
good decade before that character was even invented), doing the faux-French
‘jerseys over the shoulders’ look and even going to such bizarre lengths as
dressing as sailors and Prohibition-era gangsters.
Since the end of the ‘90s Weller’s
dress sense seems not to have changed; he reverted to the mod suit look of his
early twenties, leading me to wonder if he finally realised that it was
virtually impossible for him to commit any more fashion crimes as he’d already
covered pretty much all of them. But if that’s the case, what about his hair?!?
In his Style Council days he sported, variously, the wedge, the slicked back
look and even bleached highlights but
in the ‘90s he somehow managed to top all those by deciding to have a basin.
Yes, a basin, the hairstyle worn by
the kids you were at school with who had so many siblings that their mum would
cut their hair at home to save money and did so by sitting them down in the
kitchen, placing a bowl on their heads and snipping around it. And Weller chose to have this look?!? The mind
boggles!
Having spent so long trying too hard
in the fashion stakes one can fully understand Weller’s decision not to have
changed his look since 1998 but even though the mod look he now sports is every
bit as unoriginal as when he did it during his Jam days, the hair remains a
mystery. I mean, look at it! It’s kind of a feathered mullet of the sort that a
particularly gullible person might get talked into when they visit Toni and
Guy, to not realise how ridiculous it looks until they’ve got home. But he’s
had it for over ten years! Hasn’t he even noticed it’s the same as the ‘comedy’
hairstyle worn by the painfully unfunny stand up Paul Foot? So I can only think
of one possibility: his hair must have fallen out some years back, possibly as
a result of bleaching it or maybe due to baldness and, in the same way that
some people spend a ridiculous amount of money on a haircut and then, because
of how expensive it was, refuse to accept how stupid it looks, he spent all of
his money on a wig and has since
refused to come to terms with how bizarre it looks and thus continued to wear
it. And I know that sounds a bit far fetched but, seriously, when you look at
his hair can you think of any more plausible explanation?!
For much of his career Weller lifted
both his fashion and music sensibilitiesfrom an earlier era, whether he was stealing
the look and sound of the mid ‘60s during his Jam years (The Who’s Union Jack
suits and the Beatles’ riffs) or borrowing wholesale from the late ‘60s and
early ‘70s during his early solo career (John Lennon glasses and Traffic/Blind
Faith sound). However, in the 1980s he not only adopted a soul-lite sound that
gave him all the edginess of Sade, but then proceeded to jump on pretty much
every terrible fashion bandwagon of the era; it was a classic case of trying
too hard, with the end result being that he sported a catalogue of atrocious
looks that made him the number one contender for Fashion Victim of the Decade.
And considering that this was the 1980s, famously The Decade That Style Forgot,
that’s some achievement. And the name of the band he led for much of this
period? The Style Council! Has a band ever been so woefully misnamed?!
Since the end of the ‘90s Weller’s
dress sense seems not to have changed; he reverted to the mod suit look of his
early twenties, leading me to wonder if he finally realised that it was
virtually impossible for him to commit any more fashion crimes as he’d already
covered pretty much all of them. But if that’s the case, what about his hair?!?
In his Style Council days he sported, variously, the wedge, the slicked back
look and even bleached highlights but
in the ‘90s he somehow managed to top all those by deciding to have a basin.
Yes, a basin, the hairstyle worn by
the kids you were at school with who had so many siblings that their mum would
cut their hair at home to save money and did so by sitting them down in the
kitchen, placing a bowl on their heads and snipping around it. And Weller chose to have this look?!? The mind
boggles!
Having spent so long trying too hard
in the fashion stakes one can fully understand Weller’s decision not to have
changed his look since 1998 but even though the mod look he now sports is every
bit as unoriginal as when he did it during his Jam days, the hair remains a
mystery. I mean, look at it! It’s kind of a feathered mullet of the sort that a
particularly gullible person might get talked into when they visit Toni and
Guy, to not realise how ridiculous it looks until they’ve got home. But he’s
had it for over ten years! Hasn’t he even noticed it’s the same as the ‘comedy’
hairstyle worn by the painfully unfunny stand up Paul Foot? So I can only think
of one possibility: his hair must have fallen out some years back, possibly as
a result of bleaching it or maybe due to baldness and, in the same way that
some people spend a ridiculous amount of money on a haircut and then, because
of how expensive it was, refuse to accept how stupid it looks, he spent all of
his money on a wig and has since
refused to come to terms with how bizarre it looks and thus continued to wear
it. And I know that sounds a bit far fetched but, seriously, when you look at
his hair can you think of any more plausible explanation?!
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