The Life of Geek Pie

The problem with most fashion blogs, I think it’s more than fair to say, is that they generally consist of little more than self-taken photos (in a mirror) that show the writer proudly showing off that afternoon’s purchases, whilst the ‘writing content’ rarely stretches beyond ‘OMG!!! Look at what I got in New Look/Gap/Miss Selfridge today!!! OMG!!!’

If, by contrast, you take a – shall we say – more critical approach to the world of fashion, you’re not only largely ruling yourself out of ever receiving any freebies from style PRs eager to buy your support but you’re also in a more compromised situation if you want to take the approach of taking photos of people you see in the street. For example, you might be successful if you approach someone resplendent in whatever’s fashionable that week and say ‘OMG! You’re so cool! Can I, like, take a photo of you for my fashion blog?!’ in a way that you won’t be if you slide up to someone and say ‘Excuse me, sir, but I couldn’t help noticing that you are, by and large, dressed like a gullible twat. Do you mind if I take a photo of you and then slag you off on the Internet?’

Not that I’ve tried that yet, I just have a feeling it might not be entirely successful. I suppose I could approach people and claim I love their style but I don’t think that morally I’d be able to forgive myself. After all, someone in this world needs to have standards.

Still, over the last couple of days I’ve been wishing I could find a way to at least try to photograph people I see on the street in a surreptitious manner. The reason is that over the weekend I’ve begun to notice a new male hairstyle cropping up. It’s been entirely in Dalston and Shoreditch, so I’m assuming it’s so cutting edge that it’s not even appeared in any mainstream magazines yet and so far has only graced the pages of uber-trendy publications that I’m simply not cool enough to even know about, like Cheekbone, the magazine that Vince Noir reads in the Mighty Boosh, a magazine so cutting edge that it’s delivered by ninjas and goes out of date every three hours.

(And to prove the point about this new hairstyle, I’ve just tried to Google a picture of it. Nothing! That's why the article is illustrated by an old school photo of some guy probably out of a Kurosawa film)

So, the hairstyle in question is a topknot. But the back and sides are shaved. I imagine it’s got a name along the lines of the nu-mullet (remember that?) so is possibly called the nu-samurai as I can only imagine the wearer believes it makes him look like some sort of modern day samurai. Sadly, I fear, it makes the wearer look more of a modern day twat.

I wondered if this style came about in the same way as Geek Pie, the hairstyle in Nathan Barley that I’ve already discussed, which is accidentally invented when Dan Ashcroft falls asleep in some paint and then has to flee the barbers when his hair is only half cut, only for Nathan to think it’s the latest trend and get his hair styled in exactly the same way. I can only assume a modern trendy had to flee a salon in similar circumstances when just the back and sides had been shaved and hastily tied the rest at the top of his head (for some reason) only to find people thought it was the latest cool thing and blatantly copied it. I mean, that sounds like a far more plausible explanation than one involving people having their hair like that through choice. Doesn’t it?!?

My suspicion is that this ‘do will vanish from the streets for a few months (as these things tend to) only to return later in the year once mainstream fashion magazines and their gullible followers have become aware of it. So before that happens, I’ve decided to give it a name. It’s a topknot, worn by twats. So I’m going to christen it… the twatknot!