Some Observations on Fashion Since the Style Vortex Began

Now that the Style Vortex has been casting its critical gaze around the fashion landscape for over a year I thought it might be worth taking stock and raking over previous posts to see if, as it set out to do, the Vortex managed to cut through the grime of the fashion world like some sort of really good metaphorical cleaning product. And, looking back, I’m more than happy to see that the Vortex has remained consistent! Let’s look at a few things…

Where did all the duffel coats go? I can only hope that everyone who bought one read the post (I suppose it could happen) and, stung by the Paddington Bear comparisons, discarded them instantly. I haven’t seen any in charity shops, though, which makes me wonder if people who bought them simply burned them in their gardens to forever rid themselves of their shame.

The bow tie and elbow patches are still occasionally seen, but it looks like they’re near to extinction. Phew! Emergency over.

The Christmas jumper, interestingly enough, stayed around for two seasons. On the one hand I’m disappointed that after we first saw people wearing them in a vaguely ironic way back in Christmas 2011 they were still being worn and written about during Christmas 2012, though I suspect the people who thought they were cool for wearing them in 2011 looked down upon people wearing them in 2012. But the Christmas jumper has certainly travelled a strange path, going from being a stupid thing that no one in their right mind would wear to a stupid thing that trendy people wore to a stupid thing that lots of stupid people wore. But I am proud, and more than a little smug, to say that I have remained untainted and never worn one. At Christmas time I just stick to my Homer Simpson slippers. They’ll always be cool.

And double denim, as I suggested, was proven to work! Back in April I said that, despite it being considered style anathema by so many, I believed it could be successful, perhaps by using darker colours rather than light blue. And by the end of the year it was widely agreed that it could work! It was in the style pages of Men’s Health and everything.

This isn’t all about gloating, though. It’s nice to see that top celebrities have been reading the blog, particularly Paul Weller who has at least now had some decent suits made on Saville Row. He’s still got a stupid haircut, though.

Worrying Style Trends: The Christmas Jumper

For some time now I’ve harboured a fantasy of somehow hijacking a major magazine and starting a campaign of stylistic terrorism that involves coming up with the most ridiculous fashion ideas I can possibly think of and then using my position within the magazine to convince its readers that whatever I’ve come up with, no matter how ridiculous it may be, is a genuine up-and-coming trend. One month I could tell them that the clown look is in and they should stock up on curly wigs and oversized shoes, and another I could convince them that all the celebs in LA are going crazy for luminous codpieces and that they should get one before they sell out.

I think it would be pretty easy; once in power I’d simply set up a fashion shoot with a suitably empty headed celebrity, pretend to be a leading stylist, dress the celebrity up in the ridiculous garb then run it on the fashion pages under a suitable headline like ‘OMG!!!! Pixie Lott dazzles in her luminous codpiece!!! She’s like, really cool?!!! OMG!!!!’ (I assume that anyone who works on a magazine like Cosmopolitan speaks and thinks exclusive in textspeak, with their every utterance peppered with OMG!!!s and LOL!!!s, though I confess I don’t have any concrete evidence to support this suspicion).

However, in recent months I’ve come to suspect that somebody has beaten me to this, and that cultural hackers are already working in deep cover at most, if not all, of the style magazines and fashion houses. My suspicions were initially aroused by an issue of Esquire a few months back that ran a piece that featured chav-rapper Professor Green modelling chunky knitwear, which, as far as I could tell, was meant to be taken seriously. But that was only the beginning.

For many years now there has been a yuletide tradition of hideous sweaters being given as presents by elderly and confused relatives and the unfortunate recipients then being required to wear them for the rest of Christmas until the elderly relative has gone home and the monstrous garment can be given to a charity shop or destroyed. Now, however, it would seem that a number of shops and magazines have decided that those very jumpers are in fact now the very height of fashion and should be worn through choice rather than under extreme duress.

Whilst I would love to believe that this startling trend really is the result of the aforementioned style anarchists setting out to subvert the whole fashion industry, I have an uneasy feeling that it is not. I suspect that many people in powerful and influential positions within the fashion industry, bizarrely, believe that there is a place for such garments in civilised society.

But if you have any doubts as to whether I am right here, I have a challenge for you. This posting is decorated by various pictures of sweaters. Some of them are garments currently available from well-known high street retailers; others are ones I found photos of by Googling ‘ugly Christmas sweaters’. I have removed them from their context. Now, can you honestly say that (a) you can identify which ones are high street brands and which are sweaters your gran would buy and (b) you would actually wear any of them?

I do not believe you can. So if you open your presents on Christmas morning and are unfortunate to receive one of these, say you like it, wear it for the rest of the day but, by God, make sure it’s thrown on the fire first thing on Boxing Day.