Worrying Style Trends: Twats in Flat Caps

I’m not sure why it took me so long to notice the creeping prevalence of young men wearing flat caps on the streets of trendy London Town; indeed, I think it must be that so many recent trends – bow ties, elbow patches, tweed jackets – seemed to be borrowed from the Olden Days that my conscious brain eventually became too horrified to register anyone it noticed wearing them and I began to subconsciously block them from my vision, so when the time came that the same offenders decided to go full out and dress like old men by adding a flat cap into the mix I no longer noticed.

It’s not as if the act of a young person wearing a flat cap is even that new, though. I do believe one of the egregious characters in the Shoreditch satire Nathan Barley wore one when that show was on back in 2005 so I assume that real life Hoxtonites were also wearing them at the time (quite possibly thinking they were being incredibly groundbreaking in doing do yet somehow neglecting to take into consideration that they had previously been worn by, I don’t know, every man who was alive in the 1920s and 1930s?).

Hats are always a bit controversial in this day and age. You can try a baseball cap but whilst you might think it makes you look like a hardcore gangsta rapper from da hood it’s also a strong possibility that it will make you look like a twat who lives with his mum. Or you could try one of those Pete Doherty hats, which you might think makes you look like someone who lives the edgy and carefree existence of a bohemian symbolist poet on the fringes of society, caring nothing for the petty mores of the world and living only for art and freedom but will more than likely make you look like a twat who lives with his mum. I did see a man wearing a top hat the other day, which I supposed earned him some points for originality. And it didn’t give me any clues as to whether or not he lived with his mum.

But anyway, I can’t see any justification why anyone would wear a flat cap unless they were in their eighties. My reasons are thus:

1)     You will look like an old man. Remember the Top of the Pops performance featuring Dad’s Army’s Clive Dunn performing Grandad We Love You? Well, you probably don’t because that would make you pretty old, but it’s on Youtube. And you know how you see archive footage from the 1920s and it’s full of men wearing flat caps and smoking Woodbines? Plus Victor Meldrew used to wear one. And he’s an old man. And, yes, I know Brad Pitt has been seen wearing one recently but he’s nearly fifty so that hardly disproves my point, does it? Also, Brian Johnson of AC/DC also wears one but, once again, he is old. So, to clarify, my point is that flat caps should only be worn by old men.

2)     Actually, that’s the only reason.

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!