Geek Pie

Not really reading the papers or watching the news very much, I get much of my comment and reportage on modern society from Viz comic. And an entry in the Top Tips section of this month's issue pretty much sums up my thoughts on Paul Weller's hair far more succinctly than I could manage:

'Get that expensive Paul Weller hairstyle for free by simply running out of the barber's shop before they've finished'

Actually, now I think about it, that's the same as what happens in an episode of Nathan Barley where Dan Ashcroft goes to get his hair cut but accidentally drops some scissors into the proprietor's dog's head so hastily scarpers when the haircut is only half finished. His colleagues praise his original hairstyle and he hastily christens it 'Geek Pie'.

(One more thing: I just googled Weller and the second suggestion when you type his name in is indeed 'Paul Weller Haircut'. Is this trending?!?)

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.

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?!