Fashion

'Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.' - Oscar Wilde.

Back in the days of punk (1976-1977), we used to sneer at those old (40+) rockers who used to bore everyone about the good-old great days of Elvis, Jerry Lee, Little Richard. We listened (eventually) - and most of it - of course - was crap.

Looking back now, from my own 40+ years I can't say that our music was any better - despite what we so naively thought at the time. Nor can I say that punk itself was anything other than an utter waste of time, except for one thing.

When looked without the distortions for nostalgia for youth, it is easy to see how crap punk really was. The music of course was terrible - as I've already said - even by the woeful standards of most rock music. The stupid clothes - bin liners and bondage trousers, and the terribly stupid haircuts and dyed hair. The pointless petulant attitude - I'm so bored (it is actually true that only the boring get bored) and the sneering, self-righteous and self-regarding smugness.

In fact, the whole pose of punk with its faux-nihilism is so hysterically funny - and phoney - when you look back at it from the advantage of maturity.

However, it was not all a total waste of all the bright possibilities of youth. There was one thing, but only thing, that us ex-punks could be proud of. There was one thing that made the whole sorry episode worthwhile - and slightly more than an embarrassing footnote in the short stupid history of teen culture (what an oxymoron). This was that we - once and for all (or so we so naively thought, but hey, we were young) got rid of flared trousers.

Flared trousers were just two great swathes of superfluous material flapping around your ankles as if you were two inverted perambulating flagpoles. Was there anything more pointless in the entire history of fashion (including periwigs and bustles)?

And yet….

And yet….

The bloody things came back into fashion! Santayana must be spinning in his grave.

However, that is the nature of fashion - its essence. Change is fashion's only constant. Nothing matters except change. It doesn't matter that it makes no sense to wear - for example, trousers that cover only to just below the knees in mid-winter. If that is what fashion decrees, then that must be what is done.

The same, of course, goes for anti-fashion - sub-sub cultures like Goths et al - as for fashion itself. If fashion followers are mere sheep, then Goths are just black sheep.