I am the very first person to admit that I am sartorially challenged. My weird ways with clothes stretch back to my childhood, when my sister persuaded me to wear a skirt with an elasticised waist around my neck so that I could look exactly like a seal in a circus - and come on, who doesn't doesn't think that's a suave and enviable image?
It's not as if things improved as I grew older. The first time I was asked to a high school dance, I asked my mom to sew me what I now call 'the Victorian milkmaid slut' outfit - Victorian, because I insisted on teaming my dress - a black tube adorned with a giant white bow across the decolletage (and before you get too judgey, remember this was the 90s) - with elbow length gloves. Slutty, because the tube was stretched to its full capacity against my podgy 14-year-old frame and ended well above my knees (which were, I must mention, kitted out in sheer tights in 'Blackmail' - another contradictory touch, as this was the colour, somwhere between a daring black and a frumpy grey, favoured by middle aged women the world over as they yearned to go back to their more femme fatale years but didn't quite have the courage to dress the part). I daresay the outfit wouldn't have been too bad, were it not for those gloves - or perhaps the fact that the entire ensemble was made from taffeta, a fabric I will forever associate with Scarlett O' Hara but which at the time I loved because of the swishing, sea-like sounds it made every time I moved. Of course, now I realise the outfit's audible component was its very worst fault. The finishing touch was my hair - it being the 90s, I of course had to have an updo, complete with romantic escpaing tendrils. Sadly, my overzealous hairdresser left the curlers in my hair too long and the effect was rather less, "Oh look, you've just caught me with my locks tumbling loose after a day of picking wild meadow flowers" and rather more as if I had attached some Goldilocks pot scourers to each temple.
And then came university. The 90s was a forgiving time for fashion - you could stick on a crusty flannel shirt and be lauded as a grunge icon - ditto if you decided not to wash off your mascara for three nights running. I'm not saying that it was a particularly pretty time. Remember Buffaloes, for instance? Clearly, this was an era where 'elegance' was a dirty word. But, while my varsity friends embraced the excuse this gave them to wear whatever, whenever, I for some reason went all corporate. There I was, at South Africa's most hippie university (actually, the only place I know that has bungees and other people walking around in tie dye and dolphin shirts with dream catchers around their necks), stalking about in clunky platform shoes and Allie McBeal skirts with fitted turtlenecks. I like to think the look was not so much ugly as just age- inapropriate. What 20-year-old wants to look as if the next words out her mouth are going to be "I think that, before we unpack that, we should just take it offline?"
Hopefully, things have improved now. Although sometimes I get clear signals that they haven't. Like when I go to my exercise classes and everyone is wearing their streamlined Nikes with little secret socks and racerback vests and I am channelling Janet Jackson circa Rhythm Nation - yes, those are shuffle socks, and yes, they do terminate only slightly below the knee, leaving just a gap between what can only be described as giant gardening slacks.
Maybe this is why I don't get fashion men. I'm talking about guys who wear skinny jeans (especially in colours like scarlet and mustard) and scarves. Or who go without socks. The latter is a look I find particularly offputting. Is there anything more sad and vulnerable than a man's bony, white, hairy little ankle peeking out beneath the cuff of a rolled jeans leg? It just seems all neglected, like it wants desperately to be wrapped in a nice woollen sock and told that everything will be alright, summer will come again and bring with it a tan. Another reason I can't take this look is because it means that either the man's large, long-toed foot is sitting and marinating sweatily inside its clammy brogue. Or that it is snuggled inside a Secret Sock. Now, I thoroughly agree that Secret Socks are the only answer to summer days and synthetic shoes. We all have them. Yet there is something about them that reminds me of a bathroom where someone has tried to cover up a shameful event with a spray of air freshener (is anyone really fooled by this? Do manufacturers truly believe that is what pine forests smell like?)
Maybe it's the thought of men and Secret Socks together that doesn't sit well with me. This is where the word 'metrosexual' is going to raise it's head. While I am the first to recoil in horror at the sight of those people whose greasy heads means that their pillows have 'man smell', at the same time, I can't help but think nostalgically of the days when guys didn't have Hair Styles. They just had hair, and it sat on top of their heads. It didn't stray, artfully messy and playfully tousled, from one side of the parting to another. It just was.
Also, when the hair was in their pants, that's where it stayed. I'm all for back waxing - but surely going beyond this point is taking grooming a little too far? Grooming is something I hate. It's just another area for me to feel inadequate - as in my thighs are too big, my ass too lumpen, and my bikini line so far from Brazil it's like the unHollywood. But worrying about things like that is just part of being a woman - men are lucky precisely because they don't have to, and the advent of summer does not have to mean trying to sneak a surreptitious scratch at a flaming ingrown hair. So why would they do that to themselves? And more to the point, why would women want them to? At the risk of summonsing the 90s yet again, Dr Evil may believe a shaved scrotum to be quite breathtaking - but is that always a good thing? I just don't know how I would react if I were greeted by such a thing, but I am pretty sure there would be a lot of laughter.
Then again, I know that I am a complete anachronism. One that would cause any fashion-lover - male or female - to reach for a plastic bag so that they could let the hyperventilating begin.
It's not as if things improved as I grew older. The first time I was asked to a high school dance, I asked my mom to sew me what I now call 'the Victorian milkmaid slut' outfit - Victorian, because I insisted on teaming my dress - a black tube adorned with a giant white bow across the decolletage (and before you get too judgey, remember this was the 90s) - with elbow length gloves. Slutty, because the tube was stretched to its full capacity against my podgy 14-year-old frame and ended well above my knees (which were, I must mention, kitted out in sheer tights in 'Blackmail' - another contradictory touch, as this was the colour, somwhere between a daring black and a frumpy grey, favoured by middle aged women the world over as they yearned to go back to their more femme fatale years but didn't quite have the courage to dress the part). I daresay the outfit wouldn't have been too bad, were it not for those gloves - or perhaps the fact that the entire ensemble was made from taffeta, a fabric I will forever associate with Scarlett O' Hara but which at the time I loved because of the swishing, sea-like sounds it made every time I moved. Of course, now I realise the outfit's audible component was its very worst fault. The finishing touch was my hair - it being the 90s, I of course had to have an updo, complete with romantic escpaing tendrils. Sadly, my overzealous hairdresser left the curlers in my hair too long and the effect was rather less, "Oh look, you've just caught me with my locks tumbling loose after a day of picking wild meadow flowers" and rather more as if I had attached some Goldilocks pot scourers to each temple.
And then came university. The 90s was a forgiving time for fashion - you could stick on a crusty flannel shirt and be lauded as a grunge icon - ditto if you decided not to wash off your mascara for three nights running. I'm not saying that it was a particularly pretty time. Remember Buffaloes, for instance? Clearly, this was an era where 'elegance' was a dirty word. But, while my varsity friends embraced the excuse this gave them to wear whatever, whenever, I for some reason went all corporate. There I was, at South Africa's most hippie university (actually, the only place I know that has bungees and other people walking around in tie dye and dolphin shirts with dream catchers around their necks), stalking about in clunky platform shoes and Allie McBeal skirts with fitted turtlenecks. I like to think the look was not so much ugly as just age- inapropriate. What 20-year-old wants to look as if the next words out her mouth are going to be "I think that, before we unpack that, we should just take it offline?"
Hopefully, things have improved now. Although sometimes I get clear signals that they haven't. Like when I go to my exercise classes and everyone is wearing their streamlined Nikes with little secret socks and racerback vests and I am channelling Janet Jackson circa Rhythm Nation - yes, those are shuffle socks, and yes, they do terminate only slightly below the knee, leaving just a gap between what can only be described as giant gardening slacks.
Maybe this is why I don't get fashion men. I'm talking about guys who wear skinny jeans (especially in colours like scarlet and mustard) and scarves. Or who go without socks. The latter is a look I find particularly offputting. Is there anything more sad and vulnerable than a man's bony, white, hairy little ankle peeking out beneath the cuff of a rolled jeans leg? It just seems all neglected, like it wants desperately to be wrapped in a nice woollen sock and told that everything will be alright, summer will come again and bring with it a tan. Another reason I can't take this look is because it means that either the man's large, long-toed foot is sitting and marinating sweatily inside its clammy brogue. Or that it is snuggled inside a Secret Sock. Now, I thoroughly agree that Secret Socks are the only answer to summer days and synthetic shoes. We all have them. Yet there is something about them that reminds me of a bathroom where someone has tried to cover up a shameful event with a spray of air freshener (is anyone really fooled by this? Do manufacturers truly believe that is what pine forests smell like?)
Maybe it's the thought of men and Secret Socks together that doesn't sit well with me. This is where the word 'metrosexual' is going to raise it's head. While I am the first to recoil in horror at the sight of those people whose greasy heads means that their pillows have 'man smell', at the same time, I can't help but think nostalgically of the days when guys didn't have Hair Styles. They just had hair, and it sat on top of their heads. It didn't stray, artfully messy and playfully tousled, from one side of the parting to another. It just was.
Also, when the hair was in their pants, that's where it stayed. I'm all for back waxing - but surely going beyond this point is taking grooming a little too far? Grooming is something I hate. It's just another area for me to feel inadequate - as in my thighs are too big, my ass too lumpen, and my bikini line so far from Brazil it's like the unHollywood. But worrying about things like that is just part of being a woman - men are lucky precisely because they don't have to, and the advent of summer does not have to mean trying to sneak a surreptitious scratch at a flaming ingrown hair. So why would they do that to themselves? And more to the point, why would women want them to? At the risk of summonsing the 90s yet again, Dr Evil may believe a shaved scrotum to be quite breathtaking - but is that always a good thing? I just don't know how I would react if I were greeted by such a thing, but I am pretty sure there would be a lot of laughter.
Then again, I know that I am a complete anachronism. One that would cause any fashion-lover - male or female - to reach for a plastic bag so that they could let the hyperventilating begin.
Another reason I can't take this look is because it means that either the man's large, long-toed foot is sitting and marinating sweatily inside its clammy brogue... YES
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