Let Fashion Fuck You

Has anyone ever looked back at the style of the 80s and said to themselves, “Fair balls”? It has to be said that the 80’s was the decade of the Frankensteinian designer. Outfits defied nature, laws of gravity were flouted and the lunatic creative genius had its ravishingly wicked way with design. Many would argue differently, but the era of 80s fashion was one big, hideously funny joke made by the industry at the dumb-witted mongs that were the public masses. The designers said, “You need stupidly big shoulder pads”, the public ran out and grabbed every padded item available, giving us a comical display of pumped, rippling shoulders, quivering close to the jaw line. There’s nothing hotter than no-neck appeal. It was the blessed age of the fashion victim and as Aesop once said, “The lamb began to follow the wolf in sheep's clothing.” Fashion was fun to be the slave of and we all had a rollicking great laugh. In fact, we’re still laughing now, hair styles were ludicrous, make-up was epically dramatic, clothes were whimsical, bright, innocuous and we followed these fads in glorious succession. What was on the catwalk was in the shops, simple.

It was all so much fun, being the fashion victim, the dry humping gimps that we were, giving it some good old heavy petting and letting it ejaculate its glittering sequins and dragish make-up all over us. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was art, it was rampant, tasteless, obnoxious art, it was wonderful. Then some knob-jockey had to ruin it all by saying that faddishness was bad and that fashion victims had rights or something. Fashion became a democracy god damn it, it even got its own police force, everyone stopped taking LSD and cleaned up their act. All because some fat assed bitch wore leggings that were stretched beyond recoil across her corpulent, cellulite enriched thighs, exposing a red thong through the now pitifully transparent material. The masses revolted and wanted everything to be practical, comfortable.

Now everything’s gotten so damn boring, even Manolo Blahnik noted that, “About half my designs are controlled fantasy, 15 percent are total madness and the rest are bread-and-butter designs.” I mean seriously, you boring bitches out there condemning Mr. Blahnik to produce “bread and butter designs”, those beauties that you see in the window of his store on Sloane Street, they’re nothing, they’re pieces of shit in comparison to what he could create. Since the public has had a say in determining what sells in fashion, we have drained the life out of the creative industry. The acid-dropping, booze-inducing, vomit-inspiring, gender-fucking, sex - sex-sexing frivolity of fashion is dead, we’re grown up and sensible now. Models parade up and down catwalks in fantastic examples of creativity and fun: Galliano, Gaultier, Mc Queen take me now. It causes saliva to seep onto my tongue in a hungry, panting desire to attain and follow. I begin to quiver, I’m ready, I’m ready to run into a store and have fashion stick its big, wet tongue in my ear and say, “take it!” Just as the lady next to me is getting it up the ass, a siren screams and someone says “No”! Clothes are reformed and edited, make-ups are customised for practical every day wear and it bothers me.

      

That boring old sack over there has infused all our minds with the ideology that things need to be more practical, more wearable, more functional and more acceptable. That’s fine, let her have her way, I just feel that we’ve stopped caring about our image, how we put ourselves together and the visceral relationship we have with style. Yes the 80s brought us from the sublime to the ridiculous, but at least we had a laugh with it on the way. Now, as I traipse through the crowded streets of what was once a fashion hub of the world, I see well dressed people, well put together, pretty, attractive, but what the people of London lack is that rawness of emotion, that connection with creativity and style. It’s banal. London has become that 40 year old woman who was glamorous in her youth and has grown weary and tired of making the effort. Where’s the fun gone, the impracticality of madness, the joy of wearing something ludicrous? So let us don our lion heads and throw on our Kermit capes, slap a few steaks across your chest and paint those lips Mc Queen style. It’s time to get frisky with fashion again, go on a bender with it and let it let it touch you inappropriately. Let it make you feel naughty, wake up the next morning with the filthiest hangover and regret the night before with every sensible bone in your body. But every time you see that piece, it tickles you in the pit of your stomach and reminds you of the time you grabbed fashion by the balls and gave them a good, hard, raunchy squeeze.