What's Hot and What's Not

Statements like green is the new black make my blood boil. It is a ludicrous thing to say and highlights the worst façades of the fashion industry and other culprits who try to sell their wares to gullible fools and pseudo intellectuals at ridiculously inflated prices.

Magazines like the Style section of The Sunday Times are full of this kind of nonsense, offering, say, a pair of silver shoes at a ridiculous £400 just because they are currently in vogue and drive normally sane people insane because, apparently, they are the new black in the world of footwear.

Needless to say that Style usually goes straight into the recycling without its pages being turned – that is unless Mrs PM gets it first.

Mrs PM is a very sensible person and even she tuts and sighs as she reads the pages of this dreadful waste of ink and paper.

“Why do you read it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I usually only skim it and look at the Going Up, Going Down section."

She elaborated telling me that this little note at the side of one of the many pages of garbage, is effectively a filler which indicates what is currently cool and trendy, and what is currently on its way out.

I was slightly curious so I grabbed the most recent copy and had a look.

Here’s what I found.

At the bottom of the pile, rolling out of fashion faster than a mad dog on a ski slope, is The Shareable Coat.

What the flump is a Shareable Coat?

Surely all coats are shareable. I know that I have lent a coat to my lads who are now the same size as me, and also, like the gentleman that I am, draped it over the shoulders of Mrs PM and other female friends when it gets a little chilly. Isn’t that sharing a coat?

No. A Shareable Coat is a big scarf-like thing that two BFFs can share together (apparently BFF means Best Friend Forever but I reckon it stands for Bloody Foolish Females in this case).

You've got too much of the coat!

“What else is on its way out?” I hear you cry.

Well brankles or mankles (bloke ankles/man ankles) are hurtling down the fashion parade. Basically this involves men (or as I prefer to call them dickheads) rolling up their trousers or actually buying trouser that are too short in some cases to expose their manly calves and ankles.  I’m sure that women go crazy for such idiocy.

Really? Is this a good look????

What else? Oh yes – extreme aged steak. A steak is usually hung out for 30 days or so but in this case, the meat is left out for much longer, the longest I managed to find was 459 days.

459 days!

I would have made a pair of shoes out of it.

Do you want to hear the hot stuff? The stuff that is soaring so much that it is sizzling?

First, vinyl booties, which are thigh high multi-coloured skin tight boots that must be incredibly weird to wear. Apparently they simply MUST be Dior vinyl boots (that figures!!).

Before I go on, let me just clarify that these are for women so the chances of me ever wearing them are zero. To be honest, I can’t see Mrs PM wearing them either.

I'll bet it takes about two hours to put them on!

Also rising like a phoenix are canelés, something else I have never heard of. They are French cakes that have been around since the 18th century but, for some reason, are undergoing a resurgence of popularity.

Actually, I could probably eat one of these.

Finally, the most disgusting foodstuff known to man (apart from rhubarb) is right up there claiming a high spot on the hot list. I am talking about Oyster Happy Hours when you can apparently purchase cut price globs of disgusting rubbery seafood in shells and slide them down your gullet with your friends.

YEEEEEEUUUUUUUCCCCHHHHHH!!!!!

There are more items on this list but I can’t bring myself to write about them. One thing they all have in common is that they are almost exclusively consumed or used by slaves to the God of Style, a faceless entity that makes people wishing to be seen as cool make arse out of themselves by either looking ridiculous wearing or eating them.

It makes me laugh, more out of pity than humour.

Like pseudo intellectuals, these style chasers will pretend to love this stuff and will pay a fortune to have it. It’s no surprise to me that London is the centre for this overpriced hogwash, not the whole city, just the cool places, where it’s good to be seen and you can slurp you oysters before trying to chew on a battered old steak and diving into a container of canelés, all the time huddled in a shareable coat with your BFF while admiring the local dickhead mankles.

What a load of crap it all is.

Sadly, dear reader we are all slaves to the God of Style, simply because we have no choice about the style of clothes to wear (unless you want to buy all your clothes from jumble sales) although we do have a choice about what we eat.

Thank goodness we can pick and choose our own food. Give me a decent steak in a reasonably priced restaurant any time.

And please – no bloody oysters.

Do you want to know what I think is hot and what’s not?

Hot – The Plastic Mancunian!

Not hot – The God of Style. He’s like a modern artist and all of his followers are pseudo-intellectuals with more money than sense.

(Note to self: Please no more rants about modern art).