Fashion

I don't make any claims to being a fashionista by any means. Infact, i think i'm the opposite. I don't mean i will go out of my way to dress like i've recently escaped from an institution for the criminally insane or that i'm disrespecting all fashion. I wear what i want to wear and won't be dictated to by the latest trends designed by a failed art student. I like to be comfortable and dress according to the weather. This isn't because i'm in my mid forties, i've always been that way inclined. When i was a teen my friends would go on a night out looking like they'd thrown an outfit on and missed, i preferred my doc martins  and a warm coat. I never caught hypothermia and i don't have bunions. I like a top and trouser/jeans/skirt combo or occasionally a dress. Co-ordinated but doesn't scream 'look at my labels' or 'i'm a twat'.
I like a classic designer such as Chanel but i can't get my head around anything designed by Vivienne Westwood.
I'm a child of the 70's-the decade that taste forgot-and i don't recall seeing anyone with gaffa tape across their nipples or their earlobe stretched so wide you could train a small pony to jump through it. Just good old platform shoes, flares and mullets to die for.
I was a teen in the 80's and the closest i got to following a trend was getting my mum to buy me some fluorescent socks. Other than that 80's fashion with it's leg warmers, shoulder pads and huge hair bewildered me and i wanted no part of it. Imagine my horror when it started to make a come back in 2018 and my two teenage girls wanted me to buy jackets with shoulder pads and boyfriend jeans. I had a new romantic flashback and felt the urge to backcomb my hair and don electric blue mascara. Don't worry though readers, i had a word with myself.
Sometimes i think fashion designers are either trying to outdo each other or seeing what they can get away with. A prime example of this was the crotchless jeans that came out last year. Did anyone actually buy those? I doubt it although they're probably really popular in dogging circles. Practical and airy.
I know some folk are particularly dedicated  to fashion and will feel compelled to buy whatever the latest trend is. I've got nothing against these folk as i believe each to their own, it's just not for me. I've never been a follower of anything which is why i'm rubbish at twitter and instagram. My attention span is too low for that caper. Even social media falls foul to fashion. Facetube, instatwat and snapwank go in and out of favour like a 1970's disc jockey. I can't keep up so i don't try to. My teens are always telling me how to get more followers but i'm not that bothered about being followed unless someone is actually physically  following me wearing a mac and carrying a chloroform cosh and some rope...then i may call the police.
Inexplicably diets also go up and down like a bride's nightie in the fashion stakes. Surely if a diet works how can it become uncool? About a decade ago when the atkins diet was de rigueur people on it would cut out all carbs, lose 9 stone in a week and pay £6.00 for a loaf of carb free bread which had the density of plutonium and would survive a nuclear explosion. They lost weight, sure, but had unbelievable halitosis and shit out actual fire. Not for me chief. These days people love a detox diet where they eat mad bollocks like seaweed, kale, cotton balls, tapeworm eggs  and their own toenails. Cabbage soup, macrobiotic, potato, juice cleanse, charcoal, baby food, vision and shangri la are all real names of real faddy diets that are no longer fashionable.
Hairstyles seem to vary from being quite localised to the national hair do of choice. Hair straightners changed a lot of people's lives in recent years by being able to tame even the wildest of barnets. I confess, i do own a pair of these but it's very rare i will use them. My hair is blonde and naturally wavy which i quite like although my great nanna used to say 'do you even own a brush? You have the hair of nazzymova'. I have no idea  who nazzymova is but i bet they had fabulous hair. I don't really like unnatural  hair colours on people. I always feel like asking them if they're a natural purple or blue.It just looks odd. It's almost like they are saying 'hey look at me with my fun hair because i'm a fun person', which incidentally they generally aren't. I've met a few punks in my time and not one of them told me a joke. I had a perm once in the late 80's in a feeble attempt to follow the fashion and i ended up looking like a Ken Dodd tribute act. Never again.
From all of the different fashions, clothes, hair, shoes, diets etc the one that confuses me most is makeup trends. From the garish brown and green thick eyeshadow and red lippy of the 70's, electric blue mascara and black eyeliner of the 80's to the fresh hell of the 'natural look' in the noughties with teens and adults plastering so much foundation and highlighter on they actually gain a stone in weight. The end product is neither natural or practical. Don't even get me started on the thick eyebrow that makes ladies and gents look like they're constantly angry.  My eldest daughter subscribes to this trend and sports the heavier eyebrow much to my annoyance. The eyebrow doesn't irritate me as such it's the fact that she takes so long doing it. She has missed the school bus countless times due to her morning eyebrow regime. It both infuriates and perplexes me that she's late for school but her eyebrows are on time. As i am not a big fan of too much makeup or ever changing fashion i shall continue to bow out of needing to look like everyone else and continue, instead, to march to the beat of my own drum.