Worn is the New Wear

I was going to do a post about how awesome Morrowind is, or how my dystopian present is strangely not dystopian enough, or why Gok Wan would be 'first against the wall', or any number of rage-fuelled, hate bent topics that make me seem like a left-wing contemporary of a Daily Mail columnist. But instead, rather bizarrely, I've decided to write about fashion.

I'm not pretending to know anything about fashion. My current dress-code consists of wearing a pirate hat as frequently as possible while dressing like someone who desperately wants to be a washed up rock-star but could only manage to look washed up, which is about as close as the word 'wash' could probably be applied in a sentence about me. I'm not complaining about the fact that I look like Michael Jackson after he'd fallen hair-first into a vat of lard and had the patchy remains of a dead raccoon plastered to his face. To quote Neil Gaiman's Sandman: "I cannot help what I am".

Recently it came to my attention that I need some new clothes. I don't know where this compulsion comes from, since there is nothing particularly wrong with the ones I'm wearing. But insidiously, like an evil wizard, it whispers to me as a voice inside my head - "Get new clothes! Get new clothes! Kill your friends! Get new clothes!" I tried alcohol, but that only made the screaming go away.

Anyway, long story short, looks like dressing like a hobo who just won big at a charity raffle is the new 'recession look' of 2011. I bought some new boots recently, for an amount of money I would not divulge but would probably buy a town in China. They are quite trendy, you know, as boots go. They've got that stressed leather look that means you don't know if your shoes are black, brown, or covered in crap. They fall open stylishly for that roguish - I'm too lazy to tie my laces - look. The soles are made out of wood and check it, they actually have nails hammered into them. Real nails, really hammered, with the overall effect when walking being somewhat akin to Darth Vader in clogs.

This is not the only dizzying height of well worn fashion that seems to be gripping our nation. I was in one of everyone's favourite high street fashion retailers the other day, because someone else wanted to spend some money that in a round about way didn't actually belong to them. Apart from the indecently exposed mannequins that were thrusting their black and cream plastic nubs in my face from some badly fitted jeans, the experience was fairly mundane. I hate clothes shopping. It reminds me that I have no money, I don't look like everyone else, and that in poor lighting conditions I could be mistaken for Swamp Thing. I digress.

What I did notice - apart from the dazzling array of plastic genitalia that only reinforced my sense of inadequacy - is that most of the clothes on offer have that look. You know *that* look. It falls somewhere between "Hi, I'm cool because all my stuff is like, well travelled, like Indiana Jones" and "Please Sir, I want some more." There were pre-ripped jeans or pre-stressed jeans with faded fibres. There was a cool shapeless T-Shirt like the one someone's girlfriend would wear to bed if they weren't physically and emotionally revolting. The kind of T-Shirt you wore to death as a teenager until it lost all semblance of being decent. The only thing it's highstreet doppelganger is missing is cigarette burns and a lingering smell of body-odour and crushed optimism.

There were hats, purposefully bent out of shape. Shirt collar's were turned up and ruffled for that 'rough and ready'* look. Hoodies were crinkled like they'd just come out of the washing machine and sun-dried in a ball on someone's patio. Shoelaces weren't tied, jeans hung low, and the belts looked like they'd been stolen from a festival. I'm not particularly stressed out about this look. It suits some people. And by some people I mean people I actually like. The average guy in the street looks like a man who just spent two hundred pounds to look like a world weary gap-year student whose life has degenerated into a downward spiral of alcohol abuse, prostitution and debt.

There is still the vintage look going around too. People with giant retro cameras round their neck that doesn’t actually work. Brightly coloured oddments make up the rest of the outfit, including berets, flasher-macs, and boots that you wouldn't vomit in. Fashion is a strange world, I guess, but I still feel the compulsion to consume. It's like an insatiable hunger that'll probably end with a baffling spate of hammer-murders and shots of windswept desolate Yorkshire moors.

Good news for people who are finding the recession difficult to cope with, though. You can still look like everyone else for a fraction of the cost. Get those filthy festival shoes repaired. Don that 80’s belt you’ve been afraid to wear for fear of reprisal. Tie your jumper between two cars and pull it threadbare. Don’t worry about the hole in the seat of your jeans, because the point of jeans is to show your arse, be it from badly fitting belts that let them swing low, or tight skinnies that cut of circulation in your legs and force everything upward like a tube of toothpaste. Don’t shave for a few days so you can have that designer stubble. Why spend hard earned denari on hair products if all you want is a bedhead look? Just don’t comb.


Remember, looking like a like a failed art-student who hasn’t eaten for three days is the new hype. Worn is the new wear. If it looks bad, it looks good. If it looks untidy, is screams “Have me!” If you’re naturally unable to find that look yourself, go into any quality fashion retailer and pay hundreds of pounds for clothes you could find on cadaver in the sewer. Stay tuned for the 2012 look featuring: The collapse of ordered society and our descent into feral monsters picking at the post-apocalyptic remains of civilization.*


* Reads: There is a good chance I'm a prick
* I imagine this look involves body armour, coats with lots of pockets, matted hair, big shoes and punk influences. Think Fallout 3.