Fashion excess

According to a recent article in the Financial Times, 2013 was a frustrating year for Bangladeshi garment manufacturers.

While their exports have grown dramatically, political unrest and uncertainty has increased their costs, depriving them of the opportunity to achieve even greater increases. According to their trade association,

"In November, [garment] exports rose over 29 per cent but our target was about 40 per cent."

It's a fair bet that at least some of that 29% increase is now hanging on sale rails or languishing in warehouses, waiting for some shopper to succumb to the lure of a hefty sale discount; many major chain stores still have large areas of the shop floor devoted to sale garments nearly a month after they first began to cut prices.

The major supermarkets, too, have been left with unsold items clogging up their clothing departments - cheap and cheerful their wares may be, but when the high street giants have slashed their prices to similar levels, the discerning customer is likely to head for the mall.

The clothing retail industry seems to have bought wholeheartedly into the belief that growth is infinitely sustainable, and, with a finite customer base, this means expecting everyone to buy more - the reasoning behind a major retailer's boast that its website has 'hundreds of new arrivals every week'.

Many of these new arrivals will be marked down within a few weeks to make way for the next shipment. The trouble with this strategy is that it ignores the inherent conservatism of many shoppers and the financial and storage constraints that place a natural ceiling on almost everyone's purchasing.

Prices are the lowest they have ever been in real terms as retailers compete in a race to the bottom, but much of this has been achieved at the cost of low pay and appalling working conditions for workers in the industry. Somehow it makes it worse to think that the results of their labours now sit neglected on a sale rail amid a glut of unwanted merchandise.

Meanwhile, other countries are getting in on the act, with India planning the kind of factory and dormitory combinations that have allowed China to undercut the rest of the world in manufacturing costs. Even allowing for new markets opening up in developing countries where second-hand clothes are currently big business, it's hard to see how these millions of garments will find a home.

Clothing sales surely cannot continue to grow indefinitely, whatever the manufacturers of Bangladesh may wish for.

"...He just feels restricted in conventional clothes"

This week, the Tavern resounded to a rousing cheer for the Stockholm train drivers who have struck a mighty blow against fashion stereotypes.

A dozen male train drivers in Sweden have circumvented a ban on shorts by wearing skirts to work in hot weather.

A few centuries ago, or a few thousand miles away, there would be nothing unusual about a man wearing a piece of draped material round his waist rather than encasing his nether limbs in individual fabric tubes; indeed, as the intrepid Swedes have found, there are distinct advantages in hot weather.

Yet, somehow, our region of the world has developed an odd system of taboos and aversions; while women are mostly free to interchange skirts and trousers at will, the male skirt is still a headline-grabber when it makes one of its occasional forays into the world of fashion and celebrity.

Of course, the Scots are well aware of the advantages and style potential of the kilt, which can also occasionally be seen on unaccustomed Southern wedding guests decked out at the bride's insistence. I once overheard a bunch of them complaining in unmistakable Estuary English in a Home Counties hotel bar; it was clear that the whole skirt/kilt business made them distinctly uncomfortable.

This prejudice, of course, is why it took no small measure of confidence for schoolboy Chris Whitehead to wear his sister's skirt to school two years ago in protest at a ban on shorts; his gesture attracted the attention of the national press and a great deal of public admiration without which the outcome might have been very different.

We have somehow acquired a set of unwritten sartorial regulations and conventions that are, when you look at them, largely arbitrary and illogical; why, for instance, should a man be required to knot a length of fabric around his neck before being allowed to enter certain premises? [Insert your own Parliamentary joke here.]

To fall short of these standards or reject them is to invite at best scorn or ridicule and at worst outright hostility. While the Ancient Romans regarded trousers on a man as the unmistakable sign of a barbarian, a group of 21st-century Swedish men going to work in skirts is enough to make international news.

So, although everyone concerned should really have taken it in their stride and not made a fuss, since it has been made into a news story, I invite you to join me in raising a glass to Swedish train drivers in skirts.

Skål!

National Headcrab Zombie day

It's the opportunity of the decade for those lucky enough to have secured an invitation - the chance of a loving close-up beamed live to the biggest TV audience in history. Small wonder, then, that the guests in the Abbey are done up to the nines.

And for the majority of female guests, that means paying tribute to Kate's preferred headgear, the fascinator - or headcrab, as it's known in the Tavern for its sprouting tentacles, claws and protuberances. Yes, the headcrab zombies are out in force today*, if the early BBC coverage is anything to go by, and the same phenomenon will doubtless be appearing up and down the land.

One face we won't, alas, be seeing in close-up is that of the thwarted Cherie Blair left at home with no invitation - unless, of course, she turns up at the Abbey in full wedding rig, insisting that there is definitely a spare seat (in which case the Spouse will win a £1 bet).

                             'Headcrab Zombies, take us to your leader...'

*For those not in the loop, 'A headcrab's primary goal is to attach to the head of a suitable host using its mouth [...] incorporating parts of its biological workings with the motor cortex of the host's nervous system. The victim is thus taken over by the headcrab and mutated into a mindless zombie-like being known as a headcrab zombie.' [Wikipedia]

A hot weather post...

This is from Poorlydressed, where they have given it one of my favourite captions ever:

'Sometimes it’s just too hot to leave the house in head-to-toe quasi-futuristic Victorian regalia. Even steampunks go to the beach.'


There's more fun in the comments...

Now I just need a marble, a chute, a rickety set of steps, a guy in a bathing costume getting ready to dive into a tub…

Aintree - beware of headcrab zombies!

Grand National day - the thud of hooves on turf, the clatter of jumps, the excitement of the finish and, of course, hats.

Though they do seem to have shrunk rather in recent years; regardless of the quantities of bubbly sunk by Liverpool's lasses, there'll be a fair few sore heads tomorow after a day in the blazing sun protected by nothing more that a few feathers and a bit of netting.

I'm told it's all because of Kate Middleton - you just can't get away from the woman! Largely thanks to her predilection for the things, a whole industry has sprung up selling and even renting out what my milliner grandmother would have called 'scraps' for exorbitant prices.

Meanwhile they are, according to the Artful Dodger, causing much amusement in the geek world. You see - forgive me if I get this wrong but I'm off my home turf here - there was once a computer game called Half-life which featured a multi-legged menace to society known as the headcrab.

'A headcrab's primary goal is to attach to the head of a suitable host using its mouth [...] incorporating parts of its biological workings with the motor cortex of the host's nervous system. The victim is thus taken over by the headcrab and mutated into a mindless zombie-like being known as a headcrab zombie.' [Wikipedia]

Half-life in its turn spawned a so-bad-it's-good fan-fiction which has become an internet cult.

Now, thanks to the Dodger, the phrase 'headcrab zombie' has passed into family parlance at the Tavern to denote a mindless fashion victim, particularly one sporting a fascinator.

Frankly, I can't think of a better description.

Crimes of Fashion

First there was heroin chic, now there's stabbing style. Today's award for pretentious and unpleasant navel-gazing goes to the fashion designer whose latest collection, 'inspired by knife crime', is on show at Harvey Nichols this week.

Every now and then, you see a news story of such jaw-dropping strangeness that you think it has to be a hoax, but this is reported in po-faced style by the Telegraph, hardly a hotbed of tabloid inaccuracies.

The 'exciting young talent' responsible for this assortment of hooded tops and modified tracksuits seems a little confused in his thinking, claiming inspiration from the "narrative of 19th century Japanese pottery" but also including the statement that "knife crime is an issue that has affected and somewhat darkened the society that we live in today".

Somewhat? Somewhat? You mean 'it's all a bit unpleasant, but guys, your clothes are great!' Still, he also asserts that his work is "not just for anyone" and was "not designed for people who commit crime" but the "honourable victims", so that's alright then, isn't it?

As an exercise in tastelessness, this surpasses even the satirical film Zoolander, where New York's fashionistas swoon over the rags and dirt of the homeless-inspired 'Derelicte' collection. Its creator is now being tipped for the top, so look out in future for collections inspired by random muggings, gay-bashing and racist assault.

But I haven't got a thing to wear!

We’re all tightening our belts these days, but it seems that some of them are brand new ones from Matalan. Despite the gloom and doom of the High St, the fashion chain is planning to speed up its expansion plans, claiming there is room out there for a further 50 stores.

With like-for-like sales rising over 8 percent in the past 14 weeks, they have the figures to back up this assertion. But it does leave one wondering where all these clothes will go in an already saturated national wardrobe; after all, if clothing sales were completely halted for the next year, none of us would be wandering round naked from necessity (from choice, now; there’s a different matter).

Somehow the nation has become stuck in a sartorial feeding frenzy. Yesterday, an interviewee on the radio said that she would spend her benefit money on clothes for her children rather than paying her utility bills - at the same time, schools have abandoned second-hand uniform shops because parents and children will not accept used clothing.

And so the juggernaut rolls on, fuelled by the media propaganda of ‘must-haves’ and ‘fashion essentials’, and to make room for it all, the UK annually dumps 1.2 million tonnes of clothing in landfill sites. Another 50 Matalan stores - that's just what this country needs!

A Call to Arms

There has been much debate among the inmates of Newgate about the trend-bucking increase in profits at a certain budget high street fashion chain recently voted least ethical clothing retailer in Britain. Now the credit crunch is biting we can see just how much impact the welfare of third world garment workers will have on British shoppers and it's not a pretty sight!

The chain in question has created a website promoting its ethical record and attributes its low prices to to simple styles and economies of scale. However, much of the clothing on sale at the cheaper end of the market features hand-sewn beads and sequins - as seen in a BBC documentary being sewn on by children - which are highly labour-intensive.

While it has often been argued that buying sweatshop-produced clothing gives developing countries an economic boost, it seems likely that recession in Britain will put manufacturers under further pressure to reduce costs and lead in the long term to more outsourcing to child labour and unsafe or illegal factories. This applies even more to intricate embroidery and beadwork.

If we must have inexpensive fashion, we need a new 'austerity chic' featuring well-cut simple styles which can be made cheaply by skilled machinists - after all, who needs sequins on their pyjamas? Unfortunately we also need a better-educated public; consider this recent comment from a fashion website - '18 squids for a sequin shift?! I am *so* having it!'

Looks like we're facing an uphill struggle.