icons pt1. my fashion substance

Being a dedicated follower of fashion doesn't get you far in my book, barely past the dust cover to be frank. The big beef I have with the fashionista/isto brigade is that it is all style without substance; wearing and doing just because you have been told you should is the same thinking that plunged western Europe into a world war for the second time in under 30 years- yep I am comparing All Saints to Nazi Germany, and what of it? Not only is it mindless, it's obvious and painfully dull to watch these geese strutting around in a mish-mash of their top three window dressings. As a result you get some pretty incoherent mixes of styles, which is not to say being creative and subverting the norm is in anyway a bad thing but neon and brogues are never going to go together and it's worrying that those who spend so much time looking into their own visage cannot see this. Nothing is cool just because it's cool.

I guess in the same way that I'm a literary snob I'm a fashion snob. I refuse to read anything that is not considered a classic (modern or otherwise) and shy away from anything at all which has been written in my lifetime. Likewise I will follow trends but I want them to have icons and a base that is not what's in this month's GQ; I need fashion to have a personality or a sponsor with credentials. I think a look should be a lifestyle.

The mods and the goths have got it right as have the punks and maybe even the hippies.. but perhaps that Pill is a Little too Jagged to swallow. Me? I'm a big fan of the subversives: James Dean, Kurt Cobain and Hunter S. Thompson.


Jimmy Dean doesn't need much explaining; did three great films, smoked a lot, crashed his car, died. One of the coolest guys who ever lived.. and then shortly died.


Kurt Cobain is a little trickier; the reason Kurt is so awesome is that he never really intended it, or at least didn't try too hard at it in the conventional sense. He had effortless style and presence, was the figure head for disenfranchised youth and killed himself. Cool.


Hunter S. Thompson is a complicated fellow, though again quite effortlessly cool. Hunter's big "fuck you" to everyone and everything that he decided to be unfair and un-American was about the coolest thing to happen to the 70's, along with his shorts, sports socks, Chuck Taylors, cigarettes and shades. Oh and he killed himself too, it's pretty tough at the top.

These three guys had an unmistakable style but this style was a by-product of their life and of their personality- there was substance, and this is the ethos behind dressing well. Your look should evolve from yourself. My grunge/utilitarian look comes from my own desire to not be restricted or tied down. I don't ever want to have to get changed because I'm unsuitable to go garden hopping at 3am or worried about ruining myself scrabbling around in frozen gravel. I don't want my look to dictate my life and neither did my fashion heroes.

Put this another way: one of the best-looking-on-going-fist-fights of all time was the Mods Vs. Rockers clashes of the 60s. Each side in uniform dictated to them by their lifestyle and music taste, no mod would listen to rock and no rocker would listen to mod, there were no part-time fanciers of these gangs. This is how it should be today, perhaps without all the fighting, but unless your look is at least partly representative of yourself then you are no better than a fashionisto.. or a Nazi, whichever sits with you better.