A Year Late- Fantastical Fashion Article

Write a savvy, dynamic feature for The Decade Edition, 27th December 2009. This edition will celebrate a decade in the millennium, combining thought provoking journalism with futuristic fashion features and 2010 hype. Your feature title is ‘Noughties Fashion: The Renaissance of the Individual or Copycat Culture?’ You will be required to write a maximum of 800 words for our fashion-forward readers, exploring the last ten years of fashion and what has influenced it. Ultimately, you must explore why the Noughties has struggled to develop its own distinct fashion culture, questioning the quality of life in the first 10 years of the 21st century.

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Noughties Fashion: The Renaissance of the Individual or Copycat Culture?

The kids of the i-Pod generation are rebelling. They are rebelling and they are wearing our 70s cast-offs for comfort. Why? Chavs, Crocs and Ugg boots. That’s why.

As we head towards the prolific date of 2010, I ask myself, what has this decade done for fashion? In this supposedly modern era, where a post-modern-neo-nu-rave-punk can saunter through the crowds in Dr. Martins and a trip down a British high-street bombards the casual shopper with copies of designer fashion, where does the distinction lie? The scenester’s are turning to vintage clothes and charity shops in a bid to escape the mundane of the high-street. They are bleaching their hair bright blue, piercing their septum’s and streaking tattoos up their arms. It’s a kind of desperation. Why, in a country that embraces individualism and a plethora of cultures, do we seem to be buying into the same trends? And why do those who actively seek eccentricity somehow manage to blend in?

You only have to Wikipedia ‘2000-2009’ to appreciate the last ten troubled years of economic collapse, political misery and natural disaster. So where has fashion fitted in? It has been unarguably confused. Fashion journalists have searched for a distinctive trend, a centre point or a definition as often associated with decades gone by. The Noughties, far from restricting fashion-followers, has offered creative freedom and choice to the open-minded, yet high-street honeys continue to clone themselves.

Let’s lay the blame on the Copycat’s, who claw over the latest Chanel spring/summer collection like a pack of wolves to a lump of flesh. The transition of fashion from couture to designer to high-street has seen a rapid development in the last ten years as production becomes more efficient and the demand from the high-street becomes intense. And here, ladies and gents, comes our national obsession with the Celebrity. ‘If Pixie Lott is wearing it, I want to be, but I want it affordable and I want it now.’ Never before has a decade been so obsessed with the fashion of the rich and famous or demanded cheap transfers of their lifestyle. As soon as Chloé displays their latest trend, hot off the catwalk, you can bet your bottom dollar that Topshop will produce an uncannily-yet-not-sue-worthingly similar design at a quarter of the price, and then who gets their grubby hands on a surprising look-a-like? Primark. The hoards pounce and devour with an animalistic greed.

And so sees the out-wearing of jeggings, of Ugg boots, of skinny jeans- they’ve been overdone, they are no longer fashion forward- if Katie Price is wearing them, no one else can. Primark’s ingenious invention of ‘throw-away-fashion,’ sees even the most timeless of styles being destroyed- the femme fatal delights of the trench coat, for example. Associated with wrapping up our feminine secrets like a scene out of Double Indemnity, we find that double-crossing Primark drains it of our fantasy and makes it commonplace and casual. And all because of sickeningly cheap rip-offs that we ashamedly adore. Spending £20 on a poorly made trench coat that’ll last you one season seems far more appealing than cashing out £95 on a Topshop copy that’ll last you three. And with money at a scarce minimum, who can blame theses savvy shoppers? After all, it’s supply and demand.

So where do the ‘look-at-me-I’m-different’ desperados go? The high-street may be the Holy Grail for Pixie Lott fans, but underground prog-rock-anti-folk lovers want much, much more. In walks the Renaissance of the Individual, where the fashion-lover-Topshop-hater seeks liberty from the cage of Copycat, but how? They are Magpieing.

Magpieing is the careful selection of fashion trends from the twentieth century in a bid to create a new, mish-mashed style of modern glory. Of course, the high-street is always toying with styles from days-gone-by but no one achieves it better than the scenester. They truly work for it. Searching the back of antique shops for a one-of-a-kind broach, turning over charity shops under the watchful eye of a disapproving volunteer, cashing out £40 on a vintage (more likely hand-me-down) knitted jumper with faux fur trimming… it’s madness, surely? Because, the sickening fact is that the transition from underground to mainstream has never been so swift. A cultural movement is taking place where styles that would be deemed eccentric and untouchable by many are cropping up all over fashion magazines with an unstoppable velocity. We are all revolutionaries. Shoulder-pads, thigh high boots, studs, Agyness Deyn hair cuts… the mainstream is sneaking these trends under their wing and acting like they made them, pioneered by Queen of quirk, Lady Gaga.

This modern Renaissance, where every fashionista seeks individualism, is consuming fashion fast. The underground is struggling to maintain its integrity more than ever before. And do not forget, readers, that with the World Wide Web, nothing is sacred. This decade has seen the creation of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Blogging. The ease of access to information leads to unavoidable exposure, so how is the scenester supposed to keep style for themselves? Eventually, the mainstream wave will engulf all; leaving the original Renaissance radicals inevitable victims of Copycat Culture.

We Still Got The Taste Dancing On Our Tongues

Is….is….…..is it you? Come closer. No! Don’t turn on the light! Stay away! You scorn me, you taunt me with artificial hope! Who are you?... I remember those days not. I only remember snow. Snow. All there is now is the white sheet of slipshod snow.

The long hold of winter did more to me than I could have imagined. It sucked my spirit out of my eyeballs and tossed it to the rain clouds. It chewed desire out of my feet and fed it to the frost. Will this ever be over? Has the ice age taken hold of our land? Is this Armageddon? Has the holy one who I have always denied finally remembered his role and reaped vengeance across the country for our fornication, and our binge drinking, and our breaking of dear old Britain? Retreating to the log cabin, bolting the door, surrounded by tins of pineapple, I pull the winter furs around my chapped neck skin, forehead to my knees, to the safety of the foetal, forever. Hibernation is dedication. It involves the removal of motivation. I forget the need to shave. My legs become a terrain of hostile helplessness. My armpits the place of demons. My upper-lip, Jolen starved, form the dense paintbrush shadow. All is lost. All is over.
Winter has won.
Winter has won.
Winter has won.

And then, as if from the fair throat of Liberty herself, comes the lowly cry of the defiant starling. 'No,' he calls, 'No! We cannot give in. We cannot allow this damned season to win! We'll wait for Spring! We'll wait for Spring!'

I, lost in untold folds of grease and despair, stir. The noise of birdsong rustles in my lank tresses like fresh sea water.

The Venetian blind cancels out the day. I have circum to a defeatist state of mind. There will be no spring, there is no such thing, there never was, only winter, perpetual, consuming winter, with his toothy snarl and his drippy, snotty nose.

‘No!’ Cries the starling, ‘Awaken, girl, awaken, gaze beyond your window… go, go, gaze beyond the winter girl, the window!’

And so I write this, in blessed happiness that all is right in the world, that we have not been forgotten, that spring has sprung across the lost broadlands of our hearts like a big, happy orgasm of peace.


The long hold

Awake! Fragranced space pours pithy through the pours,
See the spirit that winter weathered, frost dishevelled pelt adores.
She’ll awake; she’ll awake, to the whistle clear of day,
Childish roots shoot under mantles of a distinct, dormant delay.
See how the crocus is buoyant beneath the hanker of the framework fall,
So awake and alight and engage with the seamless beat of the call.

My grey eyes felt the feeling of the steady
Seedless peeling of the second skin I owned.
Yet to wake from dreamt indolence, a delusion
Dampened scene, I’ll follow him with the infant faith
of springtime’s summer dream.

Stepping out of the sepia, winters hold undone,
My grey eyes laugh patina at the exultant heat of sun.

Soft with fatigue.

Ergh. I've dragged myself from my filthy pit to write to you. I've had a problem with Valentine's Day since I was four years old and I'll have a problem with it for the rest of my life.

Charlwood was a private school, god knows why I went to private school at four years old but I suppose superior education seemed ideal at the time. I have a twin brother, Daniel, therefore we have been through school together, side by side, since the beginning of time. I've only just realized this and it's pretty cool, having an allie as close as a twin brother through all of the horror's of school life.

My family will always remember a teacher from that school, Miss Potter, we'll never forget her name, who endlessly and relentlessly picked on my brother like he was an annoying tumour attached to her eyelid. She was a very bad teacher. Oddly, I remember how we used to have to say a prayer before lunch or we wouldn't be allowed to eat, and how uncomfortable I felt even then. I remember Dan whispering venomously to all the kids at our table that we didn't believe in god, like we were admitting to having a heroine addiction, and all the children gasped and one hissed, 'I'm telling!' There was a milk scheme where one pupil was appointed daily(or was it weekly?) to control milk distribution. It was a high accolade. When it was some one's birthday they were allowed to stand up in front of assembly and be sung to. It was a very, very small school. Once, when my little sister was born, my brother and I announced her birth to everyone like we were royalty. I felt very important that day. But that school was not very good at making its students feel important. In hindsight, having left in Year 1 and gone to a comprehensive (due to the dreaded Miss Potter, no less,) and as I get older, I keep finding endless flaws in the way it was organised. I have a shamefully appalling memory and yet I remember so much from Charlwood, and I was only four years old.

I remember the competition to draw a rabbit. I remember the big cement tunnel in the playground that was submerged in a hill, (more likely a small mound,) so that it looked like a cave. I remember the old wooden crates and tires that you could play with at lunch, and the library. I remember the annual competition to choose a Harvest Queen and King... was it harvest? Or May Day? I think it was May Day actually. They were always Year 2's and they were always the prettiest and they always wore flowers in their hair and got to dance around the May pole and wear the stunning bridesmaid's dress of my dreams. I hated them. I was never Mary and I was never May Queen, or Princess. I was a cloud in the Nativity play and my brother was a robin. It was always the same girl who got to be Mary. I remember sitting in a circle and the teacher asking who would like to be Mary and even though I put my hand up I knew I wouldn't be picked and I knew who would. And she was. It's still the same to this day. I suppose I have a bit of a complex about May Queen's.

So, where's this all going, hey? The thing is this; I don't think school's should acknowledge Valentine's Day at all. It doesn't have any significance to the real world and only sets children up to suffer disappointment. But no, Charlwood decided that it would be super kitsch if all the Year 2's made a Valentine's card for someone in reception. [DISCLAIMER: I don't know how much of this memory I have fabricated or imagined, but every year it comes back to me with distinct clarity and horror and I can't help but believe that it is true. Then again, I'm adamant that when I watched my Dad arrest someone in Woolworth's he said 'I'm arresting for you ser-to-sigh-etty.' Which, in retrospect, is not true at all.] They sat each reception child in rows in the hall, facing the assembly door, a firing line. I have a vague memory of being elevated, like I was on a platform, but maybe that just illustrates the extent of my agony and solitude. The Year 2's filed in, embarrassed yet wildly impressed at their card making skills and the thought that were were expressing emotion to another pupil. Pink, red, sparkles, PVA glue, buttons, magazine cut-outs, asymmetrical hearts, fluff, finger prints. The cards fluttered in as if they were floating on an puff of glittery sweetness. The reception children twitched anxiously in their seats. Would the snotty, smelly boy give his card to me? The one who used to try and hold my hand at break time? Or would the very grown up, good looking stud, who had a trendy hair cut and a pretty mum? The one who was always May Day King and Joseph. Slowly, the hand-made masterpieces were distributed and excited chatter ensued. It was loud, and consuming, and somehow managed to throw an invisibility cloak over me in my small silence. In my patience. In my hope. I think I may have made a tiny, desperate prayer then, just a little one, like the time I prayed that Mum and Dad would let me stay up to watch You've Been Framed. The prayer drifted above me in the air like stagnant gas. The possibility was hanging on with all its might. I was hanging on, my heart pounded with pleading, 'Please, please, please.' Then, like a thousand tons of hot, harsh air, the truth hit me full in the face and feelings. No one had made me a card. No one. Not even the snotty, smelly boy. I was alone and lonely and stayed sat on my little school chair, devastated. I remember crying and needing to go to the toilet and needing to go home and needing to pull the head off every happy face in that hall. The crying overcame me. I was heaving heavy sobs out across the hall like the ceiling had just caved in on top of me, devastated.

So how did Charlwood resolve this abominable mistake? Mrs. Lamb, my teacher, haphazardly doodled some kind words on a piece of red card and folded it in half. I became the kid who'd got a Valentine's from the teacher. My brother taunted me with his card for what felt like weeks, but I suppose that was his role, the smug twin brother who got the chocolate milk. I cringe to think back to it. The burnt heart-shaped blotch in my memory, singed and steaming.

These sort of memories, these harrowing experiences as a child, they really do effect your whole perspective. Now, often, I feel like I'm the one missing out. The one who'll always be waiting for her Valentine's, who'll always look to Valentine's day with dread and hope, who, upon hearing the postman push letters through the door will, despite herself, run downstairs in angst and anticipation. Yet the one who'll always, inevitably, receive a little note from her Mum, or a heart felt recognition of the past from her sister, or a hastily scribbled piece of scrap paper from her teacher.

My sensible heart.

This is the creative writing I was telling you about. I wrote it in about 40 minutes in a seminar and have polished it up a little. We were given an image of a black, leather book with the words 'I do not want this back,' tipexed across the cover in large capitals. This is what came to me...

Dead Letters

Autumn brought cold sunshine and the need to feel whole again. The hollow chest was echoing, full of sound instead of feeling. I have that lime green scarf on, the one that we found at the train station, and my hair is washed out blue, like a damp cloth, you had said. The thankless grim of daylight burns blotches in my eyes and the weather is misbehaving.

Holding onto you for the last time, my veins squirm under my silver skin, swimming. Those nails you had painted are rolling around my tongue, my fingers bleed from their beds. Helpless and eaten with your disease, The Book sings songs still searching. It makes no sense now. Words written by your hand are broken, pulled flat across the page.

The smell of petrol reminds me of camping. The smell of anything reminds me of camping. It’s consumed my senses.

The Book brought pen to page and gave that night reason.

The Book was dead; it didn’t exist until you made it. It was just a dream to get us through the dusty air and delusion.

The Book remembered us. Now I have to forget.

Gasoline melts through pages. Soaking ink and glue and photograph. I should pray. I should pick flowers. Or weep. We are so beyond those times. The lighter flashes, the flame won’t hold. The fire licks and falls, licks and falls, licks and holds, sudden and hungry, eating the corners, the sides, the leather coat. Burning. Your words smell like burning.

I drop you onto the dirt. I drop you from my wet, bloody fingers and watch as orange ribbons suck your little soul away.

The sun sighs and moves slowly beneath the sycamore trees. Night holds me: linger, wait, stay, the ash must cool; you must watch the dead letters blow away.

Testing the waters with the tip of my finger, I begin to scoop the ashes into a plastic bag. Handfuls. And then I scream. I panic, I’m frantic. The ashes fall away, the sulphur smell disappears and The Book shines whole in my hands. Untouched, untainted, unbroken. The Book shines whole in my hands.

Modern times arrived.

Oh hai there. It's been a while. How you doing?

They say this is the most depressing time of the year. January. Oh January, poor January. It didn't choose to be at the beginning of the year. At the beginning of the time that you tell yourself that you will loose weight, that you will find love, that you will stop taking crack. And when you fail, inevitably, you blame January.

On a topical note, considering the name of my blog and my blirgin post, Marina and her lovely, little Diamonds have released the most radio friendly song of the decade (of the last 24 days, then.) I am emotional. All I said in my review, all I predicted, all I hoped against, has come to light. I suppose I should have prepared myself for this. But I am not prepared. Shall we take a look at her lyrics? Just to rub salt into the wound that is rapidly stretching across my heart...

'Hollywood infected your brain
You wanted kissing in the rain
Oh oh, I’ve been living in a movie scene
Puking American dreams
Oh oh, I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America
I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America.'

Whenever someone sings about how shite America is, they have officially run out of ideas. America is such an easy target, so unimaginative, so done. It's lyrics like that that are for the masses, because the neutral, unpassionate middleman responds with a, 'Yeah! Fuck America, or Iraq, or whatever... where's my Mean Girl's DVD?' When Green Day released 'American Idiot' my soul broke in two. And Enter Shikari's most recent album, don't even get me started on that. A butler, I can only assume, opens with his 'vexing' voice over: 'An aidless and harrowing future is developing for our generation and generations to come.' Then, we are encouraged, in a million languages, that 'WE MUST UNITE!!!!' Come on, drop the bullshit! You don't care that we live in a corrupt society. If you did, you'd start a revolution or sign a petition or start a facebook group or send a text, man. It is so very distasteful when musician's choose to turn their aggressive attention onto a particular country. Or even worse, onto Capitalism. This is the way it is. It wouldn't work better any other way and there's nothing much that we, the people, can do to power change. Of course, united, we could effect something better for ourselves, but there will always be lies, there will always be conspiracies and unknown factors behind the facade of a functioning society, so stop Capitalism Bashing and write something effective. I'm pretty defeatist when it comes to politics and the such. It's a bleak prospect, but human beings have lived centuries and centuries under the wrath of superior rule, and sometimes, get this.... even quite contentedly!

This is getting overwrought. I only came here to show you what I wrote in my Creative Writing seminar but now I think it'll make this blog to long and it won't be read. Dread. I'll post it later. As for now, listen to Marina's song 'Hollywood,' and die a little.

I can assure you it's just a scratch.

So I've been thinking about the perusal of male affection. And I've been thinking, being single for a whole year in March and all, wow, that I'm bored and tired and have had enough of playing with the toys of 'The Love Game.' As the Ga Ga says, 'It's complicated and stupid, got my ass squeezed by sexy cupid.' Excluding the latter, which is drivel, it certainly is stupid. And most certainly a game.

Shall I text him?
Shall I wait approx. 4 hours to add him on facebook?
Shall I stalk him on said facebook?- Of course.
How shall I present my tone in the text?
Presumptuous?
Casual?
Officious?
Shall I put a kiss on the end?
Shall I not, to appear allusive?
Shall I ask to meet?
Shall I wait for him to ask me?
Shall I take my clothes off, rub baby oil on my lumps, take a picture and bluetooth it to him to make him want me?

Ya-de-ya-de-ya-da. Bull. Back in the day, when all was good and true, there was no text. There was no facebook, tool of the demons, or digitalisation, or Heelies. There was just two faces, two voiceboxes and awkward eye contact. Oh to go back to a time when a man actually courted a woman. I'm romanticizing, I know, but all this unreal interweb microwave cowardly communication and all its stupid rules is fundamentally odd.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned? Well. I know I'm old fashioned, it's stitched onto my palms like ring worm, but I would love to just meet a guy, find ourselves mutually attracted and get the hell on with it. In my mind, each futile text is a building brick, each facebook 'poke' a slather of cement and each MSN 'nudge' a foundation to the Anti Human Communication Wall. Which ultimately leads to dry conversation and mindless shagging. Explains a lot, right?

I've been swirling around in a washing machine mind on repeat. I've been finding the seams in my seamless soul and wondering what is wrong. But, in reality, when I disregard self-esteem and the need to be modest, I know that I'm not unattractive. I have 2 arms. And 2 legs. Bonus. I have two eyes that are almost the same size and a nose that doesn't eat my face like a blood hungry leech. My ears don't stick out. I am not fat and I am not skinny. My hair could do with work but I am paying the price of impatience and I've dealt with it. I'm tall, but hey, whenever was that a sin? I am able bodied and I'm not obsessively into cattle production or The Chronicles of Narnia, meaning, I am not a single minded bore. So what's the issue?

There's this cliché which I shall resentfully repeat, I can't abide cliché, that goes 'When you stop looking, he will find you.' Oh hai! Thanks! So if you naturally want something with all your body and heart you simply have to order your mind to give up! Simples! (Meerkat referencing, the shame.) It's impossible. It's like telling a moth to stop seeking the light, like telling a dog to stop licking its arse hole. I am being totally hyperbolic but hey, it's all such a joke.

Ultimately, in this labyrinth of do or don't, within this rule book of shall I/shan't I, is the irrevocable truth that there is no escaping it. Modern times dictate that I'll meet my match on e-harmony.com, get married, hold the wedding reception in the town hall with a disco DJ, get hideously drunk to hide the fact that I've always been sure I'd make matrimony with Robert Patterson and end up smashing my Nan in the face with the bottom tier of the wedding cake.

Sweet.

Do you trust me, Clive?

Well, what a wonderful way to end a wayward decade. My sister and I truly climbed upon the rock-rap 90's bandwagon of Rage Against the Machine and our unabridged pleasure at the prospers of our protest have left me quite giddy. Like a little girl creeping downstairs on Christmas morning- the glory, the splendour of seeing all the presents splayed out across the floor, the half-eaten carrot, the sherry devoured, the sooty boot marks on the carpet. Bliss.

Ay, music fans, I'm sure you share my joy. It's not that I am a massive RATM fan, I wouldn't go out of my way to see them live but I harbour an inextinguishable hatred for the X-Factor and everything related to it. Trips home to the Southside are bittered by the putrid stench of Cowell. I abhor it. I express my disgust at the monotony of modern day music making to my parents who, ashamed yet content, gaze at the telly-box with addicted helplessness like monkey's forced into cocaine. My Mother pleads 'I hate it, I just watch it for the laughs, promise.' Just like the rest of the nation then? I’m sure.

So imagine my utter delight when I found this group which was revolting against the bullshit, joining together the like-minded music-lovers of the late Noughties like something from our nostalgic sexual fantasies of yesteryear! The revolution had begun and I was taking part! I was standing hand-in-hand with those who just wouldn't take it no more more. No, they wouldn't take it no more. I ain't gonna stand idly by while the bridal reply of a marriage of styles is "Yeah, but what's their demographic?"

I ain't gonna take it no more.
I ain't gonna take it no more.
I ain't gonna stand idly by with a tut and a sigh while inside we all cry out for something new.

I ain't gonna take it no more.
I ain't gonna take it no more.
Soulless music, artless lyrics.
Goalless movements, heartless gimmicks.
Controlled and clueless, careers lasting a minute.
If this is the big life, well I ain't lookin' to live it.
We ain't pushing the boundaries, we're blowing them up.
We ain't trying to expand the scene, we want the scene to erupt.

Ay, Dan Le Sac VS Scroobius Pip knew what they were on about. Alas, if only we were revolting against war! Against poverty! Against racism! And not just against some grossly over paid high-waisted git called Simon who we have all chosen to demonise. Even so, we like to pretend that we play an active part in history, don’t we? Like we were there when the first plane hit, when the bus exploded, when the wave consumed, when the carpet was forcibly removed from under the Cowell’s feet. I was there! I've cut out the article to show my kids. Not that they will care or understand the sheer endlessness of my joy or how we won. How we did it. How my sister got whiplash moshing in our living-room to the live Radio1 coverage. Or how I made a video. Or how we told the man in Vue cinema about Christmas number 1 who really didn’t care at all.

Glory is mine, forever, amen. I have defeated this decade and all its horrors just by downloading a song titled, ‘Killing in the Name.’ So it's sort of apt then, really.