Every week my brother passes on to me his glossy Sunday magazine. I refuse to buy week-end newspapers, simply because of the amount of instantly discardable additions they carry. Gardening, Motoring, Art and Literature, Travel, Education etc., etc. Far from enticing me (and I suspect thousands of others) to buy, I find it thoroughly off-putting as I hate the thought of instantly binning loads of waste paper! But I digress. As I have said before, although I am 75 I enjoy keeping abreast of fashion.
When I am out and about with my husband, we love to sit with a cup of coffee and people-watch. He, being interested in fitness, searches the crowds for acceptable physiques while I cast around, mostly in vain, for a truly attractive woman (of any age) wearing a nice combination of garments.
For a start skirts and coats are largely absent. Very few beautiful wool coats brave the elements, instead almost every female sports jeggings, leggings or skinny jeans, topped by a kidney-freezing short jacket. Flat-heeled boots as well as sneakers or trainers are in abundance and thank goodness my eyes are lately spared those awful tan-coloured flat-footed, sloppy and extremely Ugly boots that I shall not name, but which for two or three seasons past took the country by storm. (I'll leave the trend for ripped jeans for another day - too heated!)
Which all leads me on to a disconnect between what ladies obviously mainly buy, and trends as espoused by fashion designers and editors.
Firstly, aside from the frequently odd-looking, androgynous, unsmiling twiggy models they hang their choices on, their fashion columns are exercises in self-proclamation, trumpeting their take on trends that necessarily change by the week. How else are we to be persuaded to continually discard perfectly wearable items of clothing?
Secondly, the odd shapes, random patterns and sloppy fit fashion editors espouse could, in my opinion, better be achieved by a swift flick through the rails of the average charity shop and an out-lay much more within the budget of us ordinary folk!
