Charlie Brooker on Fashion

Wonderful rant by Charlie Brooker on the subject of fashion

Last week, hardcore idiots across the nation stood in rows at dawn, desperate to get their hands on a cotton bag with “I’m not a plastic bag” printed on it. Right now, a group of determined oafs is camping out in preparation for tomorrow’s launch of the new Kate Moss clothing range at Topshop. If Grazia magazine printed an article declaring it fashionable to smack yourself in the forehead with a limited-edition ball-pein hammer designed exclusively by Coleen McLoughlin, a mob would form outside your local B&Q before the ink had dried on the page.

It’s a mystery to me. If the whole point of fashion is to distinguish yourself from the herd, why queue up to be part of it? Am I missing something here? I suspect not. But then I don’t “get” fashion. I once went out with a girl who was obsessed with dressing up; a real clothes nerd. While we were together, she developed a serious jeans habit. Each week, a new pair. She’d bring them home and show them to me, bubbling with excitement. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between one pair and the next, and I was staring pretty hard, in case there was a quiz at the end of the relationship. Doubtless a fellow jeans spod would’ve been thrilled by her purchases. To me, it was like trying to spot minute discrepancies between two marked playing cards.

I’m with Charlie Brooker here. Last Friday night we had a works do which ended up at some dreadfully trendy nightclub full of fashion victims, everyone just posing around, with a DJ playing ‘cool’ (i.e. crap) music. I felt totally out of place, as if I’d landed on an alien planet, and just stood around wishing I was somewhere else, like the gig the week before.