Catwalk Catastrophe

My name is Paul and I’m a fashion victim.

I don’t mean I’m a victim of fashion like, say, David Beckham who wears clothes only once, or his wife who slavishly follows the latest designers and spends a fortune to look like mutton dressed as, well, mutton. No, I’m a fashion victim in the way that a hit and run patient is a traffic victim. Like the virgin Queen Elizabeth the First, I just don’t get it.

I’m sure it wasn’t always this way. I think we all must reach a certain age when any clothes at all just look wrong on us as we head for the flat cap and anorak phase of our lives. Perhaps there should be a law that states everyone over forty must walk around naked although, in my case, I fear people would assume I’d gone for the crumpled linen look.

Take that forty something sex symbol Tom Cruise for example. This week I spotted him at an awards thing dressed in a grey double breasted suit with a blue V neck pullover and shirt and tie underneath. What was he thinking? Even my granddad wouldn’t wear a pullover with a suit - especially not now that he’s passed away. You could say he wouldn’t be seen dead in it.

But I’m no longer sure of my critical faculties. Perhaps Tom’s at the cutting edge and this is a new look we’ll be going for in six months. I draw the line, however, at the shoes. Lifts are for high rise buildings.

My kids constantly tell me that shirts have to be worn outside the trousers, but does that include with a suit? They tell me that my Timberland boots (or my Yellow Shoes as they call them) are old fashioned and look like Billy Connolly’s banana shoes which are now stored in a museum somewhere. And as for the smooth leather biker’s jacket I bought in New York, I’ve been allowed to wear it just once – to a fancy dress party.

Perhaps then there’s a chance that I’m not a fashion victim after all but a victim of women bullying me in to what to wear. I don’t remember Tom Cruise looking like a media studies teacher before he married so this is a recent development and my theory is that men are fine till women get their hands on them.

When I was single, fashion was never a problem and I wore whatever I wanted. Granted there may have been a few mistakes, and the white bomber jacket with blue criss crossed lacing across the front may have been ahead of its time (a time that, admittedly, hasn’t yet come) and the tight cheesecloth shirt with a tie dyed collar was an acquired taste, but generally I think I got it more right than wrong.

And then came along the great opinionated stylist that every marriage provides you with free of charge. It started with me being warned that under no circumstances was I to turn up scruffy for the wedding or stand at the altar in a luminous coloured suit. My compromise, or bit of rebellion, was to wear a sober, full dress kilt outfit but with outrageous multi coloured silk underwear underneath. I still sweat when I remember the embarrassment of stealing those knickers from my busty neighbour's wash line!

Since then I’ve been more lager lout than Lagerfeld. I’ve fought and tried to resist all hints and bullying from my wife about what colours suit me and what styles are best to disguise a beer belly, so now I have no opinions of my own. Often I’ll buy stuff just to annoy her, the latest being a beenie hat I purchased last weekend which has now, mysteriously, disappeared. I’ve based my fashion sense for so long on being contrary that I now no longer know what’s right or thong.

Perhaps I need a stylist. One of the great things about hosting TV shows is that someone else picks your clothes for you. No stress, no worries. Except, I once had a stylist at Sky TV who, mysteriously, kept misplacing my clothes only for them to reappear the following week. I finally discovered she had been taking them home to her husband each weekend so he could look good on the Hampstead dinner party circuit. The words Dry and Cleaning had never entered her vocabulary and the deposited matter would have made for a particularly difficult final year forensic exam.

Unless you’ve had to do it you can’t possibly understand, but I urge you to try wearing trousers that another bloke has been wearing before you. Even a full Turkish bath with two hairy all in wrestlers lashing the grime out of you as they beat you with wet towels won’t make you feel clean. Excited perhaps, but not clean.

So what am I to do? Listen to my wife and kids or ignore them and do what I did as a single bloke? It’s not as if I’m allowed to reciprocate and offer advice in return. Unless every new outfit my wife buys is greeted by me doing summersaults with whoops of joy and shouting that it’s just perfect, I’m in the dog house. It’s not fair but I guess it’s repeated in every home across the land.

I’ll have to live with it and admit defeat in the fashion stakes. From now on, when it comes to clothing, I’ll have to learn to look up to my wife. After all, Tom Cruise looks up to his wife doesn’t he?