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The fog of wardrobe

We've had the decades that fashion forgot. Now let's remember that it's all just a lot of clothes

I have never been terribly at ease with fashion. People can tell that about me from the merest hint of a glance from a long distance. I understand that some clothes are attractive and some are not. I understand that some colours work together aesthetically, and certain cuts are better than others for certain kinds of bodies. But the fashion industry loses me at the point where everything changes every six months. I can't possibly keep up with that. I have enough trouble understanding what's going on in Ashes to Ashes.

I can't think of another industry in which the changes are that swift, that extreme and that superficial.

Technological trends change fast, of course. It's long been noted that the brand new whizzy laptop you've just bought will have been superseded by the time you reach the bus stop. But that's on the basis of scientific advances. Not usually on aesthetics. Though Macs are pretty. So pretty.

Tastes change in other arenas too. There are bands I thought were great in my teens that I'm rather embarrassed about ever having liked. My brother warned me about buying albums by the Doors when I was 15. I should have listened. Ironically, in retrospect it was probably the leather trousers rather than the music that attracted me in the first place. Clearly my head is no longer turned by such things.

There's always hyperbole, there's always a bright new thing in music or film. There are movements in art, and styles change there too. But we don't suddenly hate Damien Hirst's work because Gillian Carnegie has come up with something new. We hate it because it's horrible.

Nothing's quite as flighty as fashion. It has seasons. That's something I can understand, but only to the point of floaty dresses = summer; jumpers = winter. I can't understand why flares and drainpipes come and go on someone's whim, and I am always several years behind what's supposedly good. That's mainly because I am still trying to work out why it's better than the last thing that was good, failing to realise that it's because I have been told that it is.

I don't object to changing tastes. Of course not. My tastes change. For example, I probably wouldn't wear the grey donkey jacket I wore for most of my teens now. But that's a self-expression issue. I am no longer quite as hung up on seeming moody, or as attached to being depressed. And what I wear reflects that. Actually, more often than not, what I wear reflects the fact that I've just got off my bicycle. Not a great look, but not beholden to a world in which Ugly Betty looks like fun. But I object to tastes changing because someone set a date when they should. That's cheating.

Is it as simple as familiarity breeding contempt? No, it's economics taking over everything, including what we wear. And it's wrong because clothes are important. They help us express who we are, though that's dangerous territory, especially on mufti day at school. And they're a basic human need, protecting us from the elements, unless you're from Newcastle. But food and housing are basic needs too, and no one mocks you for living in last season's flat or for still eating bananas when mango's so much more of the "now". That's coming, though, isn't it? Oh God …

Value judgments on the ugliness or beauty of things that we wear are intrinsically weird. There are some items of clothing that we can all agree are awful. Many of them will be lauded during London Fashion Week and the like. And yet they'll be taking over our lives and influencing what we wear and how we're perceived and how much we're shamed into buying – until the next big thing takes over in about 10 minutes' time.

The decade before last might traditionally be the one that fashion forgot, but let's make this decade the one in which we remember that they're just clothes.

Let's have a lovely moment in London Fashion Week when the style gurus all say: "Do you know, what you've got on now's just fine." And as we're entering a new period of austerity, let us cry "Make do and mend!" and let slip the dogs of wardrobe.


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