Cutting edge tragic fashion

This decade will have to go down in history as the worst dressed era of all time. Current fashion trends are clearly stark raving mad. When will sanity prevail?

I point the bone at Sass and Bide. Judging from photographs of their new spring 2005 collection, at New York’s fashion week, it’s clear that these two Queensland girls are laughing all the way to the bank. In cahoots to wreak havoc in the fashion world by putting the “hoot” into haute couture, they are systematically destroying any semblance of practical form in garments. Obviously something had to be done with off-cuts and pieces of old swimsuits but where is the style?

Joining them in their revelry is a whole sewing kit of excentric Australian frock makers including the “underwear is the new outerwear” queen Colette Dinnigan, bric a brac collector Michelle Jank and the master of uneven seaming Akira Isogawa.

At the frantic pre-season sale at Akira’s main Sydney store, the shop assistants must have to wrest back wayward curtains and dust covers from over-enthusiastic shoppers who will need to be convinced that these are not for the wearing.

Innovation for other clothing designers appears to involve going through the charity clothing bins and digging out the 70’s most garish designs. They then cut off any practical part of the garment before sending it off to a sweatshop for mass production. This is the cutting edge.

Beading is back but nothing subtle this time with tops shimmering in a mismatch of brilliant hues that make it look like you spilt a packet of jelly crystals down your front. Ice skaters and ballroom dancers can now walk off home in costume without raising a single eyebrow. Where are the police?

As a child of the 70s I would have thought by now our fashion would have evolved more towards Star Trek uniforms than the style on show the morning after a night in the back of a panel van. I was rather looking forward to zipping into a rubberised cat suit but maybe that is way too much information about me.

Fashion is now designed for a non-stop summer, as flesh must be exposed all year around. It’s no wonder fur coats are making a controversial return to the market, as you would need one to get from party to party without freezing your bits off.

Bra straps appear to be the fashion world’s cause célèbre as their exposure is either vital to the look or simply a by-product of shoulder-less clothing design. Why bother hiding underwear when you are down the shops only wearing a petticoat?

The tragedy that is the hipster pant will take a long time to recover from. Teenage girls today can probably never remember not exposing their ample stomachs to the general public. Many of us have our own bruising memories of involuntarily viewing way too much cascading flesh from the volcano that is a pair of hipsters one size too small.

Obviously the “fashionistas” are having a big laugh at our expense. Already they’ve got our hair standing kookily on end with expensive hair products, we’re paying a fortune for deliberately damaged clothes, everyone can see our underwear and our bodies are riddled with pierced holes and tattoo scars. These tricksters would have us believe we look great, but I am reminded of the story of the Emperors New Clothes.

We have to strike back.

Beware of clothing designers with a pair of pinking shears in their hands and a come hither look in their eyes. If your hair looks the same after two hours in the salon as it did when you got out of bed, something is wrong. Anything that won’t hang unaided on a coat hanger is not clothing. $600 is too much to pay for a pair of jeans regardless of how good the sales girl says your bum looks.

Less is not more when it comes to clothes.

The most important thing to remember if you do succumb to the madness is yes - you can take it back. A moment of questionable fashion clinging to the hips need not require cutting your credit card up into bits.

Oh and I’d like my bone back please Mss Sass and Bide before you girls make it into a headdress!