Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Grey and Red

Not being perhaps at the cutting edge of fashion, it has taken me a while to notice that everyone everywhere is wearing grey and/or red, and that every item of clothing for sale in all the shops is one of these two colours.

Now grey can be a Good Thing if it’s a deep, smoky, sexy, mysterious charcoaly kind of a grey. And this isn’t. Oh no, it’s Primary School Uniform Grey, the kind that makes me wonder where my maroon and silver tie went. I gave up that shade of grey when I started at Big School and I ain’t going back to it.

Okay, Emily has a V-neck jumper in that shade of grey and she looks fantastic in it, but that’s because she teams it with black in a very stylish way, and also because she is a size 8. The trouble with light grey is it has no edges, it just seems to go on for ever outwards. So if you are a size 10 you look like a 12 and if you are size 12 you look like a 14 and if you are over a size 14 you look like - - well, you know elephants? It’s a little-known fact that they’re not really that big, they are only about the size of a cow. The only reason they look that big is because they are LIGHT GREY. I rest my case.

Now, on to the red. There are many shades of red – including bright red – that I love. Rich red, vibrant red, cheerful red, sultry red. But THIS shade of bright red has had a brush with orange. It is as if you took a pillar-box and made it a bit brighter.

It is the colour of the anorak that Hayley wears in Coronation Street. She is a completely style-free character and she has been wearing this anorak for at least five years. Why was it chosen for her? Because this shade of red is a vile colour that suits nobody and the Coronation Street wardrobe mistress was trying to make her look as bad as possible and the red anorak was a good joke. But now hey! look! half the other characters are wearing that colour!

If you have a rosy complexion, as I have, it makes your cheeks look purple – delightful. If you are pale it makes you look as though you are dying of tuberculosis. If you have brown skin it makes you look like a Seventies living room.

I can’t believe that people have tried these colours on, looked in the mirror and said to themselves, yippee, that red jacket makes my face look really mauve, fantastic, and the grey skirt makes my hips look just like a rhinoceros in size, shape and colour. Just what I wanted.

SO WHY IS EVERYONE WEARING THOSE COLOURS? Just go into town, let your eyes blur slightly over the Christmas crowds and there you have it. Grey and red.

Come on, folks, do you HAVE to buy new clothes all the time? Just go on strike until they give up trying to foist this nastiness upon us and are forced to bring back proper colours. Otherwise, next autumn, you’ll be looking in the wardrobe at your grey jumpers and red winter coat and thinking ye Gods! Did I really wear those? They’re hideous and SO last year. Must rush out and buy some new clothes.

Could that be what the clothes manufacturers want, by any chance?

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"If you have brown skin it makes you look like a Seventies living room."
LOL.
I wonder where I got my characteristic cynicism from? Those lovely clothes manufacturers only want to HELP us... right?

8:55 pm  

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