The ridiculous fashion trends that need to stop

GET your freckle pen out, apparently a spotty nose is considered high fashion this year. And that’s not even the worst trend going around.

LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 14: A model backstage at the Preen show during London Fashion Week Spring Summer 2015 at on September 14, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images)

HEY there Fashion. I wonder if we can have a chat.

I don’t want to sound like I’m not a fan, because truly, I’m a fashion tragic. I’m a stereotypical shoe fetishist, I say ‘vintage’ instead of op shop, I once even described green as chartreuse. But seriously, there are things I’ve read lately — looks that are apparently hot and trends that I’m supposed to get on board — that I don’t think you’ve thought through.

Now, I’m used to haute couture being a touch out of reach, and I like it that way. When I pore over a Paris Fashion Week catwalk like some people enjoy porn, I want the clothes to be utterly unwearable. Ridiculous and glorious and outrageous next to my street wear, in the way Serena Williams would look if she played at my daughter’s tennis club. It’s what high art should be. I want the clothes to be a mashup of Futuristic/Kimono/Tarzan/Zombie/Tupperware.

But when I flick through my favourite fashion bibles to get some advice on day to day wear — and believe me I need it — I’m seeing a bunch of, well, crapola. I don’t want to alarm you, but some of your representatives are going rogue, and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t approve.

Only this week, for example, this is what the Fashion Editors of the world have said is so hot right now.

TYING YOUR SHIRT AROUND YOU WAIST

Yeah, this is called just having your arms full. Once you become a mother and you find yourself setting sherpa world records, you will tie everything — your shirt, your kid’s school jumper, the cat around your waist. It’s not a trend just because a Kardashian did it getting off a plane. When the Queen does it, come talk to me.

Is this a trend now? Picture: Instagram

SLIPPERS IN PUBLIC

You could call it a flat-heeled mule, if you were posh. But if you saw them on someone in the supermarket, you’d call them hung-over. I don’t care what price tag or designer label you put on it, if it’s flat, it’s got an open back, you slip your foot into it, and you can’t walk 2 steps without it sounding like a shuffle, it’s a slipper and it has no place outside the home. And unless you’re Hugh Hefner, don’t even entertain in them. People will wonder if you’ve just recently discharged yourself from hospital.

It doesn’t matter if these shoes cost you $5000. They are hideous, and they are slippers.

HOODIES AS DRESSES

I shouldn’t be surprised. Kanye brought us leather trackie dacks. Fancy hoodies are the next logical step. Except these are being worn as micro-minis by the likes of Rihanna, whose legs are so amazing, she almost looks like it was deliberate. I’d look like I took a wrong turn when I skipped down stairs to the laundry basket to find some clean undies.

Now this is what we call a fancy hoodie. Unless you are Anne Hathaway, don’t try this at home. Picture: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

FRECKLES

This last one gets me a bit hot under my hipster peter pan collar. Apparently, fake freckles are big. Vogue has helpfully provided a spread on how to paint freckles on, and supposedly not look like Pippi Longstocking.

While I think it’s lovely for those that have hated their complexion to suddenly have a perceived flaw be considered a feature, it’s dangerous to label a physical trait — like big boobs, small boobs, or skin colour — a trend. Partly because, like any trend, it will go out of fashion at some point too so where does that leave your new-found self-love, and partly because it implies that we can, and should, change our bodies based on some arbitrary Fashion Editor’s whim. Our bodies are our bodies, beautiful in their weirdness and wonder — not a commodity.

Freckles are back in vogue, literally. And these ones are painted on. Picture: Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

So, Fashion, if you could just stop, that’d be great. I know change is hard, but Karl Lagerfeld’s cat has 72,000 followers so stranger things have happened. Go back to what you’re good at: Forcing models to stomp down a catwalk in what looks like a Grade 6 Science Project. That way we all feel better about ourselves.

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