This is a Man's World...

Out of yet more writer’s block, laziness and an underlying jealousy issue with my friend Dan over his festive laziness period, I urged (pestered) him to write an article for my blog.

Let me give you a small introduction to Daniel Jones.

I was introduced to him as Kooks (he bears very little resemblance unless you count the hair). My first and rather immediate impression of him was that he carried an overbearing arrogance. This issue was resolved after many a drunken night at The Common – our home/den/squat come our final year of university.

After the initial setback of thinking he was an arsehole (sorry) I enjoyed Dan’s enthusiasm for fashion and the fact he requested we watch the Sex and The City film (again, sorry). He has very good taste in clothes and despite not having a girlfriend (ouch); he knows how to maintain himself.

He currently resides in Southampton where he likes to think he’s a big shot in music – although he is certainly getting there. He mainly (always) sticks to skinny jeans and really likes Fred Perry, but he knows his stuff so I wanted him to voice it. If I like it, he will be forced to write another article, which he will be thrilled to hear no doubt.

He is a highly sophisticated writer, so all of you who have the attention span of a goldfish should stop reading now. Those capable of understanding intellectual writing, read on, to explore the inner workings of a not so arrogant youth attempting his first fashion based piece. Enjoy.

Music critic’s are notoriously scruffy and seemingly sour individuals. Headphone clad attempted-comedians, they sit for days on end with a 45 spinning continuously, ashtrays filling up to the brim and no recollection of where the past few hours disappeared to. And although Anna Wintour may not see it as clearly as we’d like, music and fashion are about the same things - paying homage to past legacy’s and praising the innovation of new-wave individuals who cast their apparitions deep into the unknown mist of the future. I’m a music critic, and I sure as hell aint scruffy…

(you sure Daniel?)

Ever since the early 60s when Mods and Teddy Boys pranced around Carnaby street in two-tone tonic suits and slicked-back Elvis barnets, fashion has become integrated into music as a driving force of individuality and identification. Scenes and trends were rife during this time and things haven’t changed music in that respect, but when we discuss authenticity within these scenes then it’s fair to say the legitimacy of our image is crumbling under a looming corporate fist of high street chains whose cheap and thoughtless production of ‘rock and roll’ influenced ‘looks’ mean that the identity we search for in fashion and music is becoming common and tactless.

I suppose I’m a cynic in some respects. I’m a bit ignorant, probably a bit naïve and definitely bemused. If I think back to when I first got properly into music and the fashion that went with it I can certainly recall a number of times that I’d received abuse from the regular plain-jane morons who inhabit the various clubs of my city, clad in Burton shirts and cheap loafers, they ambled on about hair cuts and the like but now it’s these very same victims of commercial influence who are clothed in cardigans and scruffy mop-tops with a wannabe WAG on their arm and James Blunts fucking back catalogue of dire murderous dross.

I’m not a fashion writer so I don’t know how these things work. This is probably a regular cycle, waves of popularity within particular looks and trends, well it is, obviously, because that’s why it’s a trend, but I just feel…cheated that these Topman shopping, skinny jean wearing toss pots feel that they are the curators of such individualism, however pugnacious and fucking pretentious that sounds..

I blame All Saints.

Over priced tosh for the reproduced closed minded.

If I discard my idiosyncratic ideologies for a bit though, I’m sure this is a good thing. People becoming more diverse and all that. Back in the 60s people didn’t give a shit who wore what, comments were not thrown around like shit-stained confetti and with this influx of a little more variety minds are becoming less contained and brilliantly broadened.

When I started University over three years ago, I’ve graduated now you’ll be happy to hear, things weren’t so assorted. Fashion, in men that is, was still rather limited and commercially restricted, but it was developing. 60s Fred Perry was coming back in fashion, Penguin was hitting the U.K mainstream and cardigans were no longer a social or fashionable faux-pas. And now, it’s a much more eclectic affair, maybe music’s partly responsible what with the rise in ‘indie’ (fucking hate that term) on the radio and in the papers ever since that Doherty fella coped off with some coke-head model - but this is nothing other than a terrible thing.

Rock stars have become figures of celebrity-ism as it becomes more about who they’re nailing rather than the whole-hearted image and soul of the music they produce.



As Pete hit the Bizarre pages of the Sun newspaper I’m pretty sure the sale figures on trilby’s and rosary beads went sky high, and that’s not what it’s about.

To be honest I don’t really know the point of this article. Maybe it’s for recognition. Recognition to the music world and its influence on people fair and the cycles in which fashion circulates. The Luke Pritchards, The Orlando Weeks, The Liam Frays, the people whose subtle wardrobe adjustments may not seem so prolific but do in fact have some authority and control on the wardrobes of others - like a butterfly effect . Maybe it’s an outlet of my annoyance of people’s disregard for the countless individuals who’ve been told to get a hair cut by street-dwelling urchins who now think they’re ’indie’ or whatever the fucking term is these days because they‘ve got a pair of winkle pickers and a Mumford And Sons album. Who knows? I don’t really…