A couple of hundred years ago I used to have a pair of flairs (or was it flares?).
Not the namby pamby flairs that the kids of today occasionally sport. These were serious flairs. Premier League flairs. These were the Liverpool Football Club or Manchester United Football Club of flairs.
These were flairs that had been unpicked on the side seam and had extra pieces of material sewn in to make them the uber-flairs that were so stylish (way back when dinosaurs walked the face of the world).
They were grey, these flairs. And pinstriped. But denim. And jeans.
What I used to wear with my King-of-all-Flairdom jeans was a pair of tan leather boots, a little like riding boots but not quite, a white, long-sleeved cheesecloth shirt and a very long, blue, patterned waistcoat, made out of cotton. With tassels on. A bit sort of Hendrix-ish. Or so I thought.
I was so cool.
Man, the chics loved me
And so did the ducks. And the hens. But that old cockerel, he had a suspicious look in his eye whenever he caught sight of me if I was dressed in my Saturday best. Or so I thought.
But the girls?
Nah, they thought I dressed like a freak, even if I did think I was the coolest thing in the known universe.
That’ll be why I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 35*.
The reason for this period of clothing recall is because the 20-something student-type who just tried to hop up on to the bus in an athletic manner, fell flat on his face. He tripped over his flairs.
It’s a good job he wasn’t wearing a pair of uber-flairs. He might have killed himself.
* Some or all of these statements may be true. Or untrue. The management reserves the right to rearrange the facts at will, at their leisure and in a way that is solely calculated to cause the maximum of confusion to anyone who attended any of the same schools that I did at the same time as me. Thank you.
HAHAHAHA!!!
I’m just imagining you to look like one of the beatles off of ‘SGT Pepper’s band’ cover.
Probably got it all wrong, but that is what is in my mind!
Good he didn’t have on “platform shoes” as well. Did you have those?
I had the BEST pair of platforms ever. They were mannish (i.e. not ladylike high-heel type platforms, but platform all the way round), psychedelic and enormous. Lethal.
I wore them with my brown velvet suit that I stole from my Dad that he bought from Carnaby Street off of the proper 1960s.
I thought I was the bollocks.
In hindsight, I was a tit.
🙂
I’ve got the weirdest mental of image in my head of some quite enormously flared flairs with tan boots. My dad used to wear uber-flares in the 70s, the decade when he last had hair. He had huge flairs, loud scruffy shirts, an enormous mop of ginger-brown hair that met his ginger-brown beard in the middle and no job or degree because he was still farting about drinking and taking drugs most of the time, having been kicked off his course for taking the piss. My nice, middle class, uber respectable grandmother was utterly horrified when her daughter arrived home with this big ginger shambles. On the bright side, flares were definately better than anything that was fashionable in the 80s.
I used to trip up on my trousers all the time trying to walk up the stairs at Little Place – I like wide legged trousers and they tend to hang over my shoes.
More than a little embarrassing.
Trixie, I think you’re a little too close for comfort!
S. Le, I’m tallish so I only had a little pair of heels. How about your past fashion crimes?
Soph, are we turning this in to a discussion of your 36DDs now?
Vicola,, your dad sounds like a character! I expect he’s changed a little now? But what a good memory you have of him. Oh. You can’t have that memory. So the question is… how do you know these things?
Soupy. Hi. Hope you’re ok. Tripping on trousers is acceptable but only because it’s you.
I’m always in vogue! How dare you imply otherwise! Sometimes I think I wear clothes a bit youngish for my advanced years. I wear what I like and thus commit no fashion crimes, only misdemeanors.
Man, the chics loved me And so did the ducks.
What about the lolducks?
I’m too young for flares, although I did have neon-green socks in the 1980s and pined after a Global Hypercolor T-shirt in the early 1990s. Managed to avoid MC Hammer trousers, though.