5 Fashion Things I Didn’t Really Get (But Pretended I Did and Wore Anyway)

Trends have such a weird way of tricking us into thinking they look good when often they really don’t. Let’s blame Instagram, influencers, and a cult for bad-taste dressing, for making us believe that what might look good abstractly on screen might look just as achingly cool when worn outside. In public. Surrounded by lots of people. Judging you. As a fashion blogger I’m just as, if not more, susceptible for falling prey to such a disaster – it’s about experimentation after all – but there are some things I truly look back and thing “what was I thinking.” The kind of trend when you wear it, you’re actively aware about said trend and trying to look cool, when inside you just feel like a bit of dick.

This post is by no means a barometer on what’s hot and what’s not, more a visual list of things I’ve worn to look good, dying, and cringing, at myself inside, all whilst claiming BUT FASHION! Sift through, enjoy, and share with me the fashion things you wore but didn’t really get.

It’s about personal style rather than copycat culture, and sticking a sartorial middle finger up to trying out trends for the sake of trends.

When I was a child, my Granny got two empty cans of spaghetti hoops, attached some string to them, and turned them into funny shoe things to step on and play about in in the garden (she was a creative sort.) It was fun because it was impossible walking perched upon these blocks, making every step uneven. Now I am utterly convinced that flatforms are the grown-up, fashionable equivalent of my spaghetti hoop tin shoes I wore as a child. Falling over as a child = funny. Falling over as an adult on the way to work = painfully embarrassing.

When Man Repeller called time on the culotte I was all but ready to jump back into my old favourite jeans and eat some avocado on toast like the basic bitch that I am. It’s not to say I don’t think culottes didn’t look good on other people, because trust me, I saw a handful (or ten… thousand) of girls gracing the streets during the previous few LFW’s and back in CSM donning said item with trainers and making them look good. But did that mean that I could make them look good? Nope. They hung on my body awkwardly, chopping my already shapely calves at their widest part, making them look like the chunky legs of a cured jamon one might find in Jamie’s Italian. Now? They hang just as awkwardly in my wardrobe as they did on my body, hissing “Remember us? Well, we’re still here!” 

Jogging trousers – originally invented to do jogging, a form of exercise – made out of leather, one of the sweatiest textiles ever (especially in PU.) Of course they were only fit for fashion purposes, but sometimes it just goes to show that trends can make zero logical sense. All I can think of with this trend is that episode of friends with Ross and the leather pants…

Now I’m all for socks and a certain kind of sandal: a cute striped sock pumped up in a platform sandal looks super sweet and retro. And I’m all for nice socks in general. And slides form 70% of my summer footwear. But socks and slides? Together? It’s like eating chips with mayonnaise – a complete and utter moral sin. It requires the certain kind of swagger you’ll find of those donning tracksuits and swigging red stripe straight from the can at 11am on a Tuesday morning. I want that swagger. I don’t have that swagger. Will wearing socks and slides give me said swagger? There’s only one way to find out.

Oh, I tried that. I had as much swagger as the Mathletes rolling into the Spring Fling in Mean Girls.

One of the standout trends from last September’s fashion week, and by god, didn’t it look cool? Transforming a simple blue or white shirt into an seemingly new piece of clothing was a slice of pure sartorial genius. Was it? I envy all of the girls that make this work, as some most definitely did, because when I tried it, I simply looked as though I was wearing a badly tailored hospital gown, and garnered a host of quizzical stares on the tube to work. “Has she taken her medicine?” I’m pretty sure is what I heard one fellow tube-goer whisper.