Do fashionistas really wear a pant or a spectacle? And why do designers ignore the rules about
colour?
Why do fashion gurus singularise plurals: a pant (possibly even an underpant?), a
trouser, a jean, and – worst of all – a tight? Who uses one
pant?
Nurn Duffy, Galway
Fashion people do, Nurn. They also like "to work" a shoe, a sleeve, even a spectacle (but not "a
sunglass". That would be just silly). This is known as the Fashion Singular. How did this fashion
singular come into existence? To quote this column's favourite film about international
relations, Team America, "We're gonna need a montage!" American fashion stylists . . . all talk
like Californian teenagers . . . they started using the fashion singular on notes given out at
fashion shows . . . fashion journalists noticed this and perceived it as a form of Botox for the
voice as it freezes one into a permanently teenage state . . . it started appearing in fashion
magazines . . . lo, the fashion singular . . . always fade out in a montage . . . If you fade out
it seems like more time has passed in a montage. What? That was a lazy method to explain a very
complex semantic evolution? Hey, "even Rocky had a montage".
To demonstrate your true mastery of this lingo, deploy it only in positive circumstances, eg,
"Ooh, I do love a kitten heel." But when you're being negative, it's: "I'm so not feeling wedges
any more." You see? The difference is subtle but crucial, like fashion itself.
Years ago, I had my colours done at House of Colour and my life was transformed. Having
been a reticent shopper beforehand I became a reticent shopper who knew at least what didn't
suit. How come the designers, from Armani to Marks & Spencer, just don't seem to have heard
of the rules and so, for example, persist in using gold buckles on black bags, when everyone
knows this is just wrong.
Cathy, by email
Oh Cathy, you break my heart! On the one hand, I want to love you, you and your done colours. And
on a similar part of that hand (perhaps the heel of the palm, or maybe a finger tip), I am
pleased that you no longer have the Fashion Fear and can now shop, confidently if reticently,
armed with your little book of rules.
And yet, the other hand is still waiting to be dealt with, and that hand is wagging its finger
ever so warningly. You see, Cathy, this sort of fashion rubric is excellent for jump-starting a
fashionphobe out of a paralysing fear. Heaven knows there is a surfeit of choice out there and
that can feel a little overwhelming, so it helps to have that choice reduced. But to rely on it
so wholly, and to believe that these judgments are the Only Way and that anyone who isn't
following them is going straight to hell, well, Cathy, you haven't had your colours done
– you've joined a cult and I'm afraid that you've written to an atheist.
True, I don't like to claim a common ground of any sort with Christopher Hitchens, but I don't
mind sharing a soapbox with Dashing Richard Dawkins. And, like Dashing Richard Dawkins, I am wary
of anything that arms one with certain rules, allegedly to enhance one's life but actually only
to circumscribe it. To whit, you say gold buckles on black bags are wrong. Pourquoi, mon amie? I
love a gold buckle on a black bag (see previous letter for discussion of the fashion singular).
It looks so 70s glam, so louchely Studio 54-esque. Oh dear, your brain is shortcircuiting, isn't
it? I can hear the fizzes all the way over here as your entire belief system is shown to be built
on quicksand.
Look, I'm not (entirely) dismissing your done colours. You just need to think of them as a
leaping-off point, not even for what they say, but what they give you, ie, confidence. Come
along, woman. Do you really think that something named House of Colour knows what looks better on
you than you do? You're clearly an intelligent woman (you read this column, after all). There are
rainbows out there, Cathy. Don't miss them because you're encamped in the House of Colour.
· Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90
York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@guardian.co.uk
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