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Home / Lifestyle

Rude or prude?

19 Oct, 2007 04:00 PM4 mins to read

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Gareth Pugh does rude at London Fashion Week. Photo / Reuters

Gareth Pugh does rude at London Fashion Week. Photo / Reuters

KEY POINTS:

Only two looks are going to matter after a month or so in swimwear - fashion slut, and fashion prude. Yeah, yeah, officially it's all much more complicated than that, but what you're looking at are a bunch of very short skirts, very tight dresses in high-shine plastics and very, very high and fetishy shoes, versus wide-leg tweedy trousers, lady hats and midi-skirts. You do the fashion maths. These looks cannot co-exist in the same wardrobe. Time to make your choice.

1. Look at the heels of your shoes. Are they:
a. Mid-height, conical; lace-up, tan, Oxford-styled; chunky clunky and sensible.
b. Perspex; studded with metal; pencil thin, patent and 10cm tall; strapped and buckled up S&M style, generally laden with overtones of fetish destination dungeons.
c. Rubber, 1cm thick, somewhat grubby and attached to the sole of your Converse, as usual. Oooh, chewing gum!

2. Look at your neckline. Is it:
a. Sweetheart, with a faux high-neck blouse section sewn into it.
b. Less a "neck", more a sort of "nipple-grazing, navel-caressing, mons-pubis-skimming" line.
c. Ooh, weirdly grubby! How did that happen?

3. Your fashion fabric of choice currently is:
a. An expensive, high-quality silk.
b. Latex rubber.
c. The softest organic cotton.

4. And your headgear of choice is:
a. A feathery, flirty Fascinator. So much fun that they're not only wedding-wear now.
b. A gimp mask. Very Gareth Pugh.
c. A hat.

5. If you were to bump into a male colleague who knew nothing about the fashion pedigree on your current look, is he most likely to take one look at you and:
a. Say: "A ha ha ha! Look at you, Mary Poppins!" before skipping off down a corridor whimsically, humming Let's Go Fly A Kite.
b. Double-take, blush, fall over his own feet twice, back out of the room nervously while giggling, coughing, and sort of genuflecting - all of this, without once taking his eyes off your enormous expanse of cleavage/thigh.
c. Ask if he can cadge $1 for the vending machine, ta very much.

6. Your hair is:
a. Twisted into a neat Forties-referencing bun, inspired by those ladies on the runway at the Cacharel show.
b. Peroxide blond. Agyness Deyn is your icon (though you would have thought that was obvious).
c. Greying gently, too long, ungroomed, inclined to lodge itself unbecomingly in your lip balm, and generally the living embodiment of "afterthought".

7. Your maquillage is:
a. Rosy cheeks and a creamy complexion and barely-there eye shadow - with a delicate lick of mascara, for good measure.
b. Smoky eyes, heavy rouge, cleavage glitter, oooh, and three-tone talons, a la Galliano.
c. Eye-bag camouflage focused, essentially.

8. And your pants are:
a. Pretty and match-y.
b. Not actually there. Oops!
c. Ancient. That's not crotchless, that's wear-and-tear.

HOW YOU SCORED

Mostly a: You, mon amie, are a fashion prude of the highest order. Which is all well and good, but somewhat risky in that people might not understand that you're right at the cutting edge of fashion, and instead mistake you for theme-dressing as a little old lady. Discreet tattoos or an especially vibrant nail polish will help.

Mostly b: You, however, are a grade-one fashion slag. Other looks talk about you behind your back, and write scandalous graffiti about you on loo walls. But you don't care, because you're off smoking fags in the bus shelter with the boys, and giving their dads the eye ... or something. This metaphor may have run away with us.

Mostly c: And you on the other hand, are neither. How odd. You may want to do something about that. Alternatively, you may not.

-Observer

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