Off The Rails

Off The Rails Sartorial Fraud

Nell Frizzell sees Irish eyes are smiling

There’s a band. Let’s call them, oh I don’t know, Mumbo and Sons. They are all nice, middle class boys born with, if not silver spoons, then certainly more than a hint of Earl Grey tea in their mouths. They have nice well-spoken accents and good skin. They are all Londoners.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “I bet these guys came over here from the home country to help the villainous English to build their railways and work in their docks. They probably sleep hanging on ropes slung across their building sites, they drink stout, chew on crusts of…

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Off The Rails Border Crossing

Nell Frizzell casts her eye over the north-south divide

There are many things that, though obvious, want repetition. Dogs in fancy dress costumes are amusing, for instance. Harem pants make you look like an incontinent bigamist, for example. Converse are shoes for children, as it were.

Just such a statement is the assertion that people make more effort in the north than in the south. Oh, okay, not necessarily the effort to pay eye-watering rents and retain an industry, I grant you. But in terms of making an effort in how you look, the South of England can barely touch the coat tails of its North Country counterpart.

I…

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Off The Rails The Pencil Test

Nell Frizzell crosses her heart and hopes for pertness

The ‘pencil test’ means many things to many people. For some, it evokes the Apartheid regime of racial segregation (whether a pencil fell out of your hair was a test of race and heritage), for some it is a mathematical process, for others it is the way to measure perspective in life drawing.

For post-pubescent women, however, the pencil test means just one thing – just how spaniel-like are your low swingers? Or to put it in less euphemistic terms, can you touch your knees with your nipples? The theory is that if you can place a pencil under your…

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Off The Rails Don't Listen To Gok

Ali Schofield refuses to dress for her shape

Careers are won and lost on knowing how to dress for one’s body shape. So career-critics Gok, Trinny et al would probably have something to say about my total lack of interest in the subject.

I’m aware that my child-bearing hips pit me unequivocally in the ‘pear’ category but there is no way, no how I’m going to avoid the voluminous, vintage culottes I snaffled on a recent visit to Pop simply because they might draw onlookers’ attention to the fact I look like I could feasibly spawn quadruplets without wincing (I’ve yet to bear children, so remain blissfully ignorant…

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Off The Rails Sportswear

Nell Frizzell is kitted out

So, sport, eh? Not just Blur’s work-in-progress band name. Oh no. Sport is also an excuse for aggressive, lazy men to dress like toddlers.

To whit, who else but a ‘sporting man’ would choose to dress in a bright red t-shirt and draw-string, stretchy, don’t-put-a-fly-in-them-it’ll-only-confuse-us trousers? Who else would wear primary-coloured shorts with oversized socks and soft-topped shoes? Who else wants to dress in slightly less impressive versions of their superheroes’ costumes? Why, toddlers of course.

Sports fans are, on the whole, about as sartorially exacting as barely-continent children. They like their colours bright, their waistbands stretchy and have a…

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Off The Rails Ties

Nell Frizzell is all tied up

Feminism has achieved many things in the field of fashion. Unbound feet, uncrushed lungs and trousers, to name but a few. And yet, a fabric arrow pointing to our genitals is still a pleasure, nay honour, greatly denied to the sisterhood.

I am, of course, talking ties. Although women do wear neck attire from time to time, these tie brides are usually rocking a heinous Rihanna-style red carpet take on the tuxedo, or they’re your waitress for the evening at a chain pizza restaurant. Few of us have fully embraced the sheer ‘hey lads, catch a load of this packet,…

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Off The Rails Safari Style

Nell Frizzell is on fashion safari

Frankly, a lot about fashion makes me want to pick up an elephant gun, strap on some ammo and blast all holy hell out of the surrounding landscape: harem pants, sexually abusive photographers, fur, unhealthily thin models, peep-toe boots, carbon-guzzling catwalk shows, the renaissance of 90s piano house and so on and so on. So it’s interesting to see so many of the beautiful people dressed in preparation for my long-range, jeep drive-by, fully harpooned attack.

I am, of course, talking about safari. Like military, nautical and biker, the safari look is a trend that comes and goes like malaria…

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Off The Rails Dolled Up

Life in plastic is frankly a little creepy at this age, writes Ali Schofield

In these recession-soiled times, it is common for the ‘great forgotten’ - as Call-Me-Dave would have comfortable earners to be known - to get back to basics and regress to a more simple time. Some do this by acquiring a plot at their local allotment, some embrace the make do and mend mentality and create one-off dresses, tops, dad jumpers and the like and some, well, some miss the point entirely, take leave of their senses and pick up a Barbie.

Since the doll turned 50 last year - and, just to clarify, she didn’t actually turn 50, 2009 merely…

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Off The Rails The Joys of Spring

Nell Frizzell is coming out of hibernation

“Spring has sprung, / The Grass is ris, / I wonder where the birdies is?”

Not the words of Spike Milligan, apparently, or even Ogden Nash, but of a New York state poet who probably knew a thing or two about thermal underwear. Because, let’s be honest, New York gets colder than a dead dog’s nose during winter.

However, it also gets warmer than a lizard’s gizzard in summer, which leads me on to the fashion phenomenon we shall call ‘thermal shock’. Thermal shock, in many cases, is the shock that you no longer have to wear thermals; spring is…

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Off The Rails Fashion Politics

Nell Frizzell is dressing to the left

When you put politics and fashion together, you tend to be met with a wardrobe of well-worn tropes.

One: The Wives. This election, it seems, we will be bombarded by a dress-by-dress comparison of Sarah Brown, Samantha Cameron and Miriam Gonzalez Durantez (yes, Nick Clegg has a wife too, wouldjabelieve it).

Two: Ethical fashion. Is your cotton organic? Has your garment been made using child labour? Is your denim dye poisoning rivers? Has your beading been sewn on by a seven-year-old?

Three: Slogan t-shirts. From the AIDS awareness days of Katherine Hamnett to the totally castrated re-working by Henry Holland,…

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