Looking at webshops for Uniqlo, Massimo Dutti etc. I can see that Kingston1an is right. There's no personality there. The models are all good looking, chiselled young men (as you would expect), but the shapelessness of the clothing they're offering doesn't seem to bare any resemblence to the real world at the moment. Coats that somehow manage to look both too big AND too small at the same time. Trousers hanging straight down from the waist with flapping hems hovering around six inches from the ankle look like they're held up with a piece of rope ala 1940's comedy tramp. I can't help but feel that for retailers the margins are now so tight, with folks in general wanting to pay so little for clothes, that the quality of materials is now so poor, that they can't even make it look good on their own sites?

Really I'm long past worrying about what everyone else is wearing, let alone those thirty years younger than me, but I don't see many real people wearing this style on the street.

What I see is what Robbie does. JD, Primark, hoodies. And black plastic trainers. Again, it shouldn't bother me. Hats off to the guy that can get by with a pair of jeans and one pair of trainers and (hopefully) put his wages towards heat, food and a decent social life. But make it a pair of jeans in your size that don't drag on the floor while you keep pulling them up over the top of your arse. Make it a decent pair of white leather trainers.

I wore a pair of Cheaney chukkas through town this weekend (a fairly well heeled town if I'm honest) and as Robbie says, I'm pretty sure it was just me wearing leather shoes.

'Kiwi have pulled out of the UK market for shoe polish'

I hadn't realised. Partly because I've mainly switched to cream. Partly because I've been guilty of dropping into Timpsons as they seem to be on every high st and outside every supermarket these days.

I suppose the amount of people buying leather shoes has dropped drastically. Take away from that people buying good leather shoes, and people caring for them, let alone enjoying polishing them, and there's not much of a market left for Kiwi to invest in.

I dropped Kiwi as I was polishing shoes to within an inch of their life, then putting them away for months. The petrolium wasn't doing them much good in the long term. I'll miss it though

Last edited by Spendthrift (2023-01-30 05:06:19)

Stax,

It's the way of the world. You and I remember when you needed a collar and tie just to get into a suburban disco.

Stax- No linen suit and you are staying at a 19Century Colonial Hotel?
Schoolboy error, surely? I really wanted the JS linen suit last summer but they never had my size.

No chance getting into Iford Palais back in 69/70 without a collar and tie. I stopped going when my hair was growing out 70/71.

On the subject of leather shoes I have noticed that city boys that travel up to Fenchurch St are wearing suits but with black trainers!  Probably expensive but somehow not quite right. The girls used to travel in white trainers but change footwear when they get to the office. Working from home seems to be waining as people return to the office at least for 2/3 days a week. I'm just enjoying retirement, heath permitting.

I knew of the uppercut club back in the 60s. I just missed out age wise on being able to go there. I have quite a few cousins  5-10 years older than me that were all living in the East End at that time and some were regulars down there. Billy Walker was a bit of a local hero and his brother George was 'respected'. I saw a flyer recently on Facebook for the Christmas period at the club and the cheap entrance prices were amazing for the 'acts'. Ladies paid less.

Our club in the 1970s was the Lotus Club opposite where the Uppercut Club was. It was somewhere we stopped at, on the way home, when the pubs were shut. Your missus might know it Stax. Both situated in Forest Gate, where I was born. By coincidence we met a Jewish Lady in Waitrose on Sunday who was born in the same hospital as me. What a great conversation we had.
Dress code by 1972 would have been more relaxed but you wouldn't get in with jeans, joggers, trainers or t shirts. All of my mates had long hair by this stage. David Essex lookalikes.

2RS has absolutely hit the nail on the head there. There is a culture of perpetual adolescence. Kids are supposed to dress fashionably - and badly. It's what they do. I don't know at what point it was decided that they could just carry on dressing and acting the same through their fifties and beyond.

When you see that 45 year old man bowling down the street in too tight jeans carefully ripped at the thigh and a white puffer jacket, you just know he's on his way home to play a couple of hours on the X Box before hitting the high street for cheap early doors shots, lager and a kebab. It is depressing.

Muji aren't so prominent these days. I miss it. They had a nice minimilist way of presenting their clothes (we do both colours, white and blue) good socks and always smelled lovely