before I knew the tune for âHappy Birthdayâ. Maybe itâs hard-wired into our cerebellums. Perhaps we learn it, like whale song, through the amniotic murk, along with the theme for Neighbours .
I resent âHappy Birthdayâ. I mind its cheery imbecility. I mind its predictable repetitive ersatz jollity. I object to the implicit invitation to strangers to lean over and sing at me as if Iâm remedial, and to remind me that my mortal coil is unravelling. Mostly I hate it for not doing what it says on the tin. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, has never, in all the countless times itâs been sung, brought an extra watt of happiness to anyone.
And anyway, if youâre going to mark small milestones of a lifeâs course with song, why stop at birthdays? We already mark Christmas and national events, sport and death and marriage with specific songs. Why not a coming-out-to-your-parents song? Why donât we have a song and a cake for sleeping with a new partner for the first time? The waiters could come out with cake and a candle, and sing, Happy rumpy to you, happy pumpy to you, get your knickers off, easy Sheila, rumpy-pumpy for you . That would give you a warm glow on a first date. And what about a song for exam results, or for getting fired, or moving house? So raise your glasses, and all together, Happy â¦
Catwalk cool
In Svalbard, the most northerly inhabited place on earth, function takes priority over fashion.
Short is the new sweet, bum the new breast, tea the new lunch, poor the new rich, vintage is the new new. It seems that contrarianism is the new conformity. The ânew blackâ is a catchphrase that espouses and exposes the relentless search for innovation and the circular sameness of fashion.
It has always been attributed to Diana Vreeland, the ridiculous and venerable editor of Vogue , who actually once said pink was Indiaâs navy blue, which is funny, observant and anthropologically worth a studentâs dissertation. It was some other fashionista, I think Gianfranco Ferré, who actually said grey was the new black, which is gnomically dim, but then the â80s were the gnomically dim decade and the new black encapsulated the common garden-gnomishness of it all. By the turn of the 21st century, calling anything the new black had exhausted its frail profundity and worn out its nickel-plated irony. And then along came Obama and suddenly black was the new black and it had jumped from fashion and style to politics and civil rights.
This wasnât what I meant to talk about. I wanted to write about fashion and the cold because (I may have mentioned this before) I strongly believe that cold is the new hot and fashion is a vanity of temperate climates. You can draw the Tropics of Fashion on a map. The northern line starts about five miles above London and the southern just off the tip of Sicily. If you continue those two orbits latitudinally around the world, between the two points youâve pretty much encapsulated the Tropics of Fashion. Of course, there are clothes and choices and fashionable people either side of that but this is where fashion gets indented and arbitrated. This is where the new blacks are posited. This is the zone where the weather allows you the greatest variation in clothes and you can dress with an airy disregard for the sky. Go further south or north and the climate becomes your stylist. There are stylish people above and below the meridian but they tend to wear things that have been made not by designers but by experience and necessity.
When I found out I was going to go to Svalbard, a huddle of islands overseen by Norway that are the most northerly inhabited place on earth, I knew Iâd need some advice on what to wear and I wasnât going to get it in the fashion department, from some editor whoâd tell me that alpaca was the new cashmere and Dolce were doing some really butch biker boots that look
I resent âHappy Birthdayâ. I mind its cheery imbecility. I mind its predictable repetitive ersatz jollity. I object to the implicit invitation to strangers to lean over and sing at me as if Iâm remedial, and to remind me that my mortal coil is unravelling. Mostly I hate it for not doing what it says on the tin. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, has never, in all the countless times itâs been sung, brought an extra watt of happiness to anyone.
And anyway, if youâre going to mark small milestones of a lifeâs course with song, why stop at birthdays? We already mark Christmas and national events, sport and death and marriage with specific songs. Why not a coming-out-to-your-parents song? Why donât we have a song and a cake for sleeping with a new partner for the first time? The waiters could come out with cake and a candle, and sing, Happy rumpy to you, happy pumpy to you, get your knickers off, easy Sheila, rumpy-pumpy for you . That would give you a warm glow on a first date. And what about a song for exam results, or for getting fired, or moving house? So raise your glasses, and all together, Happy â¦
Catwalk cool
In Svalbard, the most northerly inhabited place on earth, function takes priority over fashion.
Short is the new sweet, bum the new breast, tea the new lunch, poor the new rich, vintage is the new new. It seems that contrarianism is the new conformity. The ânew blackâ is a catchphrase that espouses and exposes the relentless search for innovation and the circular sameness of fashion.
It has always been attributed to Diana Vreeland, the ridiculous and venerable editor of Vogue , who actually once said pink was Indiaâs navy blue, which is funny, observant and anthropologically worth a studentâs dissertation. It was some other fashionista, I think Gianfranco Ferré, who actually said grey was the new black, which is gnomically dim, but then the â80s were the gnomically dim decade and the new black encapsulated the common garden-gnomishness of it all. By the turn of the 21st century, calling anything the new black had exhausted its frail profundity and worn out its nickel-plated irony. And then along came Obama and suddenly black was the new black and it had jumped from fashion and style to politics and civil rights.
This wasnât what I meant to talk about. I wanted to write about fashion and the cold because (I may have mentioned this before) I strongly believe that cold is the new hot and fashion is a vanity of temperate climates. You can draw the Tropics of Fashion on a map. The northern line starts about five miles above London and the southern just off the tip of Sicily. If you continue those two orbits latitudinally around the world, between the two points youâve pretty much encapsulated the Tropics of Fashion. Of course, there are clothes and choices and fashionable people either side of that but this is where fashion gets indented and arbitrated. This is where the new blacks are posited. This is the zone where the weather allows you the greatest variation in clothes and you can dress with an airy disregard for the sky. Go further south or north and the climate becomes your stylist. There are stylish people above and below the meridian but they tend to wear things that have been made not by designers but by experience and necessity.
When I found out I was going to go to Svalbard, a huddle of islands overseen by Norway that are the most northerly inhabited place on earth, I knew Iâd need some advice on what to wear and I wasnât going to get it in the fashion department, from some editor whoâd tell me that alpaca was the new cashmere and Dolce were doing some really butch biker boots that look
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