Giles Coren: Love

I think that says all that needs saying, really.

Well, that and this-

"From: Coren, GilesSent: 10 August 2002 16:41To: James, AnitaCc: Wells, DominicSubject:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. how fucking difficult is that? it's the sentence that bestrides the fucking book i reviewed for you. it is the sentence i wrote first in my fucking review. it is 35 fucking letters long, which is why i wrote that it was. and so some useless cunt sub-editor decides to change it to "jumps over A lazy dog" can you fucking count? can you see that that makes it a 33 letter sentence? so it looks as if i can't count, and the cunting author of the book, poor mr dunn, cannot count. the whole bastard book turns on the sentence being as i fucking wrote it. and that it is exactly 33 letters long. why do you meddle. what do you think you achieve with that kind of dumb-witted smart-arsery? why do you change things you do not understand without consulting. why do you believe you know best when you know fuck all. jack shit.
that is as bad as editing can be. fuck, i hope you're proud. it will be small relief for the author that nobody reads your poxy magazine.
never ever ask me to write something for you. and don't pay me. i'd rather take £400 quid for assassinating a crack whore's only child in a revenge killing for a busted drug deal - my integrity would be less compromised.
jesus fucking wept i don't know what else to say."

If I Was An Arab, I Would Buy Sand

Yes, I have fallen for marketing. And I'm ready to embrace it. These are tough years, times are hard, and friends are few, and yet I feel the need to internet window shop. Something that never really bothered me, and was something to pass the time when I should be doing more important things. And I hadn't bought anything for about four months. Which, for me, is good.

So, I find myself browsing a well known online store and I see some shoes that I like. A nice pair of Vans, which I already have, but have a hole and well passed their best. They're in the sale, so I buy them. Quite pleased with myself until they arrive. And the bastards at this well known online store have enclosed a free gift. Fake tan. Gradual fake tan dressed up as a moisturiser, but fake tan none the less. I would never actively buy this, or even pay it a passing glance. I'm pale and I will stay that way until I burn and shrivel on holiday. It's nothing that a chemical peel and vast botox can't fix in later life.

Anyhoo, the problem with free gifts is that I become indebted to the company, in an emotional way. It's not logical in any way and I understand how it's meant to work. All too well. So then I want to shop more. Which is why they are utter bastards.

Fast forward to this morning, at 8am, I'm tired and cranky and in need of a bit of a kick start. So I go onto facebook, have a nosey, and spot an advertisement for Calvin Klein underwear. So off I pop then to well known online store, and I see underwear. And in a moment of weakness, I buy some. I don't need it, at all, but I've convinced myself that I do. And more pathetically in a split second I genuinely believed that Calvin Klein and well known online store could do, in less than 24 hours, what I and the collective powers of the NHS, WW, and my entire family, their willpower and offers of vast cash rewards, could not. They could give me the body of a model.

I'm ashamed. Deeply ashamed. But it's not the worst part. The worst part is that one pair of the lovely Steel Underwear, costs £20. I bought five.

That still isn't all. I continued adding things to my basket like Helen Keller at an eyesight shop. I bought a further seven pairs of underwear, due to marketing. Now I am ashamed at this. But quite frankly, I don't care.

They sold me a dream. I could not care less if they don't do what they imply on the tin. In the words of ABBA, I have a dream. They helpfully fullfilled it for much less than a therapist would charge and that is wonderful. And I shall tell you why- because it is. Confidence is a state of mind, so if I feel confident, then I am. And that, would save the NHS millions, it would reignite the need to shop, save the global economy and we all wouldn't be sweating about the bloody Credit Crunch as if we were pregnant nuns! So stop bloody moaning and start shopping, you'll feel much better and you'll be saving the world economy.



P.S.

"Fashion Smashion" was written for the Uni paper, and not for here, which I felt the need to point out.

Toodles.

Fashion Smashion

Fashion’s New Prozac

If 2007 was the year of re-invention and the brief debut of fresh, new burgeoning talent, then 2008 so far, has been the year of the “meh”. Everything is tired, old, and dare I say it, done. The industry that has relied so heavily on reinvention, is in desperate need of a pick me up. Like the housing market, the golden days of late, are exactly that and the fashion world has been bracing itself for the couture crash.

Thankfully though, there are some in the industry that are bucking the trend, a graduate fashion designer that made Anna Wintour turn up at his degree show at age 23 has entered his formative years with a bang. Christopher Kane, and his design partner/sister, Tammy, are the genius behind the Christopher Kane label, and if the industry was depressed, they were the first pill it so desperately needed. Last year had Kate Moss, Kylie, and Chloe Sevigny all wearing their creations.

The sibling duo were the ones who sent neon down the catwalk and brought an updated version of the 80’s to fashion week. This year they’ve been holding their own against designers who have been trendsetting since before the Kane’s were born, with their fall collection. Even if some critics have described it as lacking any accessible concept, what they can’t deny is that the collection contained something fashion hasn’t seen in a long time, original designs.

The second pill taken in the battle against the recession was in the form of a tall, blond, northern lass who used to work in a chippy, and has a name that is impossibly difficult to pronounce. It’s Agyness Deyn. She recently knocked Kate Moss off the top spot in Tatler’s annual “Best Dressed List”, has had Perez Hilton foaming at the mouth, has been setting trends every time she steps out into the glare of the paparazzi, and was the inspiration for a slogan tee for her old flatmate, Henry Holland‘s, first collection, “Flicking the bean, for Agyness Deyn”, indeed, fashion was.



In his fall 2007 show, Henry Holland was seen as a designer who was out to shock, and had no longevity. His designs all had one thing in common, they used the name of the industry’s elite and put it into a crass, but fun rhyming couplet. He inspired the many slogan tees seen that year, and everyone, thought he was done. Not so. He bounced back with seemingly endless energy and originality, along with the third pill that would begin to stave off the crash. He went from slogan tees, to patent leather hot pants and now to tartan miniskirts. His ability to predict what young London want, and to create accordingly, is uncanny in someone with so little experience. What’s even more amazing is his ability to set trends for the fearless teens, the one’s that will stay with him for a very long time.

The final pill comes in the form of a fashion legend Tom Ford. It was unthinkable to ignore the man who saved Gucci from a future of certain destruction, a man whom, like no other has been so coveted by so many, and a man, who is not afraid to take risks in anything that he does. In the latest issue of GQ Style, Ford put a naked male model on the cover and made this the theme of the entire magazine. His editorial took pride of place and caused for the entire edition to be rethought. Likewise the ads for his perfume and eyewear collection are bold and sexual, sex definitely sells. Oozing pure, unadulterated sexuality they feature naked, sweaty models wearing nothing but his perfume, with the bottle providing their only cover. Nothing has ever made a splash like these ads, and indeed the people featured above.

Tom Ford, Agyness Deyn, Henry Holland, and Christopher Kane, Style salutes you.

Give me strength! Give me a vodka.

No wonder we're all binge drinkers. Christ, it's a social necessity these days. Alcohol abuse is the only thing that prevents us all from taking our nearest and dearest out with a kitchen knife and a rolling pin. We can't even dispose of the bodies anymore. The Polish migrant workers have gone home so there's no one to dig up the patio, and no one can afford the petrol to drive to the nearest reservoir to dump the bodies, so we're all stuck in a drunken coma waiting until Britain stops being a national production of Deliverance. I know who I blame. Facebook.

Yes, I blame Facebook. More specifically, the Facebook group application. There was a time when the general public got angry. Became really angry about things like illegal wars, general injustice and the price of everyday essentials. Not now. Oh no. Now, all these former activists have become a parody of a Daily Mail reader. Only instead of writing into a newspaper ranting about whichever minority has declared war on the right wingers that week, they join, or even worse, create, a Facebook group.

Groups like this:



Aren't they precious? There's a simplicity in their thoughts that I am envious of. Well, that is until I realise the trade off would be every fibre of my intelligence, all my common sense and anything that vaguely resembles tolerance being ripped out of my head and replaced with ignorance, hatred and a passion to be a guest of Jeremy Kyle.

However, for every dodgy, reprehensible and moronic group, there's one which is the exact opposite. The make Jeremy Clarkson the Prime Minister one for example.Or the ones with actual links towards the petitions that the Government allegedly take into consideration. But they do no bloody good. At all. They provide a medium for which is used to vent. Much like blogging, only with more people of the same opinion surrounding you to validate your feelings and moan. Moan, moan, bloody moan. It's cathartic, I'm sure, but it's next to useless in effecting change and making the world a better place.

Sitting around may have worked in the 60's and 70's, but that's only because everyone was too off their faces on acid to be able to actually do anything other than sit down. And at least they were all sat together, actually disrupting things and forcing change. They weren't all spread throughout the country, like their Daily Mail reading counterparts, tutting furiously and writing in, and spending a week getting quite angry only to read their letter out of the newspaper and then to be very happy and be the talk of the bridge club, before tutting again about the minority of the moment.

Even as recently as the Poll Tax protests, the people forced the Government to back down by simply not paying it. Not now though. Now, it seems, that Neil Kinnock has spent the past two decades seeping himself into the public's consciousness and acting as a power tranquilizer to stop us doing anything proactive. In times of old, if petrol prices were ridiculously high and the vast majority of that price was made up of tax, it would be off the menu until the Government buckled. Not anymore. Now, to protest, we buy(?) the petrol, and then drive really, really slowly up the motorway to affect everyone but the Government. And don't forget giving the assistant at the petrol station such a look just to show them how annoyed we are!

It's not that we've become apathetic, it's that we've chosen the easier choice. We can protest outside, suffer a little pain, go without, make do and mend and all that, until the Government is forced to back down, or we can type a little rant on the wall of a Facebook group, full of like minded individuals, and convince ourselves that that's it. We've done all we can and that the Government will have to listen, because there are 100,000 members of the group and no one could possibly ignore them. Alas, they are ignored. Because we're all too pissed to care.