Fashionistas to the rescue...

As a rule, I don't pay much attention to fashion, but every so often it impinges....

Last Saturday's Guardian had an article in the News pages, not the Fashion section, which got me thinking.... it seems that someone called Patrick Grant, who is apparently "menswear designer of the year" thinks that;

"British men are too scruffy....."

It is tragic, you have to admit, this widespread laxness of masculine dress. Mr Grant is, naturally, devastated: "It makes you want to cry how scruffy everybody is", he says. And you can see his point.

Tuition fees riots, NHS cuts, Educational Maintenance Allowances cut for the most vulnerable youngsters, Wikileaks and Julian Assange under attack by all the governments in the world and besieged by the UK Justice System, Religious extremists bombing Stockholm, Siberian weather blocking our transport system........ all of these trivial issues claiming our attention.

But not for Mr Grant and the fashion industry. He and they keep an unrelenting focus on the real meat of the important issues that the man on the Clapham Omnibus finds so troubling.

Declining sales of gentelemens' neckwear, now there's a subject that raises the blood pressure in all true British households. Even so, the matter has mysteriously failed to grab the attention of governments and movers and shakers. Haven't they seen the bank managers rioting in the streets for the return of the bowler hat as compulsory business uniform? A good pair of brogues, that'll solve all our problems. In our hearts we know these to be eternal truths which we ignore at our peril.

It's good to know that there are, in our midst, modern day heroes like Patrick Grant and the Guardian fashion editers. Heroes who refuse to be led astray by the minor issues (wars, famine, natural and man-made disasters) that break out on the far horizon of the news agenda. Heroes who remind us, at great cost to themselves and against a blizzard of mainstream scorn, of the really important things in this life and vale of tears.  

Cravat wearers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion....