Fashion Wars

Catwalk Queen, an intermittently witty UK fashion blog, has decided to release their list of the top ten trends spotted on the streets of Blighty.

Their list was inspired by a top ten list put out by TIME magazine. Why a bunch of apparently twenty-something British bloggers felt the need to take a news magazine mostly read by affluent forty-something Americans as the last word in US style is beyond me. Don't get me wrong, TIME was a staple in my home growing up and I still pick it up occasionally - but pulse of the US fashion world?! It is to laugh.

Anyway, the bloggers decided, based on the list in TIME - TIME! - that the US is behind the UK in fashion.

Well, something is a load of bollocks - and it ain't TIME's innocuous, if rather too ubiquitous and mainstream to really be called trends, list.

The Catwalk Queens then decided to create their own list of UK trends.

However, they left off a few.

So here are my picks for the 2006 fashion trends unique to the UK:

1) Exposed muffin tops. You know that band of flesh that flops over your jeans, no matter how well the jeans fit elsewhere? That's a muffin top. British girls LOVE theirs, or so it would seem by how proudly they display them in public. Well-fed by beer, untouched by gym or sun, bare belly flesh is the hallmark of the authentically British female. And it doesn't matter the season: summer or winter, the muffin top comes out to play, jeans belted below it, cardigans stopping above it.

2) Glitter here, glitter there, sequins, sequins everywhere. The Catwalk cats picked sequin dresses as one of their trends, but they left off sequin bags, sequin cardigans, sequin skirts. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the occasional spangle, but head to toe sequins doesn't even work in Las Vegas anymore. Pair that with glitter eyeshadow matched to glitter shoes, and you have a fashion trend that Tinkerbell would find over the top. Maybe the love of all things shiny is a British thing I just don't get, like pantomime. Come to think of it, pantomime and this trend have lots in common...

3) WAGs as fashion role models. WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends) was the collective name coined for the expensive armcandy of the England football team. The best known WAG is Victoria "Posh" Beckham, but during the World Cup the papers couldn't get enough of the women's antics. The basic WAG look is orangey tan, fake nail extensions, porn star hair extensions, and designer logos. The overall effect is basic streetwalker.

So if the fact that these trends have yet to show up on the streets of the US (at least last I visited) means that the US is years behind the UK, then long may the US lag...