Flares Vs Skinnies

I've been giving it some serious thought for a while now (because this is how I do) and I've come to one conclusion: in a bitch fight between flares and skinnies, the skinnies will beat flares' arse every time.

For a starters, let's all just admit what everyone has been thinking but nobody's come right out and said: no matter how many times the fashion pundits of the world throw them in our general direction as the next big fashion fad, flares are never making a come back. They are stuck in the 70s and there they will stay.

Kate Moss - looks good in skinnies and flares... Bitch.

Do you wanna know why? Simple. It's because hardly anybody ever looks good in flares. Even models with all the image retouching and the lighting and the worlds best photographers cannot be saved from that weird shape - the crotch hug followed by the A-line taper. It's all so wrong.

Now you can say a lot of things about skinnies, how they only suit a certain skinny, long-legged shape (wrong!), how if you have anything approaching womanly curves they are not for you (wrong again!), how they make certain girls look like Oompah Loompahs, especially when teamed with the dreaded tunic (there may be a point here). But all these things are a minority issue that nothing, especially not flares, can fix.

On the other hand, for most girls, a pair of well fitting skinnies are a joy to own. They are incredibly versatile; you can team them with anything, dress 'em up, dress 'em down, they still work. You can't do anything else with flares except wear them with a tight tee, wedge shoes and stick flowers in your hair. It's all they're ever good for. You can't wear them with a dress (not if you don't want to look like the back of a bus from all sides), you certainly can't wear them with flats.

Flares - rubbish on almost everyone, even Eva

So, flares what are they good for and why do they keep being foisted on us every summer like fashion's only hope? I don't know. All I can say is keep well away. Stick to what you know, choose skinnies.

See more fashion face-offs

Bikinis Vs Swimsuits

If you have - or believe you have - a less than perfect body, then this must be a no-brainer. The bikini is the most unforgiving of garments. It's designed to reveal more than it conceals, and that makes it most women's worst nightmare.

I would argue that it's not really a garment all. At it's most basic, it's bits of string with triangles of fabric attached. Bikinis are pretty standard really, when you think about it.

Berry good: Halle fills out her bikini

There's not much to fire the imagination from a design perspective. You can change the fabric all you want and vary the amount of fabric involved, but in the end it still amounts to the rough equivalent of a bra and pants that you wear to the beach.

The swimsuit, on the other hand, gives far more coverage, you can choose one that reveals the bits that you like, while covering the bits that you don't. You can hidden support for sagging tits or bulging bellies or drooping bums.

There's also more of range to choose from: halter neck backless items, scooped, cutout, deep v-ed. They can be sexy or demure, brash or subtle. It's you choice which means that you can create you own comfort level.

The good thing about a bikini is that it is probably the one item of clothing left (apart from underwear) where "looking good" does not automatically equal "stick thin". All those stickie-out ribs and pancake flat tits and arse don't work in a bikini.

To truly look good in a bikini you have to have curves in all the right places. You gotta have booty. Just look at Bond girls like Ursula Andress or Halle Berry or take a gander at the girls on the beaches of Brazil or Miami. Now compare that with your common or garden variety size zero and tell me which looks better.

Uma God! Ms Thurman chooses the wrong beach wear

Conversely, the wrong swimsuit can quickly descend into the mimsy and mundane. Remember those pics of Uma Thurman in her plain one-piece on the beach? Before that picture she was a universally acknowledged hottie, after it she lost some of that heat.

So what am I getting at? I'm saying with this one there's just no clear winner. What really matters is being sufficiently confident in your body-shape to choose the right swimwear for you and then letting everyone know how gorgeous you think you are.

See:
Five of the best... swimsuits
Five of best... Bikinis

Glamming up Vs dressing down

If you read this blog regularly, you already know that I like to dress up. A lot. Nothing can beat pair of sky-high heels, a pretty dress and loads of jewellery.

It's great fun putting a look together and looking different. It makes life just a little less mundane, especially since I have the attention span of a gnat.

On the other hand, it does take it out of you. It can all feel like hard work when you spend hours in front of the wardrobe mirror trying on ten different things just to make sure that they all go together just the way you want. And there are days when it's just as fun to slob out in your boy jeans, a moth-eaten t-shirt and some old but comfortable trainers.

Of course, there are some who will take glamming up to an unhealthy level - if you squeeze into shoes too small for you because they make you feet look better (as if), if you starve yourself to fit into skinnies or anything a size smaller than God gave you, if you refuse to go anywhere without a girdle on (or full make up, nails and hair)? Really, you need to stop it. The essence of glamming up is that it's fun. If you take it too seriously, it will eat you.

We all like to look fabulous but let's not forget there's more to life, eh?

Chazzing Vs Cheaping

The question of the day is: charity shopping, is it still worth it? I don’t know about you but back in my comparably skint days, the charity shop was my style saviour. It’s amazing what you could do with £5 and a little imagination.

In chazzing’s heyday, it wasn’t uncommon to go into a charity shop with £20 and come out with a couple of new outfits, including a new pair of shoes. In those days, people gave their good stuff away so that other people with less money could have them. Not anymore. With the rise of vintage shopping, ebay and every uptown beastie and celebrity cottoning on to the trend, the pickings have become very slim indeed.

Add to these, the contemporary phenomenon of cheaping. For those who are not familiar with the term, this refers to buying from those high street shops with high turnover, up-to-the-minute fashion for less. The current high flyers in this category are Matalan, Primark and Peacocks, with the supermarkets getting in the act with the likes of George at Asda and Florence and Fred at Tescos.

The obvious appeal of cheaping is, as the name suggests, the sheer silliness of the prices (a pair of shoes at Peacocks averages at less than £15), and their ability to quickly turnover trend after trend. This is the ultimate shopaholic’s dream, throwaway fashion. This is the MacDonalds of clothes shopping. See a trend on the catwalk today, by it for less than the price of two pints of beer tomorrow.

And let’s not forget the sheer convenience of it all. There’s a cheaping opportunity on virtually every high street, selling exactly what you want. Where chazzing involved many fruitless hours of going from shop to shop, trawling through less than pristine clothing racks, trying to find that one bargain that would make it all worthwhile, you can just walk in to your nearest Primark and pick up that “it” coat and nobody else has ever worn it!

It’s a no-brainer really. Chazzing is officially dead and cheaping is a live beast that will just keep growing and growing. The flipside of this of course, is that the imagination and individuality of style that chazzing brought to the table is fast being usurped by a cookie-cutter blandness that might still see us foraging for something different, come the backlash. So, maybe the death of chazzing has been wildly underestimated after all.

Images:
Top right: Matalan metallic ballet pumps, £8
Top left: George at Asda printed ballon sleeved top, £14
Bottom right: Tesco Hotshop ruched print dress, £12

Round toe shoes Vs pointy toe shoes

I've been mulling this one over for a while, and I have to say that my preference is definitely for the for the round toes. For one thing, they are infinitely more comfortable. Also, if like me you have what can only be politely termed as "big feet" (7-71/2 in a round toe, 8- 81/2 in a pointy toe) that extra inch can turn your feet from cute to clownish.

On the other hand, pointy toes are just so elegant and sexy. I've noticed that women who wear pointy toe shoes seem altogether more groomed and grown up than their round toe wearing counterparts.

Round toes look good with baby doll dresses, A-line skirts, tees, ponytails and lip gloss. Pointy toes look great with power suits, pencil skirts, pussy-bows, salon fresh hair and scarlet lipstick. Round toes are playful, pointy toes are all business.

So, which is best? I guess it depends on whether at heart you are forever girlie or a grown up woman. Or then again, it could simply be a matter of "if the shoe fits..."