“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn” - Orson Welles

My son persuaded me that he absolutely had to have new clothes ready for the start of term. He is in the final year of sixth form so he doesn't have to wear uniform and he doesn't seem to have grown since the end of last term but it seems that he can't possibly cope with the clothes that he already has. So one day last week I had the joy of a shopping trip to Topman and several of his other favourite shops.

He wanted a pair if chinos, really I would have liked to just give him the money and just send him shopping on his own, but he had asked me to go with him and it is unusual for him to want us to do things together, so it was important for me to go with him. Every pair of trousers that we looked at seemed to be designed for Stretch Armstrong. Wearing them would certainly be a shape changing (and probably life changing) experience! The legs were impossibly narrow but the bottom was loose so that they give the wearer a strange bow legged look as if they have lost their horse or have had an unfortunate accident. My son assured me that they are meant to look like that, and just to be sure that I got the message he told me that old people don't understand fashion! It is so nice to have teenagers around to make me feel good about myself!!

He chose a pair of 'Stretch Armstrong' trousers with turn ups in a contrasting colour - and he dares to say that Robbie's fashion sense is weird! He then spotted another pair of trousers on the sale rail, they were the same sort of style but without the contrasting turn ups. That was the sum total of our purchases from Topman, but we still had more to buy. He chose a pair of long shorts, a patterned jumper, a pack of socks including a green pair with ducks on and one or two other bits and bobs. He was very happy with his purchases and to be fair the clothes looked better on than off, but I can't help thinking that there was a lot of truth in the words of Oscar Wilde

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months" - Oscar Wilde