'Single, Gay and almost 30'

September is here, and hot on its coat tails is none other than the glittering beacon of fabulousness that is 'New Zealand Fashion Week'! With this in mind I have been paying more attention to local street fashion and in particular "gay fashion". Now when thinking of your typical young gay male, an image comes to mind of someone with his thumb on the pulse of fashion, accompanied with an impeccable sense of style and grace... How wrong I was... In my ever continuing fascination in the art of ‘people watching’ I found myself in the Mecca of it all... S.P.Q.R on Ponsonby Road. It was of course a Saturday night and while my newly acquired “man-friend” and I waited on our pasta and vino, fashion crimes were being committed all around! If the barely clothed slappers on their way to the ‘Longroom’ weren’t enough to make my retinas bleed... the fashion talent of the ‘limp wristed ones’ urged me into contemplation to stab myself in the eye with the blunt end of my pasta spoon! Thank god my Pinot Noir arrived to momentarily distract me from the monstrosities that were just seated next to us! Accompanied with their garish attire was their drunken fag hags who proceeded to sway all over the place probably due to the fact they had consumed a few too many bottles of $6 Chardonnay undoubtedly acquired with the aid of their ‘one card’ at Countdown...

After guzzling back my vessel I could now bring myself to analyse the threads of the unfortunate ones next to us... A wave of nostalgia washed over me as I caught a glimpse of a rather 90’s looking ‘sports coat’ accompanied with a garish purple shirt, most probably purchased from ‘Hallensteins’which was tucked into some rather unflattering bootleg jeans. This somewhat ‘outlet store’ look was polished off with some horrendous shiny dress shoes, all echoing fashions from over a decade ago... I mean really, did you actually get lost on the way to your closet and end up in 1998? Things didn’t get better when focusing on his friend either... Let me just say now... even though you are wearing a ‘World’ waistcoat it does not justify wearing white shoes with a white belt! And at the best of times ‘World’ gets it wrong with ‘kooky’ fabric choices and bad cuts... If you want to look like your 3 year old sister had a hand in dressing you why not just throw your entire wardrobe in the air and see what lands on you... Why not add some blonde streaks to your ‘Rodney Wayne’ haircut and you are on your way!

Next table down offered a glimmer of hope in this fashion starved patron... That hope was lost when one stood to vacate his bladder... With another large gulp of my Pinot I regrettably raised my line of vision to meet another vomit on the sidewalk of fashion!

Like vomit it’s hard not to look at, and also gives you that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach... Yes that’s right folks I’m talking about floral shirts! Whoever thought it was a good idea to dress men in floral prints should be lined up and shot! This retarded cousin of paisley should have been drowned at birth along with its friend the diagonal stripe. Unfortunately I think we are stuck with floral as it has trickled its way down through the gays and into the Friday night drinks wardrobe of the 30+ straight male. I can understand why the straights would see this as ‘Fashion forward’ combined with their perfectly ironed straight-leg jeans and pointy ‘Overland’ casual dress shoes... hmmm. But for a species that spends more time looking in the mirror than Tyra Banks’ forehead you would think the gays would have an understanding of current trends? Apparently not!

So what is happening that the young and fabulous are getting it so wrong? Is it breeding? Influence? Perhaps just a lack of exposure? I’m not sure... But one thing for sure I was sick of choking back bile, so we quickly finished dinner and waved for the cheque. I don’t think I could handle another relic from bargain bin...

Jimi Tindall Hunt