Fashion

Yesterdays post about sales pressure probably made me sound like a paranoid old grump, but I was thinking about it today, and I went into Cash Converters, and three people were converging to watch me and make sure that I wasn't stealing 2nd hand copies of the American Hi-Fi album or pressure me into buying a copy of Meatballs. I wasn't quite sure, but it was really horrible. The proportion of staff in the store to me seems a little high at 3:1, especially in a hovel of a 2nd hand store. Cash Converters where I work is pretty horrible, and has a funny smell in it. I can't imagine what possesses people to shop there, never mind steal anything - I was only in there to try and find a copy of Eat Your Peas, the old Martin/Molloy album - or cause havoc in the cassette aisle.

There's not really a lot to say about Tasmanian fashion. I don't think there are many Anne Maree Cooksleys wandering around Hobart waiting to be discovered, not too many high fashion stores full of expensive designer clothes. Most people think everyone in Tasmania wears flannels and slippers to begin with, so why worry? The reason I wanted to write about fashion is because there's an advert on the radio that makes out the Spanish and Italians are better than the Tasmanians because they spend a lot of money on clothes. Now, I'm no oil painting, or Leilani Kai if you will, but I know that when I come back from London with, say, an expensive T-shirt (my Colombia Records T-shirt was the worst) no one is going to give a toss here in Hobart, and there's something quite re-assuring, and indeed cheap about that. To give you an example, there's a really, really, really hot girl who works behind the bar at Central (you know who she is) and one day, I saw her in JB Hifi, and she had on pink fluffy slippers and a purple T-shirt and tracksuit just happily flicking through the CDs. Had she been in London, I think she'd never have gone out to HMV in anything that cost less than a grand, but in Hobart, there's nowhere to spend a grand, so why bother? I know that as long as I have jeans on, that's all the effort I need to put in. The problem is, I'm completely out of shape - maybe if I looked a bit more like Todd Sampson, fashion would make me look better - and I know that if I wear a baseball cap I look like I've got a terminal illness, if I wear flash sunglasses they look stolen...

My favourite fashion store in Hobart, and I don't know if it's still open, is the semi legendary African Delights. It's probably my favourite store because of one of the most hilarious radio ads in the history of the world, as two middle aged white guys discuss "do rags" and where one of the wiggers got his "bling", and of course, he got it at African Delights, Hobarts official home of "homeboy gear" (as opposed to those thousands of bootleg stores full of basketball tops from the Burstin Celtics). I love people wearing homeboy gear, especially incredibly white pasty gentlemen who hang around outside Subway dissing bitches and less fly boys than themselves. I'm always really impressed that in Tasmania, Subway is the official meeting point for homeboys, because bling wearers gotta eat healthy y'all. I don't wear any bling, but I bought a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey shirt in Burnie, and I thought that the old people were eyeing me suspiciously. I couldn't go much further though in my homeboy career, as I am amazingly white, in fact the only album I owned at that time was the Lisa Loeb album on cassette, and I bought it from a girl in a record shop in Burnie in a pink T-shirt with a photo of her puppy on it. I can think of a few less black scenarios, but not many...even The Cosby Show is less black than two white people talking about Lisa Loeb...

Of course as I mentioned before, the peak of Hobart Fashion is a mention in Attitude, the Hobart Mercury rather poor equivalent of Hit Magazine in the Herald Sun. There was a very large, very angry Aboriginal girl in the middle of the mall back in the days when the mall was a trouble spot, and she basically ran the whole mall. Her fashion style was simple - she wore black, and she wore it angrily. She even yelled at Dancing Man one day. And she got in Attitude as a style icon. In Hobart, as long as you are vaguely attractive, you can pretty much set your own fashion agenda, no one really cares. Sandals with socks? Dressing entirely like June Jones? Ugh Boots and a puffy jacket? Sorted. The only ever dispute I had with fashion living here is from a night out at Customs. A hot girl had the same jumper as me and she was allowed in and I wasn't - why did we have the same top on? I have no idea, but it was pretty obvious that we were at a beautiful/ugly impasse. There was nothing between us except our faces, and she had an advantage. I like Customs, but this was one time where they even outdid the violence of Syrup or the vomit ban of Irish. In the end, I got in after one of my friends threatened to go to the papers, and she ended up spewing in the toilets for about 3 hours after eating a dodgy prawn while her friend said "she'll still be right to root later".

Fashion may go out of style, but class, it never does...