Did London Fashion Week pass you by? Me too. Here's what Giles Coren, writing in the Saturday Times, thinks about it.
'What a nuclear explosion of vomitous superficiality, custom-made and hand-finished to blast the public perception of women back to the Stone Age'.
'…poor, emaciated girls staggering down the runway with their stomachs rumbling and their eyes sunken in from misery and hunger and boredom…their bony ankles rolling over on shoes designed by woman-hating fops…'
'…at the bottom end…the emaciated values and grand fickleness of high fashion filter down to people who cannot afford more than a couple of quid a garment, that is where the damage is done. That is where Primark and Matalan and Bon Marche come in, providing bog-cheap fashion for people with very little money who still want to throw away their clothes six times a year and start again…which means the clothes must be produced at labour costs beneath what is humanly decent, or even possible. Which means Bangladesh, children, hundreds dead or thousands, as at Rana Plaza in April this year. Fashion is a pretty face with a sick and rotten heart.'
'The British fashion industry will argue that LFW creates jobs. But so does war. So does cancer.'
'…to create the endless supply of clothes that women need to show each other how nice their clothes are today, the global catastrophe of fashion must be perpetuated.'
He's no socialist, Mr. Coren, but when he's in this vein, I like the cut of his jib.