RM column March 28 - Fashion Full Circles

RM column March 28 - Fashion Full Circles

IT IS funny how fashions come back around. Back in the 1980s when I was a teenager I would have never thought that flares would come back, they were the ultimate bad taste item from the 1970s; how on earth would anyone ever want to wear them again.

Then I thought the same thing when standing in a train station in Manchester in the late 1980s and saw some teenagers walking by in some crazy flared trousers, I couldn't help myself I laughed out loud. They were back, and with vengeance and are still to be seen in one shape/style or another how many years on from their come back.

Of course there are lovely things that come back, such as the sleek and sexy 1940s or parts of the hippy 1970s but at some stage everything comes back, no matter how much we think it never will. Who would have ever thought the 1980s was a fashion time that would be revisited with all those garish colours, back-combing and shoulder pads; yet we have seen puff ball skirts and some of the worse things being recycled in the noughties.

Some of it looks even better than it did 20 years ago, some of it is well eh better consigned to the wardrobes of the past.

From slagging me as a bit of a hippy in my teens, the Young Wan has gone turnabout and now there have been loads of clothes I see the Young Wan go mad over which I had worn something similar as a youngster.

Over Christmas Nanny bought the Young Wan a waistcoat which was practically identical to one I had in years ago. I had many at different stages and the one the Young Wan has came from a man's suit just like my favourites did.

We went even further. From I was 13 to eh a near grown up, the most coveted item of clothing was a man's tuxedo jacket. My pal had a fantastic silk jacket, it was black with this beautiful navy silk lining and we all borrowed it at some stage or another.

You never felt cooler hitting the town than when wearing this jacket.

So now the Young Wan has the waistcoat, all she needs is the tuxedo jacket and we would be like twins at the same age.

She hasn't worn the waistcoat yet because she was waiting to get a large white shirt to wear under it. But she came in with one tonight. She also came in with skin-tight black and white pinstripe jeans and coloured hair extensions.

During the hour and a half it took her to get the dishes done, she had back-combed her hair madly, put in the green, electric blue and pink extensions; and I can't help but think when she gets the waistcoat and shirt on she will look just like Russell Brand, a female red-headed version. She is better looking of course, but still she will look like Russell Brand. I'm eh so proud.

Fashion rewind

OVER Christmas Nanny bought the Young Wan a waistcoat which was practically identical to one I had in years past. I had many at different stages and the one the Young Wan has came from a man's suit just like my favourites did.

She hasn't worn it yet because she was waiting to get a large white shirt to wear under it and she came in with one tonight. She also came in with skin-tight white pinstripe jeans and coloured hair extensions.

During the hour and a half it took her to get the dishes done, she had back-combed her hair madly, put in the green, electric blue and pink extensions; and I can't help but think when she gets the waistcoat and shirt on she will look just like Russell Brand. She is better looking of course, but still she will look like Russell Brand. I'm eh so proud.

RM Column - April 5 Sugar Plum Teenager

“Tell her she can get any clothes she wants for easter and I’ll pay for it,” Nanny told me. With instructions like that the Young Wan didn’t need to be told twice.

The plan was seeing as how she was off school for the week and was in with me in work, that when I had a meeting she would head off on a clothes hunt in town.

For most of the morning I felt like the parent of a toddler again, there were lots of ‘is it time yet’ a little reminder to the ‘are we there yet days?’.

At 4.30pm she burst back into the office gushing about finding the most perfect skirt ever.

“Oh it is soooo beautiful. I HAVE to have it. AND it is reduced from €50 to €25,” she told me.

I then asked what’s it like?

“Well it is red and black, kinda like a tutu, but not really. It comes down to here (points at her knee) and it is gorgeous. The woman in the shop said it is gorgeous on me too.”

Yeah cos people who try to sell you things never lie… How and ever off she went €25 in hand to buy the wonder skirt.

She came back, pulled it out of the bag to an audience of work colleagues whom she had all told about the item. They cooed appropriately as I went ‘that’s too short’.

It’s not a skirt at all it is a belt as they say, seriously. Oh and it is a tutu of the sugar plum fairy type, a short one. While it is certainly very pretty and cool it is still a belt.

So when I got back home she was trying it on in all its glory.

Now I have a rule which has been adapted from that fashion rule, the higher the skirt, the darker the tights.

Only mine is the higher the skirt, stick on some trousers. I am not talking about big mad trousers, I am talking about her Capri trousers which look beautiful under little skirts and mini-dresses.

You see I think she doesn’t move right in miniskirts, she forgets she is wearing one and can reveal more than decent.

She matched her skirt with her massive big hoodie sweatshirt, holey patterned tights, and her big boots.

She even managed to sit down and move about with the skirt on without revealing anything of concern.

Then I noticed the skirt was sitting longer on her than I thought. Trouble was she had pulled it down to her hips, and would not have any top that would sit right with a skirt pulled that far down.

So it would appear that even she didn’t want to wear it that short. So I think I might take a trip to buy some black net to lengthen the skirt and make it a decent length.

If I don’t I will just turn into an even bigger nag than I am already and I will not feel comfortable with her wearing it. As if that would be a change...

RM February 15 - Trail of Destruction

Trail of destruction/it began and ended with trousers

I've been done, screwed over and made a complete and utter eejit. This morning I have left the entire flat in complete and utter chaos and had little to do with it.

Hurricane Young Wan has wrecked havoc and left a trail of destruction in her wake.

This has all obviously been building up slowly until one little thing upset the uneasy chaotic balance levered by herself until it all came down on me this morning.

I suppose it began and ended with trousers. I had a do last weekend and she was coming with me so I wanted her dressed up to my liking not hers.

Knowing the stress a request for this normally gives on previous such occasions I told her well in advanced what I wanted her to wear and I told her to find the outfit days before she needed it,

From experience I have to do this. I can't tell you how many times we have discovered just before leaving the house that she can't find a shoe, her coat, therefore my mind.

And it isn't surprising when you consider the hovel that is her room.

So the night before the big event I asked her had she gotten everything sorted.

"Yeah, but I can't find the trousers!"
"Well you may, I told you days ago, I handed them to you, find them."
Ten minutes later:
"I can't find them"
"Young Wan, this is non-negotiable. I warned you, I told you, You had time to sort it out, Get them."

This happened over and over again for two hours until she pulled every item of clothing off every shelf and from her clothes rail onto the floor.

She sat on the pile and delved, she stood back and pulled at things. More energy was spent not finding than finding.

Then she came in and informed me, they weren't in her room, she didn't know where they were - she just couldn't find them.

Well that was it for me. I went in and immediately regretted having done so.

I started at the top of the pile and moved things one by one until the pile was moved to another corner of the room.

Still no sign of the trousers.

I then lifted up her chairbed thing and there were the offending items, lying on the floor (with a sponge chair on top) discarded from when I had given them to her to put away only days before.
That only took two hours and the entire demolition of the bedroom.

And so it has stayed demolished all week.

I have been on her back between the serious lack of studying and the bedroom, all the while trying to turn a blind eye to the real horrors of the bedroom.

The straw or should I say trouser incident that broke the camel's back took place this morning.
I was looking for a particular pair this morning that I had left on the table two days ago and which had obviously been 'put away' by herself in a futile cosmetic brush-over pretend to tidy the living room exercise.

So before she left for school I told her to get me them. She huffed and puffed because we had slept in and she didn't want to be asked to do anything by me.

But tough she put them away, somewhere, I didn't know having looked in obvious spots like my wardrobe.

Before booting out the door she shouted they were on the chair and bye bye I'm off to school.
When I went to get them. It wasn't them at all, so I had to go a-hunting.

They were finally discovered in her room, in the middle of the pile. Nice.

Anyway there will be some seismic activity in our house tonight as she will whether she likes it or not be sorting all this out. Wish me luck.

EDIT: I wrote this last month and at no stage yet has the room been done, but Nanny arrives tomorrow and it will be done by then if it kills her or me or both. Arrhhgggghhhhhg.

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RM December 21 - Teen Experiments

I WROTE recently about the Young Wan sporting a baldy-man comb-over as part of her latest look. Now its gotten worse - she actually cut a fringe herself and not well at all.

Now bear in mind Nanny is with us for Christmas and is a hairdresser. Yes in the Red Mum household all hairdos and restyles are held off on until Nanny comes to stay.

Why pay the prices of other hairdressers or indeed do it yourself when you have Vidal Nanny at home. Well that is the sensible thing and as we know teenagers don’t do sensible.

The trouble is that because she did it herself, badly, the layer above hangs long and wispily well below the new fringe.

I only noticed it after she had done it a while because she has been tying it up and out of the way. When I saw it I went bananas. Seriously when there is a hairdresser in the house, why would you do that?

And it isn’t the first time she has done this, no it is the third time. I am not talking about taking a lump out of a lock after finding scissors as a three-year-old, no the first time she did she was eight years old.

That cut was something else.

I noticed that time when I was brushing her hair and as I swept her hair behind her head I could not work out why one side of her beautiful long hair kept slipping from my hand.

I spun her around and came face to face with an eight-year-old red-haired Phil Oakey from the Human League circa 1981 mini-lookalike.

I hit the roof that time, I scolded her, I told her it would take years to grow down, which it did.

When Nanny came to stay sometime later she tried to repair the damage. The problem was she cut it nearly right to the back of her head. At one stage Nanny felt like handing the scissors to the Young Wan and tell her to do the same to the other side.
However being better than Vidal Sasson Nanny fixed the hair while keeping some length at the back and over time/years it grew back down.

So that was the first time and you would have thought she would have learned from it. Or maybe she did for a couple of years anyway, probably about the time it took the hair to grow back.

The second time was sometime last year or was it the year before when she went mental with nail scissors. Seriously she cropped bits at the side giving herself 1970s locks. It wasn’t what she intended, at least that what I have told myself. But seriously, sideburns to ehm match her long hair. On top of it all she cropped a bit of the top at the front and a half a layer's worth short underneath her hair at the top of her neck.

What on earth was that all about? That has nothing to do with style, that is seriously mad behaviour. There was nothing that Nanny could do about that, all the repair job that could be done involved time and hair growth.

In fact she had her hair cut shorter before the summer and it was only at that stage that those stubs of hairs have grown down enough. And now she has done it again. She is mad, barking in fact.

Maybe the New Year will see rapid hair growth, here’s wishing us all the best things for the coming year. Happy New Year everyone, oh and I will be hiding the scissors from now on.

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RM November 23 - Teenage comb overs

IT WOULD appear the Young Wan has descended more and more into the world of Emo. Her makeup, particularly her eye makeup has become darker and heavier and an almost daily feature.

She has even taken to sneaking out of the house in the morning so I won’t see her done-up face. But I still catch her – make up and school is a big no no as far as I am concerned. I do not care that others wear it, let them, the Young Wan is not.

Sometimes (I believe I have said this before and probably will do again) her make up transcends between vampish young woman and I immediately want her to clean her face to heavy, clumsiness turning her beautiful large eyes into two black p*ssholes in the snow and again I immediately want her to clean her face.

But I am coming to terms with seeing my beautiful daughter’s face covered in cakes of make-up. After all I was a teenager once myself and probably had more than my own share of make-up disasters/learning curves. I distinctly remember having a gold-phase that included gold-ish lipstick, gold eyeshadow and to top it all gold eyeliner. Beautiful image or what?

But something new and entirely more frightening has entered the Young Wan’s beauty regime; it has been creeping in and across her forehead - an Emo fringe.



What do you mean you don’t know what I am talking about?

I am talking about the heavy side-shade you see sported by the dark-clothed clad youngsters running around the place.

Only herself has taken it to the extreme.

Bear in mind I previously described Emos as “often sporting greasy black hair with a long heavy fringe” and I received emails from other teens complaining that they were Emo and didn’t have black hair.

Good for them, it is better to be a leader than a sheep. And it is better when you have beautiful hair to leave it as it is without dying it to follow a trend.

The Young Wan is a ginger Emo (I should say red-haired) and I hope she never ever dyes her hair until she is older and greying.

So while the Young Wan doesn’t dye her hair - not that I would let her at the age of 14 -she has tried many, many different styles to varying degrees of success and now she is working on the ‘heavy fringe’ part.

The style that has really made me say ‘GO NOW AND GET A HAIRBRUSH AND START AGAIN’ has been what I have labeled the ‘baldy man comb over’ style.

She did it the first time a couple of weeks ago and I was absolutely gob smacked. I looked at my gorgeous teen with her new hairstyle and I couldn’t help saying ‘why are you doing a bald-man comb over’. It really was that bad.

She looked at it with new eyes and laughed. Then she shrugged her shoulders and said ‘well I like it’.

I remember being told as a teenager by some old dear that my long hair which often fell down covering one eye that it was Veronica Lake-ish but would give me a turn in my eye.

But the Young Wan’s style not only covers one eye, it is a full-blown comb over covering half of her face and her complete forehead.

It was at this stage that I became animated and I demonstrated on my own hair what her hair looked like. Again she snorted laughing but still shrugged saying ‘WELL I like it’.

Fortunately in recent days the comb-over hasn’t shown itself, maybe she listened to me after all.

Ach who am I fooling, it is either gone because a pal said it wasn’t the effect she wanted OR the worst case scenario that it is lying in wait for another time when she dolls herself up and resurrects the style.

redmum@gmail.com

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RM September 21 - Is your child an Emo?

I borrowed a paragraph from a previous post to use in this column, so you may have read part of it before, apologies!

THE phrase ‘Emo’ is one that has been popping up in our household a lot over the recent months.

You may have heard it yourself if you have teenagers. It would probably be in conversations which sounded something like this ‘ach they are nothing but a weirdo Emo!

It probably shows my age because to me the person who would be called an ‘Emo’ is actually what the majority of us would recognise as ‘Goths’ with a liking for emotionally-charged punk rock music. You know the type, the kind of music that has you banging the wall yelling ‘turn that down’.

Emos is short for emotional and the best person to explain Emos is the Young Wan herself, so over to her.

I am not an Emo before I start explaining. Right an Emo is yes you guessed it another label. An Emo is someone who has black hair short usually and a side fringe that covers his/her eye. They are suicidal and cry all the time. They listen to bands like Bullet for My Valentine (which are the only good Emo band in my opinion). They write poetry and aren’t very good at talking so they express themselves in their own way which is grand but they take it over the top. I have nothing against Emos I have friends who are very Emo but I wouldn’t like to be one. Some idiots would use it as a insult but really it is pretty unimaginative. Emos (as in the real ones not the wannabes) are usually quite artistic. Anyway Emos are good listeners and are nice people in general so if you see one on the street give them a hug. But be warned you may get a punch.

So how do you spot an Emo. Well they will often sport greasy black hair with a long heavy fringe, wear children’s t-shirts, sporting horn-rimmed black glasses and they feel no one understands them.

While being an Emo sounds like the epitome of teenage angst it is not always doom and gloom. If you read anything about them it is normally concerning their propensity to self-harm and other such negative details.

But this is a mass generalisation and has no real basis in truth. I wrote recently about research into Goths which show that Goths are a very accepting and non-violent group as well as being high achievers academically. While Goths and Emos are two separate groupings there is more than a little cross-over in our house.

A British national newspaper recently had an article on Emo and self harming and the Young Wan was all annoyed. The paper claimed Emo is a celebration of self-harm. I have to say that is utter nonsense.

The article went on to say “If this environment is coupled with the psychological traits of self-pity, introspection, self-dramatisation and hormone imbalance, you have a fully-fledged Emo, even without the small T-shirt and black hair.”

Surely that just describes the vast majority of teenagers not a new and foreboding Emo cult.

So to any parents out there who may be worried because their child is displaying some of the characteristics described here, don’t worry. Okay your child is going to look a bit scary for a few years, there may be some door slamming and shouting. And there will definitely be some loud music. All of which is nothing to worry about, is it?

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