Unfashionate

There are some truly elegant and well designed clothes to be found wandering the streets of London. Winter fashions that raise the bar for professional elegance and dress wear. Unfortunately there is a flip side to this well dressed metropolis... a brutal and ugly flip side.

London is a place where anything can be worn. But this doesn't mean it should be worn. Some of the items of clothing wandering around the streets of London worn by people who are neither blind nor preadolescent should be documented for posterity in warning for the generations to come:

• Fishnet stockings and a business suit on middle aged women. On no one would it be acceptable but on someone who went to high school in the seventies it is unforgivable.
• Red shoes, black tights and a blue wool suit skirt... No... just no.
• In fact any combination of shoes, stockings and skirt all three with clashing patterns and colors can and will be worn at will. This mistake is so basic that the desire to ask when remedial fashion skills stopped being communicated to young women is overwhelming.
• Striped tights... horizontally rainbow striped tights... no, not Dr. Who's scarf. Tights on full grown women in public, on purpose.
• Wool pinstripe short shorts with fishnet tights and heels. While more professional than the denim variety of short shorts, they do still in fact make the wearer look like a hooker. On the plus side they can now charge more.
• Full skirts with ruffles, embroidery and rosettes. No really! All three AT ONCE, in pink, on fully grown adult women, not 4 year-olds who have been allowed to dress themselves that day.

These aren't brave or daring fashion mistakes, they're merely painfully bad in an extremely juvenile and unsophisticated manner. While the explanation of such items usually involves the phrase 'I thought it was fun' or something equally banal, the reality is fun and attractive are not mutually exclusive. Even if they were there are worse things than boring clothing and they can all be found in the London tube during the morning commute.