Fashion

I've never been attached to fashion, in fact if it wasn't for the whole #iamsparticus thing, I'd go as far to say that I've wished horrible and unmentionable things to anyone who admits to any interest in fashion (I'm looking at you and that meat dress, Lady Gaga).

Although not interested in fashion, I'm still fairly attuned to knowing what makes you look like a twat, so I make some effort to either looking presentable or dressing practically. I mention the practicality thing because there are photos knocking around of me in what some of you would call a "vintage" wetsuit, but in my defence:

1. It was free
2. It seems to give me superpowers when surfing, there've been many times when I should've broken bones in white water whilst wearing that suit.

My point is, that as someone who has never lived without some kind of games console and who turns into a real miserable bastard following a week's absence of sci-fi, I am far more of a certified geek than you probably think, and therefore by degrees dress in a manner suddenly known as "geek chic". I therefore pose the following question;

When the fuck did this get cool?

It's not a conscious thing; shoes that are comfortable and generally inexpensive, jeans that are just jeans, and some form of top, generally a t-shirt expressing a particular interest. Naturally, this has been elaborated on, but the general fashion rule for real geeks is to wear something that wont attract enough attention to get you beaten up by the sort of person who's emotionally attached to professional footballers, possibly in a homoerotic way but far too macho to admit it.

Not that being cool is innately a bad thing, but there is one sizeable problem with geek chic being cool. Eventually, for whatever reason, you'll need to refresh your wardrobe, be it because you've gained weight, lost weight, destroyed your clothes or just because everything's falling apart due to years of loyal service. The problem is thus: everything worth buying from a shop is cataclysmically expensive, most things from the internet are fine but shipped from the US and therefore you get boned for shipping and everything else is far too try-hard. For instance, the NES was a bit shit but it's an icon plastered over most geeky clothes - seriously, we all preferred the MegaDrive and the SuperNintendo. We'd happy wear understated Playstation logos if they weren't still closely associated with the PS3 - not out of shame, just the fact that no one likes being mistaken for an employee at a games shop while shopping themselves.

I quite like some of the stuff from Threadless, but again, they're American, so shipping to the UK bumps the price up to the "howfuckingmuch" barrier.