Loughtagalla Times

Our fashion expert has noticed a worrying new trend, and it’s one that won’t end well. Not for him, anyway.

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I SEE THE BAGGY TROUSERS are back in style.

Not that I am what you might call a fashion guru, but I am assuming that young people who meet in coffee shops would be a tad more hip than myself. And there was one young fellow in this coffee shop the other day, whose jeans could safely be used as a parachute — with enough material left over to hang curtains in every room in the house. If indeed denim curtains are your thing.

If I am right in this matter of the baggy trousers — and as my lovely wife might have told you, I am right about everything — then it’s a very worrying development. Not just for the individuals wearing the trousers, who might find themselves airborne with a strong gust of wind. But it is worrying for me on a personal level.

As you may know if you have seen me swaggering around town, my go-to look is the kind of  style last seen on a large scale when Kajagooooo were in the charts.

Though I have recently uodated my range of trousers to include  what the fashion experts call “boot cut” jeans. I am reliably informed that these jeans went out of style approximately ten minures after they were first introduced 30 years ago. But I like them because they were clearly inspired by the flares of the 1970s, and I have very fond memories of the flares I wore as a child — tartan flares, no less,  similar to the kind of thing worn by the Bay City Rollers.

(I understand this might be getting a tad confusing now for younger readers, some of whom may not have been born when “boot cut” jeans first hit the runways of Paris and Milan, never mind when Limahl and the Bay City Rollers were driving young girls demented. But try to bear with an old man for just a few more minutes. It’s nearly over.)

Now here’s the worrying thing about all of this. Given that my fashion choices tend to run about three decades behind current trends, I reckon I will be purchasing my first pair of baggy jeans about a week before they take me to the nursing home.

And what’s wrong with that, you might ask? Would I not want to be the coolest cat in the home?

I would, but I fear it won’t work out like that.

Because it’s highly ikely that my weary old legs — already well advanced on the International Bockety Scale — will be gone entirely by the time I sashay into the Ardeen. And the combination of my ultra-slim matchsticks and my cool new baggy trousers will make it look like I am wearing a lovely denim skirt.

And so I will be taken to the newly constructed Gender Delusion wing of the facility, where I will be surrounded by ould lads who identify as cool young ladies — the kind of young ladies who meet in coffee shops and stuff like that.

And being young and cool — at least in their own hopelessly scrambled minds — these ould lads will no doubt be decked out in the hottest fashions of the moment. And they will sit around all day laughing their heads off at me in my baggy jeans.

“Haha! Look at the state of your man! He thinks it’s still 2025!”

I’m not sure that’s how I want to spend the Autumn of my life, with the cackling of lunatics ringing in my ears. So please God I’ll be gone completely deaf by then.

But just in case I am not, I should probably go out and buy the baggy trousers now, and get it over with while still in my — how should I put this? — while still in my advanced youth.

Wearing the current fashions would be breaking the habit of a lifetime, and frankly I am disturbed by the thought of it.

But the alternative is unthinkable.

So I’m off down to Morans to check out the range. Hopefully they have them in yellow.

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CURRENT LISTENING: Player — Baby Come Back

If a bunch of lads in tartan flares didn’t make the 1970s exciting enough, the era also gave us the smooth delights of yacht rock. And it doesn’t get smoother than this.