Fashion

What determines when something comes back into fashion? Looking around today I see a lot of people harnessing the power of the 1980s in their clothing choices. But there must be a finite period of time during which something could be fashionable again, because you don’t see many people dressing like they did in the 1880s. Presumably this is linked to comfort and practicality. But how far back could we go before we become unfashionable again?!

On the way to work I saw a young lady in a skirt that appeared to be made entirely out of doilies. It was very tasteful really, but it reminded me of cake: my Gran’s cake to be precise. I used to love the days when a three-tier coffee cake would be wheeled into the living room on a trolley, sitting proudly atop a doily. And who doesn't love a trolley with cake on?! Mobile cake is, for some inexplicable reason, far more tempting than static cake. Doilies must be the preserve of elderly woman who bake, since I have never seen the in use anywhere else (except by some ladies’ skirt manufacturers perhaps). I’m not even sure what their function is. It must be entirely decorative since they contain enough holes to render their possible usefulness as a crumb collecting device null and void.

Incidentally, when did ‘hard’ icing go out of fashion?! I used to enjoy a bit of hard icing, though soft icing is equally delish, and does not flake and fall on the floor like hard icing when you bite into it. Sometimes pre-empting the flaking was the best thing about hard icing, since you could peel it off and eat it separately. Perhaps I need to dress as I did in the 1980s and eat hard icing again. Perhaps not.