There are things which fashion can teach us. Real things. Not just things about puce after a heavy lunch, or the invariable inadvisability of headwear. Things about choice, and belief, and about how we approach the world.
Consider this. Last weekend, slaloming through the Glastonbury fudge, I kept seeing people who were dressed as pirates. They ranged from the modest (earring, bandannas, the faintest hint of pantaloon) to the full Johnny Depp (eyeshadow, dreadlocks, triangular hats). There is an established tradition, I know, of people seeing all kinds of things at Glastonbury, from wizards in caterpillar suits to haute cuisine in a charred fajita full of muddy pork. The pirates, though, were definitely there. Unquestionably they were there. But, like I said, we’re not necessarily talking fancy dress here. Some people merely suggested piracy without plunging, as it were, the full fathom. Piracy hovered, as a theme.
I didn’t like to say anything. You don’t at first, do you? You just roll your eyes downwards, to your own garb. You think, hmm, maybe it’s me. Maybe I don’t look enough like a pirate. Maybe I never have. Maybe people note. Uncertainty sets in. You brood.
Then, over the heads of the crowd in a dance tent, I saw it glinting in the strobe light.
‘Look there,’ I shouted to my wife. ‘That man. He is waving a plastic cutlass.’
‘Oh, ah,’ shouted my wife, or words to that effect.
‘Have you noticed,’ I shouted, bravely seizing the matter at hand, ‘that an awful lot of people are dressed like pirates?’
‘No,’ shouted my wife.
From then on, I should imagine I became rather insufferable. Pointing out pirates became something of an obsession. A scarf as a belt, an eyepatch painted in mud, a beard tied in bows.
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