Present Tense »

• Philip Treacy: clearly a genius

  May 13, 2008 @ 1:43 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Philip Treacy is feted as a fashion genius, and his latest design – sported by Sarah Jessica Parker at the Sex and the City premiere – was hailed as a truly top hat. Present Tense caught up with the style demi-god and asked him how he created his latest masterwork:

  “I got a plunger, rammed it up a snake’s backside, so creating the scaled effect, before yanking off the plunger’s handle but leaving the sucky bit on Sarah Jessica’s head.

  “Then I tacked a sick flower to it, and left it in Stephen’s Green for a week. Once a swan had built half a nest on it, I dragged my creation through a hedge. And for the piece de resistance I covered it in a mix of pollen and superglue, so luring a couple of butterflies into becoming part of this work of art.

  “Voila.”

• A statistic from Paris

  February 12, 2008 @ 10:24 am | by Shane Hegarty

  ZERO: the number of women seen wearing their pyjamas on the street.

• Because men’s catwalk pictures are always entertaining…

  January 16, 2008 @ 4:00 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Here’s what we’ll be wearing next season according to Milan Fashion Week.

  One big trend? Covering yourself in glue and jumping into a clothes recycling bank.

  (more…)

• Bad hair decade

  August 30, 2007 @ 2:50 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  

  Not for the first time this month I found myself staring at some teenage boy’s deliberately catastrophic haircut and wondering if we are living through the age of the Worst Hairstyle Ever.

  There have been bad hairstyles in other decades (there have been bad hairstyles in every decade), and teenagers are not uniquely susceptible to the problem (eg, the recent fashion for the “hung-over robot with an asymmetrical mullet” look among twenty-something hipsters).

  However, what makes this current style so individual is that it can be an amalgamation of much of the previous list of worst haircuts of all-time: bleaches stripes, leopard spots, steps, mohawks, shaved patterns, mullets, spikes, mohicans, the Vanilla Ice, the flock of seagulls. Throw in a perm, and all will be complete.

  Actually, does this style even have a name. The Catastrophe? The What-The-F***? The Collision?

  All generations have a right to do stupid things with their hair (it appears to be a genetic impulse). But in 15 years time there’ll be a lot of guys looking back at their debs pictures and shaking their heads … their balding, conservatively-coiffed heads.