IT should come as some consolation to confirmed fashion phobics that according to multi-award winning designer Wayne Hemingway, just about the coolest style you can have is the geography teacher look. He turned up in the Clarence Hotel this week wearing saggy corduroys, a brown leather jacket with knitted sleeves and beige applique bits sewn, on the front, a beige, patterned shirt and, to complete the staffroom look, - a pair of brown nature shoes. His company, Red or Dead, has just won the prestigious Street Style Designer of the Year Award in Britain for the second year running, so he's a sort of high priest of cool. But geography teacher?
"It's sort of subversive," he said, "Other cool people will recognise the look." Presumably the rest of us will just think he looks, well, like a geography teacher.
He was in town to launch the Hudson Blue Clubwear Awards. It's not like the usual fashion awards in that it's open to all students and not just young people in design or art colleges and the prize is a very attractive £3,000.
"I get asked to judge lots of awards," said the very affable Wayne, "but I never do it unless I think the whole thing is worthwhile; and the prize is good, and this one is."
Earlier this year, Red or Dead was set to open a shop in the long-vacant retail space in the Green Building in Temple Bar, but thanks to a complicated company buy-out, that plan now won't go ahead: Wayne and his partner, his wife Geraldine, intend to set up a much more modest operation in this country to cater for the huge market for street and club wear.
Another judge on the panel is Irish menswear designer Cuan Hanley, one of whose yellow Rupert the Bear check suits can be seen on TV in yet another deeply unfunny Guinness commercial.
Also seen in the Clarence this week on a brief family visit home - was actor Colm Meaney. His timing was just a teeny bit off. Two of his films, The Van and The Last of the High Kings, premiered to great response last week in Dublin, when the actor was nowhere to be seen. He was said to be busy Star Trekking it in California.