THE LAST STRAW: Good news from the winter fashion shows, in case you haven't heard. While all the attention was on women's clothes, as usual, the word from menswear is that the whole pretty-boy look is out.
Brad Pitt is SO last season, the experts agree. Instead, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune, the rough-around-the-edges look is in. Reflecting changed values in the Western world, the iconic male figure now resembles a fire-fighter or policeman. He "exudes stability", says the Tribune's New York correspondent, and "walks with the sturdy earnestness of somebody who might be good in a crisis".
"Manly" is the buzz-word, and the trend extends beyond the catwalk. "Chest hair is back," says a New York video producer, reassuring those of us for whom it was never quite away. "In the visuals I'm creating now," he adds, "the people aren't as pretty as they used to be. It's not Brad Pitt any more, it's Tom Selleck." For younger readers, Tom Selleck is an actor from the era when the male lead was required to have a moustache you could scrape paint with, and the facial contours of a brick. He starred in Three Men and a Baby, in which his jaw squared off against Ted Danson's, winning on points. More recently, in an apparent comeback, he turned up in Friends as Monica's old boyfriend (which is putting it mildly). But until now, he was seriously out of fashion.
When I say this change is good news, I mean in general. Personally, I look about as much like Tom Selleck as I look like Monica. But the drift towards ruggedness is encouraging. Exude stability? According to my bathroom scales, I could stabilise a small ship at the moment. And whatever about looking like I'd be good in a crisis, I've noticed a definite upsurge lately in the number of women who assume I'm good at lifting heavy furniture.
The trend is not confined to New York, according to the Tribune. In Paris and Milan, after a period of indulging their "more extravagant" side, men's designers have returned "to a manly base". With the emphasis on family values, Dolce & Gabbana even had jumper-wearing models accompanied on stage by children, "like young dads taking a walk on the weekend". The look was chunky and colourful (the clothes, that is, not the children), emphasising a retreat from urban cool. In general, the report says men are "steering clear of anything that suggests trendiness". Mind you, it also says that while sales of DIY equipment have soared over the past two years, sales of "male apparel" remain sluggish. Which suggests that, in fact, men are steering clear of anything that suggests a clothes shop. So no change there.
But the most encouraging news in the report is that one New York designer plans to "mix real men with models" in his February show. This, too, is likely to become a wider trend. And with the outlook still uncertain in the newspaper industry, it's always good to know there are alternatives.
NOTHING is so beautiful as spring," as the poet Gerard "Manly" Hopkins wrote. Tradition has it that spring begins on February 1st, an idea I've always liked, and not just because it's my birthday. But it was a hard argument to sustain eight days ago, when storms battered the country, rivers burst their banks and, in Dublin, the major emergency plan had to be activated. The "weather story" is a staple of journalism, and it mushroomed as February 1st progressed. Any notion that spring had arrived was gone by afternoon, when this paper's storm coverage had become a mini-supplement, swamping vulnerable, low-lying stories, such as the Forum on Europe. By tea-time, the weather had spilled over on to the front page. Venturing out of the office, my umbrella was smashed, and I got drenched. And as if all this wasn't bad enough, I was 40.
Poetry is a great comfort, however. So as well as re-reading Hopkins this week, I dug out another classic from the Leaving Cert: Thomas Kinsella's 'Mirror in February'. This as you may remember (it finished joint 42nd in The Irish Times survey of your top 100 Irish poems) is about a man shaving and reflecting, "in the mirror of my soul/that I have looked my last on youth".
Comparing himself with the trees below his window, he regrets that his craggy features are not rejuvenated by regular pruning, and concludes: "I fold my towel with what grace I can/Not young, and not renewable, but man." It's a small consolation to me that this look will be intensely fashionable during the coming season. And now if you'll excuse me, I have a mid-life crisis to deal with. I just hope I'll be good in it.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie