Have you heard the raindrops drumming on the rooftops?

Have you heard the raindrops dripping on the ground? Have you heard the raindrops splashing in the streams? And running to the rivers all around? You have to use your imagination a bit for the last one. But finally! I'm really enjoying the two things I've been waiting so long for, in my unbearably hot and cripplingly Primark-bereft universe: Rain and Sales. Today I noticed 50% Off sales in Oasis, Miss Selfridge, Debenhams (still doing those amazing cheapo make-up packs incidentally - why haven't you bought them all yet?), Warehouse, Top Shop, H&M, and, I don't know, wherever else you can think of.

If you're ever looking for high streets stores online, this is better than a kick in the face. If you can read the fonts.

Every holiday romance must come to an end, and that sequinned slag Oasis finally broke my heart today when I noticed that the shop has started giving style advice on its website - patronising, smacking of capitalistic self-interest, and further proof that Oasis, although catchy and popular, will never be as good as Blur. And now they're selling waistcoats. Cripes! It's like 1991 all over again! Except that actually the Oasis waistcoats are quite nice, smart and businessy, and much as I disdain of recycled "looks" a part of me will always thrill at the thought of the rat race restyled into millions of highflying Cissys. Cigarette-holders are too-goth but in every other respect the 1920s cross-dressing lesbian look must be the only novel vintage look left, and I'm sure you'll agree that if the world needs anything, it's more girls in monocles.


Jesus brings us the water of life, but St Michael brings us the glasses of shade. They really are doing some terrifically exciting sunglasses at the moment, around £10. (Although the real bargain is in New Look (naff website - gasp!) who've sensibly lost the stick-on jewelling/ pink-tinted glass of 2004 and are turning out nice ones for about £5.) Marks and Spencers might just be my surprise summer favourite, in fact, if only for their acknowledgement (unique on the high street) that sequins on vests look naff, and their generous provision of very pleasing alternatives: plain basic vests and frankly superior linen shirts. Per Una hasn't quite got it right yet, they're still trying (and perhaps that is the problem). Turn your back on the Per Unas and the Autograph and anything advertised by Claire Sweeney's baps, and instead look properly at the "basics" they barely even try to sell. If you can't imagine yourself wearing it, try it on. Unlike Top Shop, these things are made to fit. M&S has had a bad rap but M&S is clever, and when M&S isn't trying to be clever, it is cleverest of all. I think there's a lesson for all of us there.

Meltdown

News

Maus Of Elliott is dispersing slightly. Until we get the new site running, I've created a M.o.E "Set" on my Flickr account, where I'll stick anything slightly relevant to what I talk about on here. It's shaping up to be quite a pretty gallery. Oh and you can catch me putting the ..."short" into "shorts" over on Tom's Flickr at the moment. Shorts and vest less than £10 altogether; perspex "crystal" hairband, 99p. All H&M, natch.

I've been reading round the style rags to try to come up with some useful treats for this "issue", and gee, guess what, braided hair is in. Again? Or still? YAWN! "The new way to chat up a woman is over a cup of tea and a sticky bun," squeals the Sunday Times STYLE insert, excitedly. The article turns out to be one man's "dating diary", as he recalls the details of four "cake dates" from his past in slightly autistic detail. And actually the article is entertaining, from a voyeuristic point of view obviously, but also for the hilarious experience of having your naif provincial expectations of sticky tea room stories ambushed almost immediately by some hard-nosed Sloane whose idea of a cake shop is "Broadwick Street in Soho", "a top-end Anglo Asian fusion poser's gaff" or "Maison Bertaux in Soho". Who lives like this? Who cares?

Forgive my rage, it's the weather. Which reminds me. I can't shake the belief that when the temperature outside the body is equal to or higher than the temperature inside it, human beings begin a Nazi-in-Raiders style meltdown. Admittedy I haven't been able to verify this, because I can't find anyone else who remotely seems to share the unbearable physical discomfort I always feel in "32 degrees in the shade". On the contrary: everywhere I look I'm surrounded by human spitroasts in halter-tops and ra-ra skirts. It's a whole new world and nothing makes sense...air-conditioned shops are empty except for a few wise mediterranean-looking students, people stuff ice-creams in their faces as if increasing their saturated fat levels will somehow cool their bodies, while the highlight of everyone's day is now drinking beer in the park because alcohol is, famously, a great rehydrater.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the summer. On days like today, when walking through town is like being dropped into a very realistic virtual reality game of Cambridge, actually located in a furnace on an alien spaceship where big alien hairdryers blow at your face in a crude simulation of wind, I just much, much prefer the spring. It doesn't really matter what you say about summer trends because in temperatures like this most people just go for what's comfortable, which is probably the same thing that was comfortable last year, and maybe the year before that. So here's some words: gypsy skirts (avoid); loose racer-back vest tops; fake "double layer" t shirts & vests (see M&S current window displays); ra-ra skirts; shorts with turn-ups; "boho" sandles; bright print dresses; skinny belts; shiny bags (Is this a joke, Gap?); sequin pumps (marvellous!). Summer is a bad time for fashion. No one wears any make up convincingly, all accessories look enormously affected (jewellery blings whether you want it to or not) and no hair style stays styled for long. So for god's sake, at least get some comfortable flipflops.

Peacock feathers will soon be everywhere. I like to think this has more to do with Camilla's wedding hat than anything else and is signalling a move toward a more comprehensive "Camilla look" moment in fashion; she always was the classier, better-looking successor to Diana.

Never Trust a Hippy

The thing about fashion - the thing you have to remember about fashion is, it's all a big con. Everyone sort of knows, but at some undefinable point between 1920s ready-to-wear and 1950s "new look", the world unanimously entered into a rolling contract to pretend to ignore the essential deception for, potentially, evermore. What comes around goes around and comes back again in a very slightly different cut or fabric next year. Am I the only person fiercely suspicious of the "novelty" of most of this season's trends? Didn't we all get the "long loose skirt/chunky leather belt with tarnished metal rivets, sandals, cheesecloth blouse and centre parting" look out of our systems and flushed away forever, back in 1996?

I've been trying to work out a way around this unbearably boring boho. H&M, as usual, has been beavering away in the style labs, conscientiously testing out various workarounds for a good few seasons now. But shops like River Island sold their soul to the Secret Contract of Old Rope even before the last century was out. I know I'm unreasonably offended by "prints" in almost every permutation, and don't get me started on the ludicrously oversized bling/cowgirl belts... but I can't be alone in my daily despair at the mindless annual repetition of summer styles. Sienna Miller has a lot to answer for, but her "look", really, is just patched together from the safest summer pieces of the past two decades. I mean, honestly, I preferred rock chick to this floaty nonsense.

There are ways out of this trap. Firstly, you have to accept that, by its nature, all fashion is to some extent old rope. Just remember that some old ropes are considerably more beautiful than and rare than others. Secondly, novelty is good, but it's not everything - if some garment or accessory seems to be a marvellous new idea the chances are it will bomb (whatever happened to last season's "craze" - capes?). Third, remember that there is really nothing new under the sun, and the route to real novelty is via combination. Oh, by which I mean, mix smart/scruffy, new/old, borrowed/blue, not what Warehouse has done to the halter dress in, presumably, a bizarrely belated attempt to emulate Julia Roberts's Valentino moment.