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.