Type the words "Mexican poncho" into Google and you'll swiftly see why the traditional garment of the Americas has such a hard time of it on the fashion front.
The first page will be taken up with pictures of men with fake Zapata moustaches wearing multicoloured ponchos and striking gunslinger poses in ads for fancy dress shops or eateries. Neither makes the poncho seem particularly appealing.
Even worse, the second page may throw up – and I use the phrase advisedly – a picture of George W Bush and Vladimir Putin wearing ponchos at a 2004 meeting of world leaders in Chile, where they're known as chamantos. The ponchos, that is, not Messrs Bush and Putin. They're called something quite different in Spanish.
It's fair to say, then, that the poncho which can push its way to the front of the fashion pack will need pretty sharp fashion elbows – a tall order for a garment that doesn't even have sleeves.
My personal interest in this is a growing desire to wear my own poncho in public and be regarded as in vogue rather than in fancy dress.
My poncho is Colombian and it's older than me. It's reversible so, while it always smells like the one dog blanket, it looks like two, depending on whether I'm having a plain- or a stripy-side-out day. It's great for home working – leaves the hands free to type – and for scaring the guy who collects the Betterware catalogue on Tuesdays.
The most notable poncho wearer after me, Bush and Putin – collectively the men with no shame, if you like – is Clint Eastwood, who donned one for his role as The Man With No Name in the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s. Since then, they haven't figured much on the catwalks or in street or popular culture. Mods, goths, new romantics – none fancied the poncho much. And when the NME advertised for two "hip young gunslingers" to chart the nascent punk scene in the mid-1970s, neither recruit – Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill, if you know your rock history – turned up for work in a chamanto.
But cast around now and the poncho-as-fashion-item is becoming more visible. Take hip, Bergen-based outerwear company Norwegian Rain, for instance. Its inspiration comes from Japanese designers such as Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garcons founder Kawakubo Rei, and among its 2013 collection is something called the Raincho, a sculpted poncho with a hood and a belt and a hefty £460 price-tag. At the recent Paris Fashion Week, meanwhile, Japanese label Kenzo handed out quilted ponchos to the fashion pack at its autumn-winter 2013 show, held in a draughty ex-department store. And, inspired perhaps by the recent fashion for Aztec prints, Vivienne Westwood's Paris show also featured something that looked remarkably like a poncho.
As they say in fashion circles, three's a trend. So show the dog the door, grab his blanket and a pair of scissors and get snipping. It's poncho time!
barry.didcock@heraldandtimes.co.uk
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