There are a few items of clothing which contravene so many of the basic rules of style that to even consider them as fashion items seems ludicrous.
One such is the fleece. Sure, the word is often to be found operating as a verb in the world of couture - it pretty well describes what designer labels do to customers when they charge them £150 for a T-shirt - but the idea that the thing itself could even get into the same postcode as a catwalk would have the fashion pack weeping tears of laughter.
Of course by fleece I don't mean the thing that comes off the back of a sheep. Instead, I mean the thing made from polyethylene terephthalate which your elderly neighbour slips into when he's pottering about on his allotment. If you rub the sleeves together they crackle with static and fuse all the lights. You know the sort of thing.
Among the other drawbacks of this most unappealing of garments are a tendency to (a) melt when tumble dried and (b) go up like a roman candle when exposed to a naked flame. Among its benefits are lightness, breathability, the fact it can be made from recycled bottle tops and - the nub of today's report from my budget hotel on the outskirts of Fashion City - its increasing popularity among the sort of designers who really do charge £150 for a T-shirt with a skull print on it.
OK, maybe that's slightly overstating the case. But there's no denying the fact the fleece is coming in from the cold where fashion designers are concerned. Leading the charge from the more traditional end of the market - and, as luck would have it, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year - is Patagonia, the California-based manufacturer of outdoor clothing. Its Retro X fleeces are "today as likely to be worn by hipsters as they are by hippies" according to the New York Times. Who knew?
At the fashion end of this fleecey love-in is California-born designer Patrik Ervell, who has made a career out of fashioning elegant menswear from unusual materials and who says he is often inspired by outdoorwear such as North Face jackets and, yes, Patagonia fleeces. Last year he showed clothes made from old (or "vintage") parachutes and he has also worked with gold foil, horsehair, vulcanized rubber and splash-dyed silks. Recently he has been using fleece himself to make sweatshirts. In his current collection he even has a jacket called Fleece though obtusely it's actually made from wool - still, how else can you justify the $850 price-tag?
To Ervell's mind the fleece is "simple and utilitarian … a style that becomes shorthand for a certain kind of lifestyle" and every bit as classic an article of menswear as the biker jacket and the trenchcoat. Where fashion is concerned, wonders never cease. I await with interest (and a little trepidation) the first sighting of a Marc Jacobs C U Jimmy hat …
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