Like Slade and spice-"enhanced" liqueurs, leopard print is one of those things that for 364 days of the year is obviously an assault on the senses, but, come Christmas, is perceived as "jolly", "festive" and "a bit of fun". "A sensible but chic cover-up for a Christmas party," as one current fashion magazine would have it. (Perhaps I should add that such advice is aimed only at the female of the species. Not even Christmas can stop leopard print turning a man into anything other than Jonathan Ross.)
Perhaps it is the association between Christmas and soap operas that explains why dressing like Bet Lynch to mark the birth of the Messiah suddenly makes perfect sense. True, Christmas is not known for subtlety on any level, from the food, to TV schedules to the fondness for tinsel and sequins. But dressing like something in a David Attenborough documentary does not make you look like animalistic sexuality unleashed. It does not even make you look like a 60s wannabe starlet (and that comment is directed at yoo-hoo, Madame Kate Moss). It makes you look like a half-cut barmaid, desperately hoping for a bit of mistletoe. And as everyone knows, no one from a soap opera has a happy ending at Christmas.
