I wore a lot of paisley in my teens, a time when I laboured under the insane delusion that I should adopt a 60s look. This flyblown period has come back to haunt me, thanks to old pictures posted by friends on Facebook. It's Buckinghamshire in the late 80s, and there I am, attired for tea with Donovan and the Maharishi: if you're going to Little Chalfont, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
I've always held this fashion decision responsible for my abject failure to attract attention from the opposite sex in my teens, and have frowned on paisley since. I wasn't alone. In the 90s, US fashion journalist Hal Rubenstein wrote a book called Paisley Goes With Nothing, a belief that designers are now working overtime to overturn, by sticking it on shirts and scarves.
No one knows paisley's origins: it might be Persian or Indian, and it might represent mango seeds, cypress trees or pregnant leeches. It took off in the 19th century, and later its mix of eastern mystery and Victorian association made it irresistible to hippies. One of the weirder side-effects of LSD use among 60s British rock musicians was the urge to dress up like Victorians: while their acid-enlightened US counterparts were stopping the war, the British turned on, tuned in and sourced vintage tunics.
Now paisley's back, presumably to add colour to recession-friendly clothes. Nothing wrong with that, but with reminders of my ghastly teens on Facebook, I don't feel the urge to wear it.
