Legs out for summer: Sean Clarke in his baggy green shorts (just seen)
I have to admit I was worried. When I saw that Hadley Freeman had laid down her four commandments for men's summer fashion, I thought I would be examined and found wanting. In fact I got off rather lightly, although Hadley doesn't address the biggest controversy of the summer: am I allowed to wear beads? Let's see how I did:
Commandment 2: no short-sleeve button down shirts. Fine by me. No words on T-shirts. Fine be me, today at least. If no T-shirt, then the head must have more hair than the back. Fine by me, albeit on a technicality; I'm counting facial hair.
Commandment 3: Lots of complicated rules about sunglasses. I never wear the things.
Commandment 4: Footwear: Birkenstocks, it turns out, are OK. I'm supposed to get a pedicure, apparently, but you can't have everything.
So I only really fall down on commandment 1: full-length trousers only. Baggy green shorts like those I'm wearing, it seems, are right out.
Now, in a very technical (read: misleading) sense, I was once a fashion reporter. So, although an outrageous shambling hippy, I'm an outrageous shambling hippy who still finds fashion vaguely interesting, as an academic discipline. But here I think we see fashion's limitations. Hadley's instructions tell me what to do if I want to impress those around me. I know that my shorts don't impress anyone, of course. Impress, no. Delight, yes.
For everyone in Guardian Unlimited Towers knows that the first cuckoo of spring has sung, the first swallow of summer swooped, when my brown hairy pins are once more exposed to their happy gaze. The sight of my naked legs, I'm confident, is as essential to summer as Pimm's and lemonade, gambolling lambs, and flower-strewn meadows. So for the good of humanity, I'm selflessly sacrificing my fashion sense. Rest easy, good people: the legs are here to stay.
