Ugly Is In

Judith Watt praises bad taste:

Not every designer, of course, can manage the necessary combination of self-awareness and sly humour. Some go too far, stretching the joke until it snaps and their customers end up wearing top-to-toe gold-plated leopard-skin. This is not clever; it's just showing off. "Comme only gets away with bad taste because it does it in a cerebral way," says the fashion writer Kay Barron. "Flashy, on the other hand, is not good. It means you have no style of your own." Moralioglu agrees. "Top-to-toe designerwear--it's too much of a uniform... There has got to be a bit of joie de vivre in life." He feels, too, that the brain needs to be engaged for bad taste to work: you do have to think about it.