Fashion Review - 2008

Remember that 6-lane road I used to look at out the window ? These days it's been replaced by a small suburban car-park. It's hardly more inspiring but it's been absolutely drenched in sunshine over the last couple of days. According to the weather on TV yesterday I could stand up and say "I live in the hottest large European city aside from Athens, Istanbul and Malaga !". I wouldn't have believed a word of what I said but there we go. So, summer has arrived in Helsinki, finally. This unexpected situation led me to dig through my considerably small wardrobe to see what summer clothes I had. T-shirts are never a problem in this country as you have to wear 4 or 5 of them, ten months of the year. Besides those though, I discovered, I had one pair of shorts and no summer-friendly shoes. Having put on these shorts and promptly burnt a big hole in them with a cigarette, I came to a conclusion. It was time for me to go out and do something that has split the sexes more than anything in recent history - probably aside from the release of the Sex and the City movie - clothes shopping.

Anyone who knows, has known, has seen, or has vaguely heard of me will very well know that I'm not on the peak of the fashion iceberg, nor am I anywhere above the surface of the water. I am sitting on the ocean floor, chilling with the octopuses and platypuses, attempting to act as if fashion didn't exist or, if it did, was pointless. Now that I was forced to go and buy a pair of shorts though, I had to stare this issue in the face. Having perused shops all the length of Aleksanterinkatu and explored, in increasing states of desperation, the entirety of the Forum and Kamppi shopping centres, I sat, exhausted, on a pavement and rolled myself a cigarette with shaking hands, drenched in nervous sweat, dreaming of a utopian society where we could all walk around naked like our ancestors did without having to care what a bunch of fashion designers think we should all wear this year. My choices were, by and large, to pay large amounts of money for Hawaiian flower shorts, or to pay large amounts of money for a pair of 45-year-old-man-on-safari-in-Tanzania shorts. As I prepared to enter what I had decided what would be the last shop of the day, I noticed the greeting by the escalator:

FLOOR 6: Administration
FLOOR 5: Menswear (and outdoor Womenswear)
FLOOR 4: Womenswear
FLOOR 3: Womenswear
FLOOR 2: Womenswear
FLOOR 1: Womenswear

My mind went back over the nightmarish 2 hours I had just endured, and came to 2 conclusions. Firstly, a window on the 5th floor would be good to jump out of in case I didn't find anything apart from flowery shorts or safari shorts here. Secondly, I noticed a slightly familiar theme here. And it's not that I want to suggest that things are imbalanced at all, but... doesn't this seem slightly imbalanced ? All through the day, as I now realised, I'd been shoehorned into 3 square metres with one other bored looking guy staring at 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of safari shorts and 2 t-shirts with ridiculous, meaningless slogans on such as "I slept on the Virgin Island - St. Thomas V.I." and "Archipelago of Tuamotu - Live the Dream" while the women wandered around an area the size of a small country wondering which of 847 designs of blue bra with red straps they should buy.

At some point, in Benetton, I found the bedside table housing mens clothes and on it were a screwed up pile of T-shirts, apparently backing Youssou N'Dour's project to grant microcredit loans to small enterprises in Africa. One caught my eye - it was green, decorated like the back of a Senegalese minibus. I liked it. I bought it. That I had made an impulse clothes purchase in the first place showed how desperate I was for success. A little something in my bag that said "you COULD have had a nap, yes, but you've got something now." It was a consolation, however small. So for you Africa lovers, you people with more money than ideas or you idealistic people who want to give a helping hand out there, go to Benetton and buy an "Africa Works" t-shirt. They're funky and they give guys on desperate shopping trips something to be slightly happy about. And as a good supporter of this project I'm going to reach out to everyone here so, to all you White Supremacists out there - go to Benetton and buy these t-shirts. If they have more money it'll stop them coming over here right ? You know it makes sense.

In the end, I dragged my panting, suicidal self up to the 5th floor and, after trudging past the usual assortment of crap, found myself in desperate man heaven - a pair of shorts which I could actually wear and cost less than 80€ !!! I grabbed them, kissed them, bought them, and walked out of that shop to have the coldest, most welcome beer I have ever had.

There's something very liberating about the summer though, even if it only lasts about half a week in this country. Walking around in hard-earned shorts and sandals and not feeling the onset of frostbite just feels good. Sitting outside and having a beer in the sun doesn't feel good because of the beer, or because you're warm - it just does because you CAN do it. Maybe it's the rarity of the situation in Finland which makes you treasure it all the more. Lying around in the park surrounded by girls in bikinis doesn't feel good BECAUSE they're in bikinis right ? It's because they are liberated isn't it ? Don't get me wrong, I'm a great admirer of the unclothed female form as well... Or maybe I'll just give up there. I'm a perve and I know it. And I'm proud.

Summer brings big football tournaments as well, although it also brings mosquitos. Summer is when you like to spend money arsing around, although you hate being locked up at work instead of out in the sun. It's a season of contrasts, although I'll happily take bikinis, football and sunshine at the expense of mosquito bites and being locked up at work sometimes.

Finland being Finland, of course, I must interrupt my daydreaming on these wonderful topics and go to put my shorts back in the wardrobe (or indeed the cellar.) The weather report indicates that in a few days it's going to get cold again. Alea iacta est.