Liverpool opinions
Be a sport - Mass fashion for laid back athletes
By John
Williams
I am not the most active of men. For instance, I don't go jogging. Probably because even at the best of times I look so run down that the idea of being seen grimacing and gasping for breath is too much to contemplate. I am occasionally forced to run for a bus, and then spend the entire journey slumped in my seat trying not to sound like an asthmatic Howler monkey.
I wasn't always a domestic sloth. Indeed the time was when I was as fleet of foot as a pigeon-toed cheetah. Nowadays though, it doesn't matter how fast you can run there is no escaping the fact that sportswear is the preferred choice of garment for most people on the planet.
Just the other day I saw a man, who must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, lumbering down Church Street, togged out from head to toe in state of the art sportswear. He looked for all the world like a barrage balloon in trainers with even the heels of his shoes flashing red like landing lights.
At one point he attempted to hurdle a discarded coke tin and I half expected him to crash to the ground in flames like the Hindenberg. Fortunately for the pavement he cleared the obstacle with millimetres to spare.
It appears that half of the stores in Liverpool are dedicated to sportswear, which would be laudable given that the people here suffer the highest lung cancer rates in England, but of course it's less about fitness than profits.
All over this country people of both sexes are wearing replica football shirts which are regularly rendered obsolete by the introduction of yet another soccer strip by greedy soccer clubs, thereby forcing parents to shell out more cash for the latest version of what is essentially a jumped up tee shirt.
I sometimes wonder what we would have been wearing had sportswear been the vogue thirty years ago, but then recoil at the thought of three hundred and fifty pounds of cellulite lumbering along wearing plimsolls, baggy shorts and a singlet!
What will happen to all those retail outfits when the next generation of teenagers decide that walking around in a modified clown's outfit is distinctly naff?
What will become of all those child labourers who, without benefit of formal training, make training shoes by the ton? What kind of garments will fill the racks left vacant through the demise of sportswear as we know it?
Hang on to your demob suits, loons, tank tops, maxi skirts and kipper ties. They could make a comeback!