Paris: World fashion capital, and home of Really Bad Trousers

(The original post appears to have been deleted. So here's a repost with a slight adjustment to avoid further deletage, assuming my theories are correct).

Today I was sitting in the Métro coming back into Paris from Créteil, freshly drenched from some serious rain action announcing that autumn was here and meant business, when I witnessed an unimaginable horror.

Paris is still indisputably one of the major fashion capitals of the world. The French know better than most how to dress well and elegantly, and across the arts they have a deserved reputation for aesthetic style (...over substance). But over the years I have noted a thriving subculture in absolutely appalling trousers. This appears to have spread to Italian teenagers, which considering Italy's reputation for design, is equally odd.

Olly and I observed this subculture in action at the Jazz Festival back in the summer. A girl in bright red and completely shapeless pantaloons was sitting down listening to the music (which really wasn't jazz at all - cf. "15 live acts in one weekend") with her orangely betrousered friend. Your intrepid and ever snappily-dressed blogger started to speculate upon the trousers being the cause of the friendship, or perhaps rather the effect. At this juncture, we were faintly amused at the entry (stage left) of a further young lady wearing shapeless bright blue trousers. Was she another friend? She walked towards the other two, closer and closer, ah yes she must know them, she's right up to them.... and then past.

This man is almost certainly French. We can't see them on this photo, but white socks would be the ultimate confirmation.

Yes, the blue trousers disappeared into the crowd. She had not been a friend of the other two. But five minutes later she reappeared (enter stage right), walked right up to the sitting pair again, slowed down... but again, no sign of recognition, and she passed. Ah, it was clear, blue trousers desperately wanted to make friends with her poorly dressed sisters, but she had been cruelly ignored! What a stinging rejection! I can only conclude that, in bad trouser circles, wearing blue makes you a desperate and irretrievable Melvin.

Imagine how they would deal, then, with the sight I saw today on line 8. A young girl of, I suppose, not displeasing aspect, boarded the train wearing the much maligned skirt-over-trousers look. Consider, then, on top of this, that the trousers were of the shapeless bright red variety, and that the skirt looked like it had been made from 1980s oven gloves. Paris, global fashion capital? My arse.

This sentiment was comforted about fifteen minutes later, when I got off the Métro and entered Monoprix to be greeted with the sight of a serious-looking man, whom I guess would have been in his fifties, wearing a heavy grey trenchcoat, grey trousers, grey jacket, grey shoes. And a pink hat.

He left before you could say "colourblind divorcee."