Name: Leather trousers.
Age: 7,000 years or so.
Appearance: Theresa May’s one true success.
Hang on, are leather trousers cool again? You bet they are. All the coolest people in the planet are wearing leather trousers right now.
Are they? Such as? Such as Amanda Holden, Vanessa Feltz and Frankie Bridge.
Are they cool? I don’t even know who that last one is. Well, how about this: last month Katie Price was seen wearing leather trousers as she attempted to revitalise her singing career at a garage festival in France.
This is a real stretch, you know. Yes, but the leather trousers are everywhere. Zara seems to be the source of all these sightings; they have all sorts of faux leather trousers starting at about £20. An extra £30 will get you a pair of faux leather dungarees, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys a very specific type of chafing.
OK, can we circle back to Theresa May? Sure, she’s responsible for this sudden leather trouser upsurge.
That’s quite a claim. Let me explain, then. A few years ago, the leather trouser was a pariah. Nobody wanted to wear leather trousers. They reeked of midlife desperation. To buy a pair of leather trousers was to show the world that you were coping very badly with the ageing process, and that you would soon blow your savings on a sports car and leave your wife for a 19-year-old.
OK. Honestly, they were terrible. There was even an entire episode of Friends about how awful leather trousers were. And that’s Friends, for God’s sake. Friends was the enemy of fashion.
So what was the turning point? Cast your mind back to November 2016. May had been prime minister for five months and was developing a reputation for being cold and aloof. To counter this, she gave an interview to the Sunday Times accompanied by a photograph of her wearing a £995 pair of leather trousers.
And? And now they are everywhere! Therefore I put it to you that May is a fashion leader.
Oh, hardly. Just you wait. This is the first step in complete Theresa May fashion domination. First, it’s leather trousers. Then it will be upscale formalwear as far as the eye can see.
And then? Then everyone will start dancing like a broken automaton. And then, as a final pièce de résistance, the glitterati will all start getting haircuts that make them look like Damien from The Omen.
Are leather trousers really Theresa May’s legacy? No, Brexit is Theresa May’s legacy. But that’s really depressing, so let’s pretend that it’s trousers and move on.
Do say: “The leather trouser is back in fashion.”
Don’t say: “Time to finally buy that Ferrari.”
