When I was young, there was a huge list of things you shouldn’t do, or specifically wear, over the age of 30; there were fewer explicit rules about what you should and shouldn’t wear over the age of 50, but they were all implied by the fact that it was 20 years since you’d been 30. Then someone lampooned the whole business – it was strikingly memorable but, teeth-gnashingly, not memorable enough that I can remember who it was – with a definitive list of Never Wear This Over 30, which included “a necklace made of ears”. The entire discourse was buried that day, and I never thought about it again, until the weekend, when I was walking up some stairs with a mirror all the way up. That, I could not help but notice, is a very 90s walking style.
I guess we all learned it from Bez out of Happy Mondays, the man specifically employed (if you would use such a LinkedIn word for it) to bring happiness to the nation with his physical joie de vivre: leading with the shoulders, as if you’re in a ferocious hurry to get to the front of somewhere, with your neck hunched in to bypass the attention of the authorities because of all the drugs you are about to either sell or buy, the rest of your body an afterthought.
