Full Metal Dressing Gown

Well after a day or two of seasonably warm weather it has snapped back to being chilly and rainy.  I'm delighted, it means I can sit here in my fluffy dressing gown all snuggly and warm.  The other people in the cafe are looking at me strangely but that's a small price to pay.

Isn't it odd that the most comfortable clothes one can buy tend to be those we never wear outside the house?  Women, of course, are the main sufferers in this regard but even men tend to dress a little less comfortably when they go out.  I suspect that the cause can be found in our dim and distant history.  Traditionally clothes were worn for protection, from the elements, the prying eyes of men or, in extreme cases, from swords and arrows.  With protection the main rationale comfort naturally took second place.

Once inaugurated ideas are incredibly hard to kill, even today comfort seems to be the last thing on most clothing designers minds.  The one exception to this is when comfort is the only criterion and in those cases the results are clothes that even I would hesitate to wear out of doors.  I wonder how many clothing designers realise that they are the direct heirs of armour makers?  Which of course leads to the question of which designer will be the first to send a model down the runway clad in a quarter of a ton of exquisitely made steel?  Don't laugh, it will happen.

Once it does we will have come full circle.  Mass production clothing chains will jump on the band wagon (knocking out cheap copies made with inferior steel of course) until everybody is clattering around like a garbage bin rolling down a flight of stairs.  Eventually sloppy versions will be created for us to wear indoors and we won't have any comfortable clothes at all.  I would develop this theme further but I have to polish and rust proof my slippers.