Fashun

Pennie ponders the meaning of colours and uniforms on this week's Commonwealth-themed Fashun. 

What makes a way of dressing take over as a subculture's uniform? And why on earth did the likes of punk band Proud Scum (and Karen Walker) choose to replicate the the jumpers of Donald Duck canon bank robbers The Beagle Brothers?

Deck the halls with dodgy fashion, it's yr mate Penelope Noir. Pennie's here to trace the history of the Christmas sweater, though things do get a little derailed by etymology. Sweater _is_ a gross word, isn't it.

Once labelled the 'King of Cling', Azzedine Alaïa made his name covering, but certainly not hiding, the female form. Immortalised in popular film by Cher Horowitz as "like, a totally important designer", Pennie pays tribute to the man who adorned the body of every nineties 'somebody' from Stephanie Seymour to Grace Jones.