Two sullen tubes of malevolence

Some more skinny pants in a charmless print:  oh, how my cup runneth over.

What's particularly galling about this offering from Topshop is the unpleasant admixture of brown and black, which makes me think of sheds, for some reason; and this tiresome dogtooth print was better left in the fifties, where it was last seen adorning the second-best coat of a minor Foreign Office official.

Goodness, the cut!  That unforgiving structure will emphasise even the briefest patch of cellulite, and make your knees look like a giraffe's.

£45:  all you'll get is some tight cords and six months of unrelenting gloom.

Venetian blinds

There is clearly some drapery-themed fashion going on at the moment:  first we had pelmet skirts, and now this, a skirt which mercifully comes without a pull-cord to roll up the slats.  I'll still be wearing my big knickers, however, if it's all the same to you.

That misaligned frill thing will be making OCD sufferers everywhere wince, and immediately straighten their pencil collections.

£30, River Island.

Oh look, an escaped squid

Usually, edible cephalopods are sliced into rings, covered in breadcrumbs and then deep-fried.  This dress would be immeasurably improved by the same process, and what's more we wouldn't have damned cuttlefish roaming up and down the aisles of River Island.

£30.  Which is a bit rich, given that it's missing a few tentacles.

I'd have worn it, but then I scraped the barrel and found a thin smear of self-respect

Prisoners sew these, but the finished product usually has the legend 'Royal Mail' printed thereon.

Perhaps the designers have loosened the bottom hem and added sleeves so that we will have something cheerless and vapid to wear when we put the bins out, or indicate to the neighbours that we require immediate and sympathetic medical attention.

£80, River Island.  God, you have to spend a lot of money these days to look dirt-poor.

Anyone know a good opthalmologist?

Staring at this dress produces retina burn so hideous and complex, you'll be seeing it three days later.

The pattern is clearly an artistic representation of Hades, the primrose path   along the shoulder and hem leading the damned to the seventh circle of hell somewhere amidships.

At all events God's judgement should be visited upon the designer.  And the sooner the better, before they perpetrate another monstrous act of villainy upon the poor shopper.

Topshop, £80 for a formless polyester frump-a-thon.  It's even got a pussy-bow at the neck, just in case it wasn't dowdy enough.

'Sheer feather knit' description: why yes, there *is* a Spoonerism available with this garment

This, somewhat improbably, is a skirt.  Its uncanny similarity to a dishcloth (99p for pack of ten, B&M's) need not disconcert the true fashionista, but the elasticated waistband and unreliable hemming certainly ought to.

Urban Outfitters retail this for £40, presumably to people who don't mind going out dressed in fourteen yards of crepe bandage.

This looks about as friendly and comfortable as a cheese grater

Just trying the thing on will leave you with raw knuckles. And something in a colour this dejected will probably have you finding a suitable vein anyway.

From a distance, this cardigan looks as if it were made of tin cans telescoped together in one of those well-meaning sculptures cobbled from the recycling so beloved of newly-qualified art teachers.  Close up, it looks exactly the same.

Just a little rough-edged for thirty quid, I'd say, River Island.

What happens if you leave a damp tea-towel out

This has rendered me speechless for most of the day. I started this post this morning, but I couldn't find words sufficient to express the grotesque, bulbous barbarity this coat epitomises.

I love the overdone fur coat so beloved of ladies in the thirties, who were often shown stepping from expensive cars drawn up in front of a large house in Mayfair.  I can only think this coat is some kind of reference to that image but, oh how irony fails when the coat is synthetic, the shoulders mushrooming, the colours unaccountable, and the price obscene.

Even animal activists will suggest you wear a real mink if this is the alternative.

Topshop, £450.

More usually to be seen on the parcel shelf of an old Fiesta

...along with a thermos flask and a road atlas from 1989.  There'll be some tinned sweets in the glovebox, I daresay.

Plaid shawls are only permitted in period dramas set in mills, preferably draped around the person of the consumptive heroine, who will almost certainly be pining for something.

Either that, or it's the sort of thing you'd wrap a cat in to stop it struggling on the way to the vet's.

Urban Outfitters, £32.

For God's sake, put a vest on

This shirt looks rather like those plastic strips which are hung in butcher's doorways to prevent flies getting in and laying eggs on the bacon.

Thanks to Siobhan Walker for revealing fresh horrors at Urban Outfitters, where this flimsy item can be had for a very substantial and brass-necked £60.

PS  For the full catalogue description, go to:  http://www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk/yaya-nom-de-plume-striped-shirt/invt/5110461796633/&bklist=
where the model's face will tell you just how she feels about this blouse.

Quick, the eye-bleach!

God, the legs aren't even an equal length!  Are these pants some sort of Frankenstein's monster, patched together from the remains of deceased trousers?  This kind of deranged tailoring will win you few friends, and probably encourage those you do have to call a helpline.

River Island, £35.

I wonder what happened to the seats in the waiting room at Kwik Fit?

God, could this look any cheaper?

Why yes, it could.



£50, Topshop.

Yes, I'd love to go out looking like a cardboard tube

Readers will protest that this coat is neither grotesque nor amusingly patterned, and therefore not a suitable entry for the Fail Rail.

But, Fail Fans, note the mannish cut, deep revers and lack of buttons.  This unfitted structure will make women of all figures look dumpy and egg-shaped, and the looseness of the cut will encourage unexpected chilly gusts at bus stops.

It's all very well giving a nod to the eighties, but really, not with Grandad's crombie, which will be redolent of Vick's and roll-ups.  Nostalgic, but you'll have to explain why you're dressed in an old man's coat and smell of church halls.

Topshop, £175.

This sweater will beat you in a staring contest

This nasty pattern probably has a rich and ancient heritage in Woman's Realm knitting patterns from the fifties. Our achingly modern and sophisticated sense of kitsch bids us wear this kind of jumper at Christmas, whereat we all laugh heartily and thank our deity of choice that this sort of thing will never happen again, much like tuberculosis or scrofula.

£46!  You can get something similar at one of those anorak shops on Lytham Road for far less.  Available at Topshop, where it will linger, unhappily.

That fringe is going to get caught in something

Tie-dyed suede leather fringed jacket, £175, River Island.

This jacket's fashion moment is so brief it will probably pre-decease the more unstable elements of the heavy end of the periodic table, whose half-life is a gadfly-like three milliseconds, or something.

If I had £175 to spare, I'd be investing it sensibly in Tennent's Super Strength, or getting a hundred and seventy-five things from the pound shop.

String-tangling contest

Back in the forties, a scientist in Germany gave spiders doses of various drugs to see how they would spin their webs.  This dress is reminiscent of the web spun by a spider ripped to the tits on weed:  it produced a bit of web at an enormous rate before giving up completely and going to the all-night garage for six bags of Doritos and a Viennetta.

Topshop, £75.



PS  Interestingly, the spider on caffeine did worst:  about three strands were completed before the damned thing dozed off and had to be prodded awake with a cocktail stick.

Reshape whilst damp

Fetching, this little cable-knit item, isn't it?  However, go out in the rain and a thing of horror will slowly bloom and stretch about your person, expanding to several times the original size and enveloping your legs in a sodden, wangy, woollen balloon of affliction.

Topshop, acrylic 'n' wool mix, thirty bloody quid.

Aztec sweater: costs £39, or an aorta

Aztecs:  murderous bastards who ripped the still-beating hearts from their victims' chests in an attempt to appease bloodthirsty gods. So, the ideal inspiration for a folksy knitted dress, then.  And quite what are those finger-shaped blocks of colour doing over the chest area, hmmmm?  

Available at Miss Selfridge, which describes this sweater as 'slash neck'.  Most unfortunate. 

Mangled remains of wildebeest

Is there something missing from this?  I mean, it looks like a bust of the Duke of Wellington, his head carelessly removed during an unfortunate encounter with a strimmer in the garden.

Faux fur gilet, £50, River Island.  At least Dick Turpin had the courtesy to wear a mask.

Recycled duvet filling

For the love of God, don't wear this when you go to see short-sighted Aunt Edna, or she will pick you up and attempt to dust the mantelpiece.  And that will be the end of that nice china flamenco dancer she brought back from one of the Costas in 1976, and those castanets she can be persuaded to snap after a couple of Cinzanos at Christmas. Don't shout 'Ole!', as this will only prompt her to get out the Viewmaster and show you her pictures of that 'holiday' in Fuengirola with Ernesto.

And also the lyre bird will want his mating plumage back.

Topshop, £75.

Ideal gift for scientists

Home chromatography kit from River Island, just in case you need to separate chlorophyll.

£40.  It's made from acrylic, which should further excite the home chemist.

Wear this and you'll find yourself circling lightbulbs

I can't tell whether this is a Rorschach test or moth camouflage.

Anyway, it's fifty quid from River Island, money better spent on having your head examined.

Elves knit these for River Island, you know

Older readers will instantly recognise the pattern on these leggings as the static on a badly-tuned television, somewhere between Welsh TV and Channel 4.  The attendant hiss contains remnants of the Big Bang, which is a novel thing to record on a pair of trousers, but we've had all kinds of subatomic and interplanetary garments on here before, haven't we?

I don't think Professor Brian Cox will fancy me in these, though.

£22.  

Oooh, I've come over all tessellated

River Island doing what it does best:  resurrecting seventies fashion badly.

Do, for a moment, imagine if you can turning up to a social occasion in these.   Actually, trying to imagine infinity or the vastness of the universe produces the same giddying effect, and will probably make you fall off the couch.

Staring into one of the black hexagons for long enough will probably induce a similar sense of spiral descent and faint nausea.

£35 for eye-bending strangeness.