Adults|Spoken|Intermediate|10. Fashion

a catwalk — the long, narrow stage that models walk along in a fashion show.

self-indulgent — allowing yourself to have or do anything that you enjoy.

1. Bjork is on the catwalk. Her skirt is made of bright red ostrich feathers. The 2,000 shiny red glass beads attached to her top ring like little bells. She sounds like a one-person bell orchestra. And the beads are not just ordinary beads. They are specially-ordered microscope slides, each individually hand-drilled and individually painted red. Extraordinary? Yes. Radical? Yes. But what’s the point?

2. Most people are happy with a T-shirt and jeans, a shirt and a pair of chinos. Even business executives dress down these days. Clothes are casual: easy to wear, easy to care for. Whereas the dress, that Bjork wore, designed by Alexander McQueen, took over a month to make and is one of only two in existence. The other is in an exhibition in a museum in London. Though, frankly, who else would want one?

3. For many people extreme fashion is just self-indulgence on the part of the designers. They are attention seekers, they make headlines, but they don’t sell clothes. But for the designers themselves, fashion is a way of airing ideas, of making a statement. The clothes they design are intended to provoke and challenge the way we live, think and are. Closer to conceptual art and less to do with the clothes industry, perhaps.

Camden Town often shortened to Camden is an inner city district of northwest London, 2.4 miles (3.9 km) north of the centre of London. It is a world-renowned place to shop for alternative clothing. Carmen goes there to find out more about its history and what’s fashionable now.

Camden Market is made up of many different markets. The first market was called Camden Lock because it was next to the canal. It first opened in 1972 and is now one of the largest markets in the UK.
Half a million people visit Camden market each week. And with hundreds of stalls, there’s something for everyone. But Camden is best known for fashion and famous for punk.
Everyone knows what punk fashion is but 30 years ago it didn’t even exist. Clothes like this seem quite normal now. In the 1970’s it shocked many people because it had never been seen before.
Punks were young people who were anti-government, anti-popular music and anti-fashion.
Punk music was loud, wild and about breaking all the rules. Punk style was the same. Punks created their own cheap fashion with torn clothes, safety pins and spiky hair. Punk fashion is still here today and it’s still about rejecting ordinary fashion and standing out, but there are lots of ways of looking different.
Camden isn’t the only place for fashion. London Fashion Week, held twice a year, is a great place to see clothes by British designers and the latest new fashion trends.
British fashion is very important; creatively, it’s very important all around the world. Lots of the kind of fashion trends that you and I end up wearing started out on the catwalks in London.
British fashion is different from the fashion that comes from different countries around the world.
Often the shape of the clothes is a bit more aggressive — maybe a bit sharper and we try to come up with looks that are a bit more imaginative so possibly they’re less wearable, less classic clothing, but always very exciting.
Back in Camden there are still many other fashion trends. People mix different ideas and create new looks. Another style that really stands out is Cyber-Goth. So this is one of Europe’s biggest Cyber-Goth shops. What’s a Cyber-Goth? Take a look at
these.

Carmen | Jack

Carmen: So Jack, what exactly is a Cyber-Goth?
Jack: A Cyber-Goth is someone that doesn’t think about what other people think about them. And it’s someone with a very strong fashion sense. It’s kind of a mixture of varied stuff; like punk, Goth and American surfing scene.
Carmen: So, talk me through the influences of your look, the hair?
Jack: Well, my hair is a really, really lovely creation I think. It takes everything from the punk style like colourful stuff — really standing out.
Carmen: The t-shirt?
Jack: My t-shirt is a Cyber-Goth futuristic style. It’s an exo-tubes top — which means like, it shows the inside of my body.
Carmen: The trousers?
Jack: I really like the American surfing scene — I’m really into that. So I wanted something to remind me of that so I chose these really, really baggy trousers.
Carmen: And finally the belt?
Jack: Twenty-first century.

So punk maybe thirty years old but here in Camden it’s constantly evolving in the twenty first century.