The Intelligent Consumer: Style police - The Seventies: Just say no

A little playful irony is all very well, but faun nylon trews and flicked hairdos? Enough is enough, demands James Sherwood

True fashion addicts can be as discerning as the most erudite food fetishist. So, the news that Farah trousers are back on the fashion menu is like The River Cafe naming Angel Delight as the pudding of 1997. Born in the Seventies, the 100 per cent polyester faun Farah has infiltrated the window of hip menswear boutique Jones, Soho's American Retro and even the Oxford Street Top Man. Like the Stepford Wives, Farah wearers are taking over the British high street.

It seems that the murkiest depths of Seventies "style" are not too dismal to be plumbed in the Nineties. Hairdresser Charles Worthington has even seen fit to dredge up the Suzy Quatro spike and Linda Nolan flick, when both styles should only be seen on UK Gold. Meanwhile, Red or Dead is experimenting with the pork-pie comfort shoe, the Gabicci "Bus Conductor" shirt and nerdy bifocal specs. "I look like a geography teacher today," says Red or Dead's Wayne Hemingway, cheerfully.

"The circle of fashion is getting tighter," says Stephen Pierce, menswear expert at the London College of Fashion. "The Hush-Puppies-and-dad's-trousers- look may be ironic, but when they are indistinguishable from the original, then it's just putting the past forward again as something new."

Why Nineties kids would want to look like the cast of Abigail's Party is a mystery. Farahs were, after all, the naff travelling salesmen's working wardrobe and true style victims trawl markets for the originals rather than the F-Tab model. "Jarvis Cocker and Noel Gallagher are wearing originals," says Farah PR Louise Wrixton. "F-Tabs are in a wider spectrum of colours but the cut (tight) and fabric (polyester) are the same."

Shoe supremo Patrick Cox believes the Seventies only work when reassessed with a Nineties eye. Cox, whose latest ad campaign depicts a man in Farah- style trousers and faun slip-ons, defends the retro style. "Unlike Seventies skinny cuts, the Nineties fabrics stretch. That's what makes the designs new. My platforms are lighter, which makes it easy to walk in a 2in or even 5in heel."

"I think the Brits are best at turning the mundane into glamour," Hemingway says. "Our youth culture is about having fun and a subversive sense of fashion irony. I love the idea that people on the street don't know whether I am the height of fashion or a complete spod."

The trouble with ironic fashion is precisely who the joke may be on. Unless you are Jarvis Cocker, you can smugly walk around looking ironic, while the rest of the world sees a jerk dressed as a geography teacher.