Don't wear that: Bandanas

Raúl Peschiera on fashion faux pas

Nothing odd can last," said the astute Samuel Johnson in the 18th century. He was referring to passing literary follies, but his assertion is as pertinent today when it comes to the fickle field of fashion. Hundreds of bizarre, ill-conceived trends have been rejected throughout the decades, happily proving the wise critic's point.

But when it comes to certain fashion foibles, Dr Johnson's wisdom starts to lose its relevance: bandanas, for example, refuse to go away.

I would have thought it goes without saying: if you wouldn't crush beer cans on your head then you've no business with bandanas. Maybe it's your midlife crisis and you yearn to drive a Harley across the Arizona desert. Sure, we've all felt that. But there's no need to stretch a handkerchief across your head.

We could pass the blame on to a handful of bandana-wearing public figures. It is, for example, the headgear of choice of the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. I'm the last to kick a man when he's down-Berlusconi was, after all, said to be protecting his newly inserted hair transplant. But honestly, what's wrong with a hat?

And when our own clown prince Boris Johnson sported a bandana while out jogging a few years ago, he got locked out of the house for his troubles, ending up temporarily stranded on the doorstep.

If you wear it over the hair, you will invariably look like an egg-head. But it really doesn't matter what you do with it—whether it's on your head, or tied around your neck, arm, leg, belt or whatever—it will always, always look daft.

The good Dr Johnson's condemnation of oddities was specifically directed toward Laurence Sterne's enduringly popular novel Tristram Shandy, a mistake on Dr Johnson's part, it turns out. And so are bandanas.

So while Sterne's Uncle Toby spared a fly's life with the words: "This world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me," he would have thought twice if that fly had been some smarmy bloke in a bandana. Sometimes you just have to take a stand.