Black Velvet Jacket

Well, I’d wear that,” was the highest accolade I achieved. After the piss taking. 'Fashion criminal, tragic bastard,’ they thought or they thought they thought. Instead they began to render grudging admiration.

I have committed some fashion crimes though, shockers some of them. But it was a way back and at last I can look at myself in the mirror again. Sewing my own hippie bag was one of them and that was made of black velvet too. Walking down the road wearing a green corduroy jacket, maroon loons and a black velvet hippie bag with a tasselled shoulder cord. Oh, and as I remember it I’d affected reflective shades and lit a cigar. Fuckssake, a cigar. Well it was the early 70s and I was all fired up, as indeed the cheroot occasionally was. The dog’s bollocks, a right young dandy. When I walked past the builders they all whistled and went, “Wayhey Sparko” and “Ducky” (the word gay hadn’t been invented) and I was honestly indignant. I looked furiously up at them, then down on myself, and thought, “How dare they. This is style this is. Sad tossers. Why don’t they see what I am?” And of course they had seen what I was.

Ponce. Perfumed ponce. Provincial poseur.

But in 2009 down the pub, the thing is, they couldn’t keep their hands off it - the jacket that is, everyone wanted to stroke my lapels, to the extent where I’m thinking ‘Fuck off, am I at a wedding? Stroking me, like I’m a cat. Then I realised, revelation, you love my jacket. You all want one. You all want my black velvet jacket.

It was a surprise, something inate, the need, the want at least, for a velvet jacket, especially a black one. They were standing on the pub doorstep roll ups in hand, going, “How much did you pay for that then? Thirty quid?” All disparaging. OK, I was definitely showing off, doing a bit of modelling, but I knew, that at that particular moment, they’d have paid anything, everything for my black velvet jacket. They, like me had themselves wanted one back then, as well as a Triumph Bonneville with Jane Birkin on the back.

Three hundred quid, I lied. That shit impresses people.

That was the reason I went for it, it was all built of history. I’d already had one but the wrong one, I remember a guy in college who wore one with aplomb. That was thirty years ago but a classic is a classic. Not like it’s been playing on my mind or anything… for thirty odd years. He had rock star hair as well, which didn’t help. Rock star hair – thick, black, wavy, Keith Richard’s hair cascading onto the black velvet jacket, which housed a crisp white shirt and hairy wrists that protruded through the buttoned cuffs, hairy but not too hairy.

That look; it was so definitive. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have a velvet jacket. I had a fantastic velvet jacket. I’d probably had it long before he had his. It was bought it in Lyons, when most of my friends hadn’t yet been out of the county let alone to southern France. I’d not only been there I’d bought clobber there. They’d definitely never bought clothes there and smoked a Gitanes in a boulevard café with a tasse de noir. And none of them had a velvet jacket from anywhere. I’d bought the brown velvet in Lyons, where I’d also bought my fuck off trench coat and my psychedelic pullover… oh and the maroon polka dot shirt I’d worn till it fell off me, and it was amazing – it fit like a glove and it was a perfect fit. French. It was a great jacket. It was velvet, it fit like a glove… but it was brown.

But the guy had a black velvet jacket and perfect rock star hair, and also perfect hairy arms and a crisp white shirt and it turned my head.

These things stick by you.

Until 2009 it seems. I’m glad I’ve got the jacket, finally, it took me a good long while and endless Ebay bidding. In the end it came from the USA but it’s Polish by origin. Polish. Have they been wearing great jackets over there all this time? It came from Poland by way of the US but it came in the end.

I made it all seem easy, the sartorial gamble. They don’t know how long it took, sizing them up, buying the wrong jacket, the expense, the false hope, the Ebay experience, post strikes. Weeks and months of false hope, then reality! It came, I saw, I wore. And I wore a crisp white shirt with it. However, the hair and the just so hairy arms? Well, you can’t have everything.

And the hard-bitten builder never seen out of denim said the impossible thing: “Well I’d wear that.” Magnifique. Une accolade.