Mother was right

Marks & Spencer jeans

As befitted a respectable middle-middle-class English family, my brothers and I were kitted out almost entirely by Marks and Spencer - from underwear to gaberdine coats and everything in between (except shoes, which usually came from Clarks). There was, as my mother well knew, no arguing with the quality. Most of what she bought me there I would outgrow before it wore out.
By my mid-teens, of course, I had outgrown the store and its stolidly conservative wares in another way.
Occasional trips back to England had me cruising M&S, and buying the odd item of underwear, but mainly for old time's sake. Nothing else of theirs appealed one bit.
Then in 2006 I went to visit E, and finding myself in need of a pair of jeans, bought some black ones for 20 pounds at an M&S sale. They were extra-long, bootleg, super-stretchy, with a lowish, but not excruicatingly low, rise. I didn't care for the naff red embroidery - a couple of linked hearts - on the back pocket but it only took 10 minutes to unpick.
This morning, six years later, I put them on again.  At some point between then and now, I took them in down the side to make them skinnies. But they're still long and stretchy, and still black - the most comfortable, good-looking jeans I own.
What on earth will I do if they ever wear out? Am I too young to hope that I'll wear out first?

Ankle fur

Down with the marketing of absurd items that give fashion a bad name. Like these so-called legwarmers.

Thanks to the The Fashion Police for running these offenders down. And they're from such a good home too - Marks and Spencer, no less. But then these were the very people who, only a few months ago, thrust bulge-enhancing male underpants into polite company. If my mother had a grave, she would be turning in it.

Bulge-enhancing male underwear arrives

You heard it here first ... well, second, actually. This morning's Dom Post reports that that retail shrine to British commonsense, Marks and Spencer, is about to thrust onto the market something called a "frontal enhancement garment". For those whose first language isn't M&S, this translates as knickers that make your package look bigger. Thirty-eight per cent bigger, according to reports, although god knows how they arrived at this degree of precision. 

I couldn't find this exciting item on their website - the closest I got was a bunch of dudes in vests http://www.marksandspencer.com/Bodymax-Underwear-Underwear-Mens/b/332652031?ie=UTF8&pf_rd_r=17EGAD9TBG995YHNEP6G&pf_rd_m=A2BO0OYVBKIQJM&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=43593030&pf_rd_p=475115433&pf_rd_s=left-nav-2 Bodymax vests. Which, claim M&S, "shape" your body. It seems likely the new undies will emerge under this label. 

They'll sell for around NZ$21. And you'll also be able buy bum-lift knickers. I can imagine some men being eager for both enhancements, but the only way to get them will be to wear two pairs of undies at once. Why didn't M&S design them as one?

Women routinely buy and wear wired, push-up, padded bras. Not to mention those stretchy cast-iron garments that "control" you from from mid-thigh to chest. Men just want the same, it seems. Or M&S hopes they do. Which is the way of our glorious capitalist system - create the thing and desire for it will follow.

It once more raises the question of who we dress for. Men dressing for other men will possibly flock to M&S for both products. Men dressing for women might too. They'd be misguided, though, in any belief that this will make the difference between pulling and not. When, lady readers, was the last time you decided it was all on with someone by sizing up their crutch? Their arse, now ... that's another story. 

But then, so the argument usually runs, women buy underwear to make themselves feel good, not primarily to attract a mate. Perhaps it will prove the same for men. A bigger-looking bulge equals more confidence equals more success.  Why do I feel like sighing?