For something more breezy and boho?I had some floaty floral shorts from Urban Outfitters that I’d team with my least laddered pair of tights, telling myself that if I didn’t look quite as cool as Florence (whom I’d watched, soggy footed, at Leeds), I could maybe pass as a lost member of her Machine.I later discovered that my siblings had been calling said shorts “the pantaloons” behind my back.
At a festival in a changeable British climate, you could combine all those experiences into one joyful day; wellies and tights are a particularly toxic combination in damp weather, and I’m still surprised I managed to dodge trench foot at Leeds Festival 2009.
For a stretch of the late Noughties, a period that roughly coincided with the premiership of Gordon Brown, layering miniature shorts over a pair of bog-standard black opaques was somehow deemed the height of cool (if you were young, female, fashion-obsessed and spent all your surplus income in Topshop).
So, inevitably, my prayers have failed, and the shorts-tights combo is now creeping its way back into the mainstream, one slippery, slightly laddered foot at a time.
Trends inevitably come in cycles, and now the Noughties craze for wearing shorts over tights is sneaking back into fashion.
