Fashion Crime Unearthed

‘A VERY good morning to all of you reading Anorak while on your holidays in Tuscany. And our sympathies too.

Christian soldiers’ marching boots

You will of course be used to attracting admiring glances from the local population as you stroll around in your immaculate ComfiSlax – a byword for style, available from Anorak at £19.99 for three pairs.

On the other hand, how embarrassing it can be when your compatriots let you down by wearing faded pastel t-shirts and crumpled shorts.

But we have some good news for you. The Times reports that the trademark English sandal-and-sock combo may in fact originate with the Roman settlers, rather than sight-seeing Latin masters of the mid-twentieth century.

A life-size bronze foot, dug up in London last month and dated to the second century AD, can be clearly seen to be wearing the offending item under the traditional strapped shoe, presumably as protection against the local weather, which the contemporaneous historian Tacitus described as “absolutely foul”.

The paper notes that finds of life-size Roman statuary are extremely rare. Hardly surprising, really. When Romans commit a fashion crime of this proportion, the least you can expect is a full-scale cover-up.

Of course, there is an alternative explanation. As the Italian professor Paul Soreno speculates, the foot may be the earliest example yet of English “modern” Christianity.

Ancient tambourines and Blair-like masks found in the vicinity offer strong support to this audacious theory.’

Posted: 26th, August 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink