I've had it with fashion.

I can tell you the exact moment I gave up on fashion. It was the other weekend, while I was fighting my way through a sea of people in the Meadowhall shopping centre.

It seemed like every one of the army of their miserable faces was wearing a similar scowl to the one I had across my face.

I thought it was rather ironic that the marketing men had dubbed this dismal, characterless place "The land of shoppertunity".

The slogan gave me the impression that spending money is the only way people express themselves these days.

Well I've had enough. When it comes to fashion I am now officially out. I was never really in, but now I am definitely out.

Being trendy has always seemed like a secret club, one populated by the cool kids who won't tell me the secret password.

No matter how much the magazines endorse the cod piece and life jacket combo or the spiky mullet hairdo, I will now ignore the fickle finger of fashion and all my future clothes buying will be based around the ever-sensible cardigan and slipper style.

I'm not sad to be giving up on keeping track of the latest fashions. As styles come and go, the only thing that I can see that unites them is a tendency to make the wearer look slightly ridiculous, but you can't say that about them because they're trendy and you're not.

An example of the capricious nature of fashion is my Great Uncle Rodger, who has been a painter and decorator all his life.

Nearly every piece of clothing I see him in is splattered in paint and he has been the master of that particular look for more than 50 years and for no obvious reason, all of a sudden he is in fashion.

Though rather than mucky clothes up through hard graft like Rodger, fashionistas with more money than sense buy pre-paint splattered clothes.

Of course fashion is supposed to be the thing that gives people the chance to prove how different they are, expressing their individuality.

If you believe this is true, then next time you are in a swanky bar take a look around and you will quickly discover that trendy folk all look different in exactly the same.