Cosy DJ

Think about how toasty and serene all those DJs look around the wintery months and ask yourself how they do it, is it because of the droll ditty they are "dropping" or more to do with their trendy dress?  We don't really care for the answer, all we wanted was an excuse to buy ear muffs and pretend we were fiddling with the treble while enjoying a creamy pint.  If this presented us with the chance to discuss how the current tune fit in with the diapason normal then all the merrier. 

That's right, we're covering Cosy DJ, but sporting a pair of fluffy headphones. Now you may be asking yourself whether headphones (even without a fluffy element to them) are a trendy item, but you need to question whether you know any of the people shown here:

Of course you know them all, as they are the same person, and I don't mean they share matching DNA. What I mean is that they are all that person, walking around town with the headphones around their neck. I've seen these guys, but I have never seen them with the headphones on, so what the hell are they achieving? Could it be some form of music emitting neck protection, the last time I saw Wolf he wasn't wearing headphones, but instead a health and safety approved neck brace, a nipple revealing lycra one-piece and a menacing look in his eye.

How is his chest so bald, but hair so wavy?

Despite how ridiculous these people look, and the anger their unused headwear causes us here at TTC, we felt it an important trend to review.

As discussed last week, we have had to move on to Full Moon Bar due to the demise of Floyds and this week that move has paid off big time, look below!

The fact they had decided to jazz up the place to suit our latest trend warmed our hearts, having nice drinks and only a fairly disgusting toilet cemented it as our new hotspot.  Of course the hotspot is ironic as it is freezing in there, a long icy corridor with blasts of Siberian air, thankfully we were the only people not shivering and there was only two reasons why, our fluffy muffs and our steely resolve to report on trends.

As the other DJs blasted out tunes that we didn't really like we uncovered a secondary utility of our luxurious neck accessory, put them up over your ears and suddenly you are transported away to a tranquil but incredibly sweaty chill-out zone.  All that fluff was the perfect sound deadening and spirit lifting material.  The fact we looked like the DJ meant that punters didn't think anything of the prominent muffs and had no idea we were trying to remove ourselves from their clamorous world.

Similar to Patterned Knit, can be worn 2 ways

It wasn't all breezy living as a Cosy DJ, the great fear whenever we sport head/neckwear is the filthy thieves who can't wait to steal any item you hold dear and put on display.  See below for a textbook example.

Please no

Being suddenly subjected to a rambunctious Live Lounge shook us to our very souls and did the criminals no favours, they were just bad eggs.  We did eventually recover our treasured items and in fact weren't bothered again so compared to other specialist winter items, such as the bobble hat, they fared well.

Away from all that drama we came to realise the beauty of the Cosy DJ.  Out on the street you can look like a music enthusiast who is protected from a neck chill or some form of trauma, while in the night clubs of Cardiff you can pretend to be the big dog while actually blocking out that ghastly stuff and focus on just jumping around and sipping bacon flavoured vodka shots.  What a trend!

 

Patterned Knit

Following on with the Winter/Spring theme, our second trend to be tested in front of the Cardiff collective was Patterned Knit, which FashionBeans calls Graphic Knitwear just so it can be as individual as the top-knot sporting hipster; yet I can't help but feel individuality is essentially opposite to what FashionBeans is touting.

In the deep dark Winter, it was easy to find a warming selection of patterned clothing which expresses that knowing Spring titillation, however the Cardiff retailers were providing mostly printed patterns on Tees and Deep V's. Now don't get us here at TTC wrong, we love a Deep V, and giving it a spicy pattern that accentuates the deepness of the V is a lovely testament to the garment, however the remit of the hunt was patterned knit, and the 'knit' part of this is as important as the pattern.

As ever, Peacocks was the place to go for the penny conscious fashionista...

Wowzer

Monochrome, although while lined not especially patterned

Eventually (TTC is very time consuming, and we do put in the time at this stage to ensure perfect results for the end user) we found the perfect knit and bought every example the store had, to ensure exclusivity (it costs a lot of money as well), the fundamental guideline for patternware is not to share them with people outside your group.

As a TTTwist we even tried alternate ways of draping the knit over our respective torsos

Now since our last post there's been something of a blow for the elite of Cardiff nightlife - Floyds has shut its doors for the final time, we think due to a very poor interior design decision to move and elevate the DJ booth, making the whole environment less intimate and sweaty.  It also always suffered a slight reputation issue from not having basin taps in the men's toilet, instead sporting a bucket and ladle.

Replacing Floyds' gaping hole in our evening schedule was nigh on impossible but a combination of Moon and Full Moon clubs gave it a darned good go.

The Alternatives

These places didn't do our favoured Jagerbomb deal but what they did have was mediocre bands trying to make a go of it rather than accepting they needed to get an actual job instead of relying on selling £12 gig t-shirts to 10 people as a way of feeding oneself - it would be funny if it wasn't so tragically depressing to see their crushed hearts when nobody wanted their poorly printed CDs.

These places also don't offer Floyds' exquisite lighting, famed for producing the best trend photos (please see our Instagram offerings).  Instead of photographic chutzpah, Moon Club gives us an honest representation of our delightfully playful yet geometrically brilliant patterns.

What these places did deliver on was the delightfully chatty punters who were more than excited to provide their thoughts on the patterned knit, which ended up being mixed. One such fellow, who had obviously decided that aerodynamicism was not a top priority whereas sub-dermal food storage was, enjoyed the trend. After complimenting though, he did say that he thought we may have been twins. Before this we were taking his compliments as praise from a wise, well fed man, however this quickly changed, as believing that two people are blood related due to similar clothing and optimal muscular definition is a sign of a fool.

We did encounter one incident that highlighted the risks of being a full time blogger/engineer, when a Regular Joe gets too familiar.  Looking carefully at the imagine below you'll see a mystery hand performing a deep tissue massage on one of our shoulders, looking even more carefully you'll appreciate that it can be neither my hand nor James'!

Mmm loosening

As it happens an overly excitable reader of ours had decided to become shamefully drunk and needed a steadying handrail. Thankfully for him, in the dark cesspit of Live Lounge, geometric patterns pointed the way to safety and a chance to propose all sorts of blogging ideas, something that we are never open to hearing about. The danger of arrow type patterns and favourable lighting conditions became very clear, so we quickly fled to the toilet where in a rather characterless fashion they have ladle-free taps.

Hopefully we've had our last mid-jig massage

The evening did not actually end up with much more interesting praise (or for that matter condemnation). It seems as though the Patterned Knit is not much of a great trend, and even with FashionBeans giving it a funky name.  The hurt of a Floydsless world will last for some time, all we can hope is that Cardiff gets a new RnB themed tavern very soon, and that we aren't wearing patterned knit when it does.

Snuggly Goth

Well, here we are again with another (very late) installment of Trend The Consequences. it has been a while since the last post simply because finding new and interesting trends has been difficult. It seems that the 'mainstream' fashion sites are just regurgitating the same trends every year, with a randomly boring addition squeezed in the middle. In fact, it seems that Vogue are just playing the past TTC playlist back to us for 2016. Now I would agree with them that floral and scarfs are good fun, but we have done them. The only interesting addition is Lace:

Delightfully revealing

And then you have FashionBeans with their 'jackets on jackets' which is just a poor remake of the layered V that TTC discovered a couple seasons ago. But I digress from the point of this post, which is to introduce the latest season that TTC are covering, which is some form of Winter/Spring 2015/2016 hybrid that we are posting in the summer.

This first post is about a hybrid that we here at TTC needed to blend together. A meeting of the 'all black' look that is synonymous with the goth world, and the snugglyness of a soothing knitted scarf. We felt that the classic goth was not the image we wanted to portray, simply because their scary outlook is quite intimidating, so incorporated a comfortably huggable scarf to really remove the social separation from others, whilst maintaining an outsider edge.

I think you'll agree - quite snuggly

When in town, you could tell that people were reserved at first, our gothly appearance was making people feel intimidated, and I don't blame the public for this; two dangerously handsome fellows all in black with menacingly good dance moves, what is not there to be intimidated by:

So menacing

However, intimidation slowly turned to intrigue as people noticed the comfy looking scarf. The obvious question going through people's minds was, 'how could someone looking so snuggly be anything other than delightful?', even goth Elmo is still cute:

What an adorable pentagram 

It was when we got to Cardiff's notorious Live Lounge where the crowds really enjoyed the trend. Multiple adoring comments were sent our way throughout the evening, and even the bar staff, who could only really see the scarfy darkness from the bar surface upwards, were delighted every time we came up for a refreshing beverage.

As the evening progressed, our snuggly appearance became too inviting, and groups wanted to get in one the action and feel just how caressable we really were, but with a silent understanding that we all liked drop-D based guitar riffs (or ideally C).

Lovably Cuddlesome

Swap beard for scarf and he is snuggly too

So welcome back to Trend The Consequences for our latest late-hybrid-season report, as ever we have a smattering of posts coming over next few weeks, each greater than anything we've ever done before, but to conclude Snuggly Goth is a (heart)warming way of getting stylish over the bitter winter period while also dabbling with the hoody and growly music types you'd normally steer well clear of.