If you were reared by an Irish mammy, the odds are pretty good that you spent most of your early years under a hood of some description. Duffle coats were a mainstay of the Irish playground, and always came complete with faux-horn toggles and a hood, which meant that your boring old duffle coat could easily be converted into a cape to be worn Batman-style on the swings. Hoods, or hoodies as they're more widely known now, are still a hugely useful and versatile garment, even if you don't spend quite so much of your time as a caped crusader these days. Despite being a very contemporary look, the hoodie has it's roots firmly in popular culture of the recent past. No self-respecting Mod would have stormed through Brighton without a parka with zips, an optional target sign painted on the back and a hood hanging down the back like a depleted swag bag. The other type of parka was the one so popular in Ireland for a brief period in the early 1980s.
These were made of heavy-duty navy nylon lined in an astonishingly bright shade of orange, and they had a hood trimmed with a kind of fur known only to man and not to beast. This style of parka quickly flooded every chainstore in the country and for a while, cropped up with boring regularity on Garda Patrol, as the fashion accessory du jour of the criminal classes. Despite, or perhaps because of these dangerous associations, this style of fur-trimmed hood is making a comeback, appearing most recently in the film, East is East. Here the youngest son of the Khan household is never seen without his parka on and his hood up, leaving director Damien O'Donnell to frame all the shots from his perspective with a rim of fake fur.
It's hardly surprising that the hoodie keeps making comeback after comeback in the world of casual gear. For a start, it's an instant barrier against the rain, and that's a huge advantage in a country with an average rainfall to rival its GNP. To put it another way, it's a hat that never gets lost, an umbrella that never turns inside out, and it keeps your ears warm too. Yet it would be a mistake to think of the hoodie as a functional piece of clothing, used only by the very pragmatic and those prone to head colds. Indeed, the hoodie has long been the uniform of people who care quite a lot that they're giving off the right vibes, and not too much that they're warmly dressed. It's not so much that they're a garment for the fashion victim; more that they imply a kind of insouciant cool, a devil-may-care attitude to wearing a shirt and tie.
There are all types of hoodies, of course. There are the ones that predominate in American street fashion and are usually made of cotton jersey, attached to long-sleeve t-shirts or sweatshirts. Big favourites with everybody - from rappers, to indie kids, to the dance generation - they first made it big in the early 1990s and show no signs of fading out yet.
MORE recently, though, the hoodie has made the crossover to catwalk and mainstream fashion. In recent seasons, many designers have been teaming very sophisticated cashmere and lambswool versions of the teen favourite with sharp suits and razor-crease pants. In the high-street too, many garments, from sensible coats to thick Aran knits have sprouted hoods like an extra limb. Of course, just because they're everywhere at the moment doesn't mean that it's a look you like, or one that you'll get away with. A hoodie may look very well with a Firetrap jacket and a pair of Hilfiger pants at the weekend, but might still raise a few eyebrows at the annual adjustments and settlements conference when teamed with an M & S suit. Although they don't come with an "Age 18-34" label attached, they do tend to be spotted on younger men, while fans of a more classic or conventional look might just find them too damned trendy for words.
Still, fans of the hoodie tend to keep on returning to the look, so if you haven't given one a whirl, now might be the time to try one out. Anyway, if you don't like it you can always while away some pleasant hours pretending to save the world.
