I have always been one to question fashion, and to strive to have my own personal sense of style. That sounds poncy. What I mean is I know what I like, and I like what I know. For many years this was the safe “t-shirt and jeans” combo that is still a faithful standby as I rapidly approach my post-late-mid-20s (I’m 29 in about 2 weeks). However I have also dabbled in somewhat chappish attire of waistcoats (never with jeans, unless you want to have comparisons with Justin Timberlake stamped on your forehead in your own blood), brogue-style trainers, and good-old button on braces. By and large, I wear what I think suits me and not what strangers and magazine editors tell me to wear.

Anyway. This isn’t about me. This is about other people as seen through my embittered and sardonic eyes. I just thought it was worth confessing my own sartorial sins before pointing the finger at someone else.

And today’s someone else is anyone wearing anything by Ed Hardy.

I have no idea if this designer’s works are internationally known, or perhaps the cancer has not yet spread beyond the British shores. If not, then hopefully this will be a warning beacon, informing others on a global scale of such over-priced shite before they suffer from sequin-induced blindness.

Ed Hardy apparel follows 2 simple rules:

Bright Colours Make Up For Crap Drawing Skills

Now I am no artist. I would describe myself as autistic before artistic. A sure-fire way to lift TechnoScouse’s spirits and probably reduce her to a dribbling heap of chuckles is for me to put pen to paper and try to draw even the most simple of pictures. I accept this lack of talent, and instead use words to paint a mental picture (rather than using a pen to paint a picture that just looks mental).

The designers at Ed Hardy, on the other hand, seem to have been recruited from the local happy-bus of colour-blind freaks as part of some form of art therapy workshop. Never have I known people to pay good money (see below) for pictures that look like they have been drawn by the backwards kid in a class of 7 year olds, who has no idea what the picture is meant to be of.

For example, let us look at the skull. If we are to believe the geniuses at Ed Hardy, then the human skull is so distorted and misshapen that John Merrick would take the piss.

Alternatively let us look at the majestic tiger (here looking more like a ginger cat from the depths of a nuclear reactor, and spanked round the face with a spade). I personally would rather walk round with Napoleon Dynamite’s Liger on my t-shirt than one of these technicolour abominations!

The brand tries to defend the lack of artistic talent by following the trend of retro tattoo design, such as pin-up girls and the like. The difference is though that if you had a picture this bad permanently etched into your skin, observers would assume that it had been drawn by your loving cellmate during a long incarceration in prison. Would you want to look like you were the bitch of a guy that can’t draw a for shit? No, I didn’t think so, so don’t wear a pair of jeans that look even worse.

Glitter is Good

As I saunter through the walkways of shopping centres, I am now intermittently dazzled by a spectrum of colours that makes me think that I’ve either taken LSD by mistake, or I’m being pissed on by a My Little Pony. These virtual laser-light shows are because of Ed Hardy t-shirts that are covered in more sequins than Liberace’s codpiece! While certain animals such as tropical fish have developed shiny skins to reflect light and dazzle potential predators, I don’t think that the Neon Tetra is a role model if you want to avoid getting punched in the chops for looking like a pillock.

Remember- the only people who don’t get beaten up for wearing sequins are 1980s WWF wrestlers. Before parting with your money, just ask yourself “Am I Macho Man Randy Savage?” If not, then slowly put the t-shirt back where you found it, and run away before the shop assistant spots you.

My final complaint, and this is often true of fashion, is that this crap is so painfully overpriced. For some reason, wearing a holographic t-shirt of a gay weasel with a birth defect becomes socially acceptable if you’ve paid £120 for the pleasure. If these things were going for £15 at Asda, then people would wisely stay away for fear of looking likesome rancid bastard’s wiped their nose all over your pants.

So where should you go to experience such an item? Try Gems TV

Gems TV is one of several channels on Sky TV that claims to sell incredibly valuable jewellery, for low low prices. Now I make it very clear that while I am the world’s foremost expert in many things, jewellery and precious stones are not my specialisms. On the one occasion that TechnoScouse tasked me with selecting a pair of earings (which she had pointed out to me less than 7 days previously), I still managed to pick out the wrong bloody ones.

However, notwithstanding my lack of expertise, I still have eyes and can identify overpriced crap when I see it.

The key word to look for is “Gems”, not “Jewels”. Jewels are precious stones like diamonds, rubies, sapphires… the kind of things you expect to find in a pirate’s treasure chest. Gems are the bits of gaudy coloured blobs of crap you see in an 8 year old girl’s dressing up box.

For example, Have any of you dear readers heard of the following “gems”? And for a truly impartial test, it doesn’t count if you heard of these on a dedicated TV shopping channel. Understand the rules? Good:

Alexandrite, Amblygonite, Andalusite, Aragonite (I’m sure he was in Lord of the Rings), Flourite (isn’t this in toothpaste?), Howlite (got to be a made up name), Iolite, Kunzite, Malachite, Marcasite, Morganite, Sodalite (isn’t that what Americans call diet soft drinks?), Tanzanite, and Tsavorite.

Now by and large, I’m suspicious of anything that rhymes with the word “shite.” Coincidence, or something more significant?

If you want something that contains a gem you’ve actually heard of, why not shell out £58 for a pearl… mounted on a chunk of silver shaped like an Octopus. That’s right, you could have a 2 inch metal invertibrate hanging from your neck. And why wouldn’t you want that? It only looks marginally worse than the Beastie Boys with VW car badges in the ’80s.

How about a Fire Opal and diamond ring? Sounds promising until you see that the diamonds make up less than 0.05% of the gem weight (0.066 Carats diamond compared to a 12.28 Carat Opal). So what does a huge Fire Opal look like? Best description I’d make is a golf ball sized gobbet of frozen urine stuck to your finger. Sophisticated, no?

The next cause for concern comes from the pricing structure. When these items are offered, they start out with astronomical valuations, usually in excess of £1000. However, these prices (for materials never heard of outside a Tolkein story), seem to plummet like a stone to around £100-£150.

I’ve just seen a bracelet containing 66 sapphires (real jewel, but only 2mm in diameter each) set in 9 karat white gold (so not exactly pure gold there then?) go from £1976 to £200.

Now call me old fashioned, but if something can reduce in price by 90% in the space of 2 seconds, I suspect it could have been a tad overpriced. Now I am not accusing Gems TV of such a ploy, so don’t misinterpret me. But if, hypothetically, a company were to boost its prices by 10 times the real RRP, then how can you trust the “discount” price to reflect the value of the item?

Put it this way. I have a box, and you don’t know what’s in it. I say it contains something worth 50 quid, but I will sell it you for £5. You still don’t know what’s in the box, though you can smell something that reminds you of squirrel crap. You see that I’m dressed in very expensive clothes, and you know that my only source of income is my sales work. How sure are you that the thing in the box is worth anything at all?

Well fortunately the good people at Gems TV know what a scaptical bastard you are. I would therefore direct you to their Appraisals page. This raises some very interesting notions that I would like to expand upon:

“An appraisal valuation is what someone is prepared to pay for something. For example, what is the value of the Mona Lisa? Is the value the same as the cost of the canvas and the paint or is it determined by the amount that someone will pay for it? We believe that jewellery appraisals should reflect the average cost you would have to pay to replace the item if lost or stolen.”

So yes, a good question is “what does value actually mean”, and their example of the Mona Lisa shows that while something is physically worth diddly squat, it can be priceless. Alternatively it can mean that if you’re stupid enough to pay a certain price, you have defined it as being worth that amount. The really nice touch is saying that appraisal value should reflect the replacement cost. Of course, the minerals referred to above are only available on these TV channels, and so again the “value” is defined by the seller who could be making a massive profit (after the overheads of running 3 TV channels, which are surely not that much!!!)

And as for the next bit, it’s probably easier to add my comments to the actual text:

On these pages are just some of the thousands of comments (I can’t find any) we have received from delighted customers whose appraisals have exceeded their expectations (What if they have ridiculously low expectations?). Unfortunately, we have also heard that some customers have had a negative experience when obtaining appraisals from local jewellers (again, these aren’t posted on the site). As GemsTV is an integrated manufacturer and television home shopping retailer of coloured gemstone jewellery, we cut out numerous middlemen. This keeps our prices extremely competitive (Competetive with who? you’re the only ones selling this toss). Whilst most jewellers thank us for increasing the awareness of coloured gems (possibly because the profit margins on colourful horse-shit are massive), a few may feel threatened and try to discredit our jewellery (or perhaps they are the honest ones, and think that your shiny baubles are worth bugger all).

Like I say, I’m no expert on jewels, gems, or valuations thereof. I just have a few doubts about anything sold only on tv, that gets sold at a mere fraction of it’s starting price, and that has a website spinning what can only be described as bullshit!