With his latest take on swimwear, British fashion designer Alexander McQueen seems to be channelling Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character, offering a version of the audacious ”mankini” the comedy actor wore in his movie a few years ago.
McQueen’s swimming brief might be a little more subtle than Borat’s but it is just as ridiculous. At least the Kazakstani mankini had a construction designed for practicality; its over-the-shoulder straps providing vital lift and support while ingeniously leaving a great expanse of white flesh completely denuded and ready for painful sunburn.
Unless you are a perfect model size, with torso and legs in a specific proportion, you may have trouble wearing the ”McQuini”. Men with long, rangey bodies will find themselves encountering an eye-watering triple wardrobe malfunction of a garrotted windpipe, testicular bifurcation and, for paler patrons, a tan with a stripe down the middle of the chest that will look like a particularly brutal open-heart surgery scar.
In hot conditions, it would be possible to un-noose yourself from the collar and let the long tie thing dangle down between your legs, as if doing an elephant impression, but then you’d look even sillier.
More importantly, isn’t the mankini a bit spring/summer 2006, darlings? Hasn’t it passed its sell-by date, along with saying ”Jagshemash!” as a greeting? In short, aren’t these disturbing T-bar trunks less the sort of thing that McQueen should put his name to and more the kind of gag that you might agree to wear on a charity fun run or to a stag do?
Firebox, a website that specialises in novelties, has been doing officially licensed Borat mankinis (10% elastane, 90% polyester, one size fits all — Naaice!) at £9.95 each since November last year and they’ve already sold more than 10 000.
”We have been overwhelmed by the response,” says Firebox director Christian Robinson. ”We never thought that something so humiliating would prove to be so popular.”
Go to the Firebox website and you’ll see lots of satisfied customers have posted pictures of themselves wearing mankinis on raucous evenings out. Here’s Daz and Ben, Kevin and a man called Rona whose mankini caption reads: ”You’re never too old”. Actually, on second thoughts, don’t look at that one. —