Paul & Joe’s Play Clothes

The new season is a tad on the serious side and a little bit dark and grown-up.  No more playtime smocks.  No more little girl dresses.  No more of the cutey cutey.  Not according to Paul & Joe though, who seems to have defied everyone and have gone out of their way to make the 21st century ‘play clothes’ for adults for their AW07-8 collection.  The term ‘play clothes’ first got stuck in my head when Maria managed to turn some hideous curtains into a gazillion different outfits for those Von Trap kids. 

Play clothes in this century according to Paul & Joe are made out of boiled wool and shiny satin in juicy purple, non-child friendly white (hopefully adults can handle it) and that particular kind of turquoise that I remember always losing in my felt tip pen set.  Actually these almost look like cartoon character costumes with the Puss in Boot trousers, exaggerated volume and overall vibrancy and cartoonish crispness.  Save for the patent shiny bag boots (a little too advanced to be on children’s TV I feel), I am already seeing these outfits animated on screen (good old fashioned puppets or clay animation though…none of that Pixar stuff here…).  Something for us ‘kids’ to play in and watch. 

For some reason, I’m feeling they would be the perfect outfits to sit cross legged, with heads tilted up, gawping at the TV screen watching the Magic Roundabout.  There’s something very un-stylish and hideous about the outfits that is sort of attractive for me in an odd way.  Like eating peanut butter with celery.  It SHOULD be wrong…but it’s so damn good…