You'd better shape up

One of the pleasures in working in the city and catching public transport is that I get to indulge in people-watching on a daily basis. Having had a lifelong interest in the way people dress, this is a source of endless fascination. Especially when people make really interesting choices in what they wear to work, school and to just plain lurk around the metropolis.

I get many of my best ideas about what I want to wear this way. And, of course, oh so many of what not to wear. And I don't even need Trinny and Susannah around to interpret - most of it is just so bleeding obvious.

While we have thankfully passed the horror-filled era of extremely lowcut jeans and crop tops (which offered far too much information about the state of your midriff thank you very much), there are still plenty of rather startling clothing choices out there. Here's a selection of some of the sights I've been treated to recently.

• While I am not against a bit of crochet, I'm not sure that an Afghan throw strewn over a short skirt is really the way to go. Especially when worn with bare legs and Crocs.

• It seems that clunky granny sandals worn with shin-high dark socks is now a legitimate choice to make for 20-something students. It just makes me think of all of those chaps who used to marry walk socks and sandals with their short safari suit back in the 1970s. (And what kind of term is 'walk socks'? Are we only allowed to walk wearing walk socks, with all other socks intended for a more mysterious purpose?)

• T-shirts from French Connection UK. The acronym may have been a tad clever in the beginning, but now it just seems ho-hum, unclever and nasty.

• Harem pants suit NO ONE. Certainly not people like me - middle-aged women who've popped out several kids and are no longer svelte. Sorry lady, these gathered duds just work over-emphasize your chunky bits, not disguise them.

• While I haven't actually spotted one of these on some unsuspecting child, I have been shocked to find black jersey-knit harem-pant-jumpsuits on sale in Target. Horrifying on several levels, but especially in the thought of some poor seven year old being subjected to keeping it together while swinging on the monkey bars in one of these.

I spotted this last one on a recent hunt to find my 11 year old daughter some leggings to wear under her school uniform. Which brings me, yet again, to the greatest crime of all - the mushrooming of the trend in wearing leggings as pants. This is now an epidemic, closely followed by the horror of tights (tights!) worn as pants. Please, put some real pants on, even if they are only shorts.

There is only one person on the entire planet who is allowed to go there - Olivia Newton-John. And then only if she transports herself back to that funfair at Rydell High in the 1950s as seen through the lens of 1978. Even Sandy couldn't get away with it strolling down Bourke Street Mall in 2009.