Man about town ... an Emporio Armani underwear advert in San Francisco, featuring David Beckham. Photograph: Kevin Sam/FilmMagic.com
Does David Beckham's upcoming underwear range for H&M represent the nadir of celebrity fashion ranges?
Angela, by email
I'm sorry, did you say "fashion ranges", Angela? Ce n'est pas un range! C'est une collection une collection de la mode!
Personally, I'd have thought the story about stylist Rachel "OMG, so three years ago!" Zoe getting a walk-in closet for her baby Skyler who can't actually walk yet would have been the nadir of the week. Well, that and Skyler's pair of baby driving shoes from Tod's, when he can't . . . oh, y'all can finish that sentence for yourselves.
In any event, you must never doubt the capacity of the fashion/celebrity nexus's toxic centre to plumb ever greater depths (and news that Zoe is, inevitably, now designing a fashion range for babies proves that the descent is accelerating).
To be honest with you, I'd rather a celebrity be honest about the limits of his design ability and knock out some iffy pants than pretend he has actually sketched an entire collection in between making guest appearances on TV singing competitions and taking a helicopter to Glastonbury.
With the exception of Kate Moss's first collection for Topshop, which was surprisingly good, the only thing a "celebrity fashion range" ever has going for it is the first word in that term, not the second. So, seeing that H&M believes there are men out there who will buy something just because the Beckham name and maybe even image appears on it, kudos to them for just going with a pair of pants as opposed to more expensive jeans, a football kit or some other such nonsense. Maybe next season we can get Lindsay Lohan designing a range of scrunchies for American Apparel so you can tie your hair back before puking in the street. Or Angelina Jolie designing a range of beach bags to take to developing countries.
While I'm not generally a subscriber to the popular celebrity belief that "I wear clothes, therefore I'm a designer", I can at least say with some certainty that Beckham has spent a lot of time in pants. In fact, I find it hard to think of him wearing anything other than just a pair of pants though that might be because I'm the kind of person who spends more time looking at fashion adverts than football match-game-type thingummybobs. The point is, Beckham has spent a lot of time standing in pants as he shilled for Giorgio Armani, who himself is no stranger to knocking out pairs of pants, slapping his name on them and jacking up the price accordingly. Maybe, come to think of it, that's where Beckham got the idea from. If so, that only goes to prove the power of advertising.
But this also suggests a problem for designers. With more and more models now getting it into their pretty heads that they can design (Moss aside, Claudia Schiffer has knitted some jumpers or something that I can't quite face researching too deeply, etc etc), it's all gone a bit Frankenstein's monster. They're aliiiiiive!
If nothing else, at least we now know for certain that the high street will literally pay a past-it (ooh, controversial! Sorta!) celebrity for the privilege of sticking his name on a pair of pants. And people say the 1920s got all the glamour.
I'm obsessed with Rebekah Brooks's hair. Would it be too tasteless to don a curly red wig and dress like her for Halloween?
Georgia, by email
It would be a lot less tasteless than donning a beehive and dressing like Amy Winehouse, as I fear many will do. And I strongly suspect that there will be a strong crossover on the Venn diagram illustrating people who dress like Winehouse for Halloween and those who left half-drunk vodka bottles outside her house after she died, a gesture that brought all too poignantly to mind a point made by the late, great Bill Hicks: "A lot of Christians wear crosses round their necks. Do you think when Jesus comes back he's gonna want to see a fucking cross?"
I hope Amy and Bill are hanging out together. I think they'd have a laugh.
Anyway, no, I think a Rebekah wig would be a fantastic choice, combining those two essential qualities of great Halloween costumes: distinctive physical appearance and national hate figure status. Of course, with the speed news moves at the moment, who knows what will have come out by October. Probably that God Himself was hacked under his tenure and the world will now explode in retribution. In which case, you won't need to worry about your costume.