Women’s lifestyle magazines, as anyone who has regularly read one for more than two years will have noticed, are rather cyclical in nature. Like the soul on the quest for Nirvana, their stories return to earthly eyes again and again, packaged up as something different but essentially the same at heart. (Which does raise the frightening question of what Nirvana looks like for women’s magazines? I suspect a giant walk in wardrobe where angels serenade you with stories of the time they grew two vaginas, and at the end you get to behold Brad Pitt lying on a bed offering you sex tips and the best fake tan you will ever get.)

A fashion feature that gets vomited out with a regularity that suggests fashion editors need a special type of stomach worm to qualify them for the job, are the ones where someone road tests a particular item of clothing or new season trends. Now I have no problem with this, I love clothes; however my main gripe with these types of articles is that absolutely nothing interesting happens. Beyond being told by their boyfriends that they can’t go outside dressed like that and falling over heels so high they were practically asking for a fight with gravity, zilch happens. I fall over and get chauvinistic comments directed at me on regular basis already thanks. I don’t read women’s lifestyle magazines to hear about everyday life. (I’m sure there’s an irony there somewhere…)

So, in emulation of these magazines and to highlight to you the real hazards of a fashion faux pas, I have written a completely untrue diary of my experimentation with two trends from the collections of of spring/summer  ‘11.

Trend 1: Floral Frenzy

It’s the first day of my fashion odyssey, battling the monsters of modern practicality to find a way to work these designer trends on the high street, just for you, my dear reader. As the sun is shining my friends and I have decided to have a glamorous picnic, it’s going to be an afternoon of strawberries, pimms and fabulous dresses.

This is the perfect occasion to slip on a floaty dream of a maxi dress, made of white chiffon and decorated with garlands of flowers, which I got from a dinky vintage boutique that cost me all my food for the next month. Which, is really a bargain when you think about it as it saves me hiring a personal trainer to help me fit into this dress! I finished off the look with copious amounts of gold jewellery to match the yellow of the flowers on the dress (it’s so important to have matching accessories), and popped on floral print wedges. But, mind a different type of floral pattern. It’s really not fashionable to be too matchy matchy.

I felt like a Grecian goddess as I stomped across Hyde Park, crushing daisies and ladybirds beneath my fashionably brick like wedges. It doesn’t matter about the daisies and ladybirds though, the flirty floral pattern on my vintage dress more than replaced them, it surpassed them. Unfortunately the floral feast I provided was too much temptation for the wildlife within the radius of pretty much the whole world. Bees swarmed towards me, the monkeys at London Zoo broke out of their cages, lapdogs jumped out of handbags across Chelsea and sea cows swam up the Thames just so they could eat/urinate on my dress.  Then some nymphs and satyrs mistook me for a particularly nice grove and danced on me. Their hooves hurt a lot.

I give the floral trend 1/5 because it is rather tiresome to be chased by animals when all you want to do is quaff alcohol. Another fault it is quite a costly trend as you have to replace the outfit after every outing.

Trend 2: Sexy, bright stripes

The catwalks were awash with offensively bright colours for this season, especially at Gucci and Prada. Prada were even greedier in the trend making stakes and have made crazy stripes fashionable. In my bid to really stand out at work I decided to combine the two and remind my boss that I exist.

 I tucked a stripy purple and turquoise blouse into bright orange peg leg trousers, put on a pair of blue and gold striped heels and slung a magenta blazer over the top to complete the look. Actually my aviators completed the look and were extremely necessary as my outfit was so radioactively bright it shone and when I passed reflective surfaces it was blinding. Literally. As I strutted through the streets and into work, people crumpled to the floor shouting ‘it burns’. Those who are not permanently blind from the sight of my awesome outfit are seeing stripes in their vision.

There’s even news that an alien invasion force is on its way to earth, as my outfit’s colour defeated physics so much it alerted the rest of the galaxy to our presence. Some say I should be imprisoned for what I have done, I say I should be given a Nobel Prize for fostering intergalactic relations.

I give this outfit 4/5. The only thing stopping it from full marks is the sad fact that despite debilitating pretty much the whole work force it didn’t get me a promotion as my boss is colour blind anyway.

What trend should I try next? Let me know!