Independent, The (London): HOW NOT TO DRESS

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HOW NOT TO DRESS

Peter York

THIS WEEK

DJs

In the competitive world of DJing, wearing the right gear is almost as important as playing the right tunes. So what could our style experts do to give these two a career boost?

G Child, 26

Radio 1 Xtra DJ

JS: The thing that struck me about G Child was what a suave young rogue he looked stepping out of his Radio 1 Mercedes with the coolest new vinyl under one arm and a Radio 1 publicity babe under the other.

PY: I'm illiterate about sportswear, but I do think the retro Adidas moment has run its course.

JS: DJs know instinctively how to pose. What an exhilarating surge of power he must feel. With all those spaced-out clubbers under one's spell, you'd be tempted to roar "Dance, monkeys, dance!" But I digress.

PY: Quite. It appears that you haven't changed his hair at all.

JS: G had asymmetric cornrow plaits in his hair. The idea of unravelling this masterpiece sent our hairdresser Natalie into a cold sweat, so we decided to leave well alone. Personally, I love cornrows on a funky little chick like G Child. He looks so much more believable with that "do" than David Beckham.

PY: You know I don't talk trainer, so I'm at a loss as to whether you've improved him on the shoe front.

JS: G tells me he buys a pair of box-fresh beauties almost every week. I think he should be able to claim his trainers against tax. He's a Nike boy but wasn't averse to "crossing the floor" to Puma.

PY: He seemed to be wearing huge shoes before and his new shoes look more streamlined. So that's an improvement. However, I am absolutely confident that you've topped his usual stage clothes. What can I say about that fantastical outfit, apart from "Ooh er, get you"? Whatever next?

JS: Considering I'm someone who thinks Alma Cogan is directional, I think it's rather a marvel that G trusted me to give him a restyle. There was me thinking hip hop was all about dodgy tracksuits and those bucket hats from Kangol that make one look simple. Not so. After flirting with a little Stussy, we decided to go vintage. The jeans are from Vivienne Westwood's "Marlene Dietrich" collection; about pounds 600 at auction at Sotheby's.

PY: In that case, we must worship these jeans. Any jeans that could extract pounds 600 for a print of a dead old lady are worth their weight in cotton.

JS: The Marlene jeans could look camp on the wrong guy (me, for example), but on a bitchin' hip-hop god they look fabulous. The shirt is fitted and it's got that nice bit of pin-tuck detail to make it different. The very reserved bit of gold bling around G's neck looked chic rather than too ghetto-fabulous.

PY: Bling is very important in the way that it's penetrated upwards. All that gold and bigness has had a huge impact on people who never even considered wearing big gold jewellery before. So well done.

Alex Zane, 24

Xfm DJ and MTV presenter

JS: Alex is quite a cheeky chappie. He's got a smirk like Ron Weasley in Harry Potter, but it looks cute with all that angelically curled fringe. I like Alex's hairdo because it isn't blow-dried into a Vernon Kay Seventies bouffant, so we didn't touch it.

PY: How could you touch his hair? Alex looks like a boy who comes to the big city from an American dream suburb. He also looks terribly young and impressionable in his denim boiler suit.

JS: I thought he was perfectly dressed to have been larging it with Sarah Cox and Zoe Ball at Glastonbury: denim-on-denim with a roughed-up skull-and-crossbones black T-shirt and credible trainers. Actually, he was dressed to do an MTV interview with the Charlie's Angels gals at the Dorchester, so we deduce he's a nice, responsible boy.

PY: What have you turned him into? That's a very nifty jacket. Is it Duffer?

JS: Well spotted.

PY: It's a nice piece of Dufferishness and it has made him look sharper, older and much more credible.

JS: We decided to get away from the easy option of denim and generic trainers. I think DJs are like strippers - "You've gotta get a gimmick". I thought Alex's gimmick could be working a high-fashion look as if it were something he had pulled out of the laundry basket.

PY: Even the woolly Juicy tracksuit looks very nice.

JS: When I suggested Juicy Couture to Alex he mumbled something about Evisu and Diesel. So naturally I ignored him and proposed a chocolate Juicy fleece tracksuit with cream sport stripe. We went for a chocolate cotton drill Duffer jacket over the outfit, then I remembered the cardinal rule in the music business: colour co- ordination is for wimps. So we clashed it with an orange Juicy T- shirt with the confrontational logo "Over You".

PY: I'm normally against that sort of thing. Yellow trainers are Ali G and logo T-shirts mostly awful. My favourite logo T-shirt for a man is Paul Merton's "Nobody knows I'm a Lesbian". "Over You" is rather marvellous though for a DJ.

JS: The trainers we chose were scary yellow patent leather numbers with accents of orange and lime green. These Pumas were so shocking they made the leap into fabulousness. The Evisu beenie hat was Alex's idea and I've got to say I like it a lot more than the baseball caps he was experimenting with before we put a sedative his Red Bull.

PY: Apart from the Ali G-ish trainers, I think you've turned him into a club icon.

JS: Alex was a bit flabbergasted by his outfit. He said the clothes made him feel like quite a hard case. I must say I think we've made him look utterly bitchin'.

AFTER vv G CHILD'S VIEW

`In the daytime I keep it sport and street. At night, when I'm working, I go for something no one else in the club is wearing. That's why I chose the vintage Westwood jeans. Those trousers and the fancy white shirt are clothes I would wear as G Child the DJ'

AFTER cc ALEX'S VIEW

`I feel like somebody else dressed like this. It's pretty damn hard in a hip-hop kind of way. I do work with stylists for MTV but usually like to mix it up with my own look. I feel like a prince of fashion. What do I like the most? I like everything'

G wears vintage Vivienne Westwood `Marlene Dietrich' print jeans (pounds 600), cotton Zara shirt (pounds 39) and Puma trainers (pounds 69). All gold jewellery G's own

Vintage Vivienne Westwood @ Steinberg & Tolkien, 193 King's Road, London SW3 (020-7376 3660); Puma @ Puma Concept Store, 52 Carnaby Street, London W1 (020-7439 0221); Zara nationwide (020-7851 4300). Hair by Natalie & Jazz @ Cut-Throat Barbers, 94 Turnmill Street, London EC1 (020-7490 8342)

Alex wears Juicy Couture tracksuit (top pounds 130, pants pounds 120), `Over You' Juicy Couture T-shirt (pounds 78), Duffer of St George Nehru jacket (pounds 200), Evisu beanie (pounds 50) and Mihara for Puma trainers (pounds 130)

Juicy Couture @ Harvey Nichols, 109-125 Knightsbridge, London SW1 (020- 7235 5000); Juicy Couture (020-7287 6767); Duffer of St George, 29 Shorts Gardens, London WC2 (020-7379 4660); Puma Concept Store (020-7439 0221)

Coming up: chauffeurs. If you'd like to appear, write to HNTD, The Independent, 191 Marsh Wall, London E14 9RS, stating age and measurements (shoe, chest, waist, collar, inside leg)