Harper Beckham should be allowed a fashion faux pas, I know I did, says Christa Ackroyd

Which reminds me until then I had always worn good sturdy shoes bought from my Uncle Calvin’s shoe shop in the shopping centre at Crossgates in Leeds. The nearest I got to choosing my own was being asked whether I wanted patent leather, which of course I always did, even though they were a pound more.

But hot pants I could only dream of. And I did. They became an obsession. To the 13-year-old me, those hot pants symbolised I was all grown up, I had a mind of my own and I was for the first time in my life, fashionable. And so they became desperately important.

They were the culmination of at least a month of arguing that, despite my father’s reservations, I NEEDED them. To me I truly believed they would make my life complete. These were not the late sixties’ Twiggy kind of hot pants. These were the Pan’s People hot pants of the seventies, designed in my head to be worn with wet look boots and a long knitted cardigan. And so I pestered and badgered until my mum gave in. Well sort of.

You see the kind of hot pants I wanted I had seen in the Gratton catalogue which, being from Bradford came every year, twice a year. Not that we ever bought anything from it. We didn’t do HP. We saved until we could buy outright. Such a bore then, eminently sensible now. My kind of hot pants graced the shop windows of Chelsea Girl or C&A. And they called out to me every time we went ‘into town’, which was usually once a week on a Saturday.

But not for me the shop bought hot pants I desired. No, caving in on the grounds of anything for a quiet life, my mum finally announced I could have some. I was ecstatic. Until she told me she was going to make me some. Noooo! That is not what I had imagined. I had imagined going in with my friend Anne purse in hand and telling the oh so trendy shop assistant I wanted those. Not only that, but I would change into them there and then, hand over my childish garb to be bagged up and walk out a new woman. Well a teenager still, but certainly different. It was not to be.

My mum insisted. And so we went to Brier’s in Bradford for a pattern. A Vogue pattern no less. Though trust me there was nothing in vogue for what later transpired. Then we went to the market for some material. And there’s the rub, quite literally. What my mum hadn’t realised was that the material she chose had a strange kind of foam underside. Not only that, but once made up on her trusty Singer, they may have been my size they stuck out at all angles when worn and when I took them off they literally stood up in the corner of my bedroom. Even the addition of a detachable bib, sewn on with Velcro, didn’t make them any better. They were a fashion disaster. And I think I wore them once,

‘You see,’ I heard mum say to dad, ‘no need to worry it was just a fad. Good job I made them or they would have been a complete waste of money.’ I didn’t make the same mistake the next time.

Shrink to fit Levi’s were my next ambition. Well she couldn’t get a pattern for those could she ? Again I pestered and pestered. They were a lot of money, as I remember five pounds, which was a week’s wage for my part time bookkeeper mum. My dad believing denim was made for workmen and not for teenagers once again railed at the idea. I, of course, won and this time I bought them myself with birthday money and a little help from mum, who was horrified when she came home from work to find me sitting in a bath of bright indigo blue water doing what you were supposed to do and that was shrinking them to fit. ‘How long have you been in there,’ she asked. ‘Two hours’ I replied ‘just another hour to go.’ Shaking her head my mum proceeded to tell me it was entirely my fault if I caught my death of cold. I didn’t and I loved them.

I recount these stories because they were my first forays into fashion. But, because I was really still a child, were they appropriate? The hot pants, probably not, well not for Sunday school at least where they made at least one elderly lady in the congregation choke on her hymn sheet. But those Levi’s. Oh my I loved them. Add a Ben Sherman shirt, a pair of dad’s braces and some saved up for brogues and I was the very height of fashion. For the first time in my life, almost. My mother drew the line at a Crombie. But do you know something I wore those jeans for 20 years, until they were so battered and faded, that I cut them down for shorts. So you see I did get my hot pants in the end.

Last week there was an outcry over 11 year old Harper Beckham’s outfit to mummy’s fashion show in Paris. I may have only dreamed of going to the teenage disco at the Mecca, but the argument is still the same. To those who said the dress was plunging showing her cleavage, it didn’t. Because she doesn’t have one. To those who blame Victoria, what about David ? It’s often the father who is the more prudish when it comes to what their little girls wear. But the argument is the same. Harper Beckham looked slightly awkward as we all did when we tried on ‘grown up clothes’ for the first time. But inappropriate ? Oh give her a break. She will probably look back at those photos and cringe in years to come. She will probably say what was I thinking? Or she may not. She may remember that time when, for that moment, she felt like a ‘fashion plate ‘ as my dad used to say. But I tell you something, if I could have got away with shop bought hot pants I would have done. And if I could still get into my cut off Levi’s I would do so now whatever my age. Just because I could. And I wouldn’t give a damn what anyone said either. Because that is the joy of getting older versus the awkward awakening of growing from a young girl into a teenager and then a woman. Fashion faux pas are all part of growing up. And boy, a quick look through my photograph albums certainly proves that. But no one got hurt, nobody died (except the wearer looking back in retrospect.) We all have to go through it. So don’t get me started on shoulder pads and poodle perms or granny’s crocheted poncho. Because at the time I though I was the bees knees. And that is all that matters.