The Bitter Press

I attended the Grand Deliberative on Tuesday prepared, as always, to be disappointed. What I was not prepared for — what no fruit of conscience could have anticipated — was Mango, correspondent for the rival rag factjuice.com, arriving in what I can only characterise as an unstructured gradient. No drape. No tuck. No gesture, however fumbling, toward occasion. Just that great glowing slope of him, presented to the assembly as though ripeness were a substitute for effort.

It is not.

The colour — and I use that term with the generosity I rarely extend to the so-called workers — read as aggressively ambient. There is a difference between warmth and thermal incident. Mango has not learned it. The fibrous undertone, which a skilled stylist might have softened with contrast texture, was instead allowed to simply occur, like weather, like a loss, like something nobody planned.

A note on silhouette, since Mango clearly requires one: oval is not a philosophy. It is a starting point. From oval, one builds. One articulates. One does not simply arrive at the Grand Deliberative and expect the oval to carry the room. The room has seen Persimmon in full formal pleat. The room has standards.

I have been told that criticism of Mango's presentation is 'unkind.' I refer those critics to my earlier manifesto on the subject. Being underdressed at a Deliberative proceeding is not a personal choice. It is a public offence, and the public — by which I mean myself — deserves better. Factjuice.com sends its workers into the world looking like a still life that gave up halfway through. I, at least, have the decency to say so in print.