Modern weavers

Would you stretch to spending £170,000 (plus £7 postage) for a loom band dress? In this heat?

Top marks to Helen Wright and Kathryn Burnand for their energy, enterprise and imagination in making and selling a dress entirely out of plastic loom bands and selling it for the price of a house. Their creativity and commercial nous has sparked a chain reaction of wannabe wealthy weavers eager to cash in on the greatest and best playground craze since scoubidous.

But is it wearable? I can barely cope with wearing my floatiest kaftanesque dress in this weather and even then I had to be prised off the bus like a piece of stray mozzarella from a pizza box. Very attractive.

“You just don’t know what to wear do you?” said my neighbour, Mary, dressed for the tropics in sandals and a sundress, then forced to turn on her espadrilled heel to go home for her brolly as lightning threatened to split the street in two.

“Should I go back for my wellies too?” she asked. God knows how Cleo got on at her festival in Belgium – she left the house last week looking like a cross between Daisy Duke and a snail with a backpack slightly bigger than her bedroom strapped to her back.

She and her friend texted me from Victoria to say she’d made it to the coach and I haven’t heard a peep since. Funny – but it wasn’t the bus ride to the station that was worrying me!

I think I need something to take my mind off it so maybe I’ll take up loom weaving. I’m trying to persuade Katy and her friends it’s time to resurrect the honourable tradition of making their own clothes. Besides we’ve got a fortnight in Malaga to pay for. Get those looms out girls!

Posted by Amanda Blinkhorn