According to, the BBC, the town of Delacambre, Louisiana, has officially become the most unfashionable place in the United States after it passed a law making it illegal to wear low slung jeans that may result in the waistband of your underwear showing. It seems that anybody who makes the mistake of wearing low rise jeans now faces a fine of $500 and up to 6-months in prison.

So, what the unfashion police are saying here is they don’t want anybody wearing stylish clothing and they certainly don’t believe that fashion should be a form of self-expression. Surely, however, they are missing the point of designer fashion – if we can’t use clothing to express our moods and our personalities then we may as well all wear uniforms all the time.

Over the years, new fashions have always shocked and outraged the establishment just before they entered mainstream acceptance. In Victorian times cross-dressing was illegal and any woman caught wearing men’s trousers could be arrested, yet today we love seeing our girlfriends and wives wearing our clothes. More recently, in the late 1970’s the tabloid press printed article after article expressing concern over the possibility that punk subculture was going to destroy British society – today you can buy Ramones t-shirts and Clash t-shirts in H&M and Topshop.

By drawing attention to the rebellious nature of revealing your underwear while wearing low rise jeans, this uptight town in Louisiana has just ensured that anybody who believes in freedom of expression will be wearing this style soon, preferably with underwear that expresses just what they think of these absurd efforts to stop them.