Belinda Beckett (Columnist)
I EMPATHISE with my home town of Brighton where the locals have been begging lockdown day trippers to ‘Please Stay Away’.
There were more beach brollies thrust into the pebbles last bank holiday weekend than you can count protein spikes on a coronavirus cluster.
In Los Barrios the closest we get to crowded is the bridle path from our village which currently resembles scenes from The Hajj as scores of off-work walkers circulate from town to campo and back again, taking in the shrine of Mercadona on the return loop before their time slot expires.
But a tourist invasion could be on the cards since Gucci chose Los Alcornocales Natural Park for its Pre-Fall fashion shoot. The Disney-esque trailer has gone viral on Youtube with over 500,000 views and now everyone will be heading here to have a go on the swings and roundabout by the lake and take selfies with squirrels, cute fluffy bunnies and tame Bambi fawns, Gucci Gucci coo.
But they’ll be sadly disappointed. Wild bunnies are not fluffy, the playground attractions don’t exist and the fawns in our neck of the cork woods are far too savvy to come anywhere near a spiked Gucci heel. It’s all props, Photoshop and fantasy.
As for the clothes, I don’t know what you’ll be wearing for country hikes this autumn but I doubt it will be a red cape and black thigh boots. Fall fashion? You undoubtedly will in these getups.
The Italian fashion house hopes its naffly-titled So Deer to Me campaign will have us all skipping off like flower children to buy Sixties-inspired corduroy suits, pansy shirts and bell bottom trousers. No way! My bottom is bell-shaped enough these days without revisiting that unflattering style.
But is anyone even thinking of clothes shopping at the moment? Most of us have enough trouble deciding what to wear on our faces. Does one go for those flimsy disposable masks that gape at the sides and make your sunshades steam up; the beaky ones with metal bits that bend round your nose that stop the fogging but make you look like a Medieval plague doctor; or make your own? I’m so cack-handed with a needle and thread it took me an entire school year of needlework classes to hem a tablecloth.
My fashion tip for supermarket shopping is the Darth Vader look: a plastic visor – reusable, easy-clean and other people’s sneeze droplets just roll off.
For walks, I’m sticking to circuits of our rooftop – no face covering required, stunning country views and I can do it in my slippers and PJs – not Gucci, George at Asda, but who cares?
