
Khloe Kardashian slammed as fans say she left out 'most obvious' procedure after plastic surgery bombshell
Fresh off her appearance at Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's star-studded wedding in Italy, Khloe earned a glowing shout-out from London-based aesthetician Dr. Jonny Betteridge, who called her the 'standout face' of the event.
Betteridge noted that the Kardashians star's look has 'changed a lot over the past few years' and speculated that her transformation likely involved a 'temporal brow lift,' rhinoplasty, lip filler, and a face and neck lift.
Khloe took the assessment in stride and even responded the next day with a detailed breakdown of what she has had done — complete with doctors and service providers.
'I take this as a great compliment!' she wrote.
While some fans praised her honesty, others quickly called her out for what they saw as a glaring omission: a BBL (Brazilian Butt Lift).
Khloe took the assessment in stride and even responded the next day with a detailed breakdown of what she has had done — complete with doctors and service providers
DailyMail.com has not received a response to its request for comment from reps for Khloe.
'"Transparent"?… notice she didn't say BBL,' one user wrote, while another added, 'The most obvious BBL of them all maybe.'
'She did not mention the addition or removal of her BBL, but she definitely had one,' a fan calmly noted.
One critic didn't hold back: 'Lips and ass are definitely not what she was born with. She said fillers so I guess that covers lips, but does that also cover ass? That's being super disingenuous for a BBL.'
Another piled on, saying, 'Praising her for admitting to one of her 28 surgeries. Like no lol.'
One fan even accused Khloé of trying to shift the spotlight after younger sister Kylie Jenner admitted to getting a boob job — and hilariously tied it to the billionaire bash in Italy.
'I don't believe that's everything and I feel like she's only doing this bc she saw the praise Kylie got about the boob job and bc she's trying to change the narrative going to the Hunger Games wedding,' they wrote.
Still, Khloe had plenty of defenders in her corner.
Khloe has worked hard on her figure - having shared her passion for fitness in the more recent series of The Kardashians (seen left in 2008)
'"Transparent"?… notice she didn't say BBL,' one user wrote, while another added, 'The most obvious BBL of them all maybe'
'I love how open you're about your transformation journey, goes to show you're a matured person. Love you Koko,' gushed one fan.
Another added, 'I think Khloé looks absolutely fabulous. Her procedures have not changed her 'Khloé-ness,' only emphasized them.'
In his breakdown, Betteridge suspects Khloe has undergone numerous procedures including a face and neck lift.
'Taking into consideration Khloe's appearance from many years ago, we can appreciate just how much she has changed over the years,' Betteridge said in the video posted to TikTok.
Soon after he published the reel, Khloe took to the comments of it to set the record straight on what she's really had done, which includes a nose job, Botox, filler, collagen baby threads, salmon sperm facials and more.
'Alongside noticeable weight loss, I think she's had a temporal brow lift, upper blepharoplasty, rhinoplasty, lip filler, a face and neck lift, and a chin implant,' he speculated.
With the help of various photos, Betteridge detailed the physical indications he observed that he believed pointed to a surgically-enhanced tweak.
In addition to what he perceived to be a more 'tucked' earlobe, Khloe's 'smaller sideburn' also suggested she had undergone a facelift.
'Apart from the jawline being ore contoured and the neck tighter, what I want you to notice here how in the before photo, the earlobe is slightly detached and hanging away from the face, but in the after it's tucked inward, smaller and more flush with the jawline, indicative of a surgical procedure.
'In the after image, the hairline near the ear is more pulled back, which can result in a smaller sideburn. This can happen after a facelift when the skin is lifted and repositioned.
'It's a dramatic transformation, probable surgical procedures I mentioned earlier can be visualized here in relation to the lifting of the brow, the reduction in upper eyelid hooding, the lifted and more contoured nose, fuller lips, projected chin and tighter jawline.'
On Instagram, Betteridge posted a shorter breakdown in which he claimed her appearance contained 'clear signs' of both non-surgical and probable surgically-enhanced changes.
'Over the years, Khloe's transformation has gone far beyond weight loss. There are clear signs of both non-surgical tweaks and likely surgical procedures, with several features pointing to a face and neck lift,' he wrote.
Betteridge also clarified his analysis was 'purely speculative and based on my professional opinion.
'I have no personal knowledge of any treatments Khloe Kardashian may or may not have had,' he added.
Khloe decided to set the record straight in the comments section of his video.
Khloe kicked off the note with: 'I take this as a great compliment! First off I think these photos are about 15 years apart, but here's a list of things that I have done. I've been very open in the past about what I have done so here we go.'
Khloe listed each procedure, as well as which doctor or what place she did them at.
'Nose job @drkanodia90210,' referring to Dr. Raj Kanodia, also known as Doc Hollywood according to his Instagram page.
'Laser hair for the hairline and everywhere else @sevlaseraesthetics, Botox and sculptra where my face tumor was removed in my cheek @7qspa, soft wave laser for skin tightening @softwavetherapy.' she continued.
'Filler in the past but not any over the last few years (I hear it never goes away, so I'm sure it's still there but calmed down, lost 80 pounds over the years (slow and steady) @coachjoe.paris,' Khloe noted.
'Collagen baby Threads underneath my chin and neck @thethingswedo.co, salmon sperm facials/regular facials, peptides, vitamins and daily skin care,' she said.
'In 2025 there are many other things we can do before surgery but when it's timed, and if I choose to, I know some great doctors,' she added.
She wrote another comment in reply to her surgery and procedure reveal: 'Those photos are actually OVER 15 years ago... man time does fly.'
DailyMail.com has contacted representatives for Kardashian about Betteridge's claims but did not immediately hear back.
Over the years, Kardashian has been slammed for using filters, editing applications like FaceApp and getting various plastic surgery.
Back in 2021, Kardashian finally confessed to undergoing a nose job after years of speculation from fans about her ever-changing appearance.
A year later, she even took to Instagram to thank her plastic surgeon, Dr. Kanodia, for her 'perfect nose.'
Her plastic surgeon calls himself the 'king of closed scarless rhinoplasty' and is based in Beverly Hills, conveniently close for the Kardashian family who all live nearby.
At the time, Kardashian opened up about the procedure saying she 'always wanted' to get a nose job, and 'finally got the courage' to do so.
Speaking to Robin Roberts during an ABC special on The Kardashians, she said: 'My whole life I would say - I've always wanted my nose done, forever.'
Adding: 'But it's in the middle of your face and it's scary to think about. But I finally got the courage, and I did it, and I love it.'
Many fans took this as Khloe admitting to having a nose job for the first time, but she corrected them on Twitter after the interview aired writing: 'Yes! I spoke about it at the [June 2021 Keeping Up with the Kardashians] reunion with Andy Cohen as well.'
During her interview with Cohen, she expressed frustration that critics were always accusing her of being on her 'third face transplant.'
'I've had one nose job, [with] Dr. Raj Kanodia,' she insisted. 'You're the first person in an interview that's ever asked me about my nose.'
The mother-of-two added that she's also done 'injections' but 'not really Botox' since she claims to respond 'horribly' to it.
Back in 2018, Kardashian spoke about wanting a nose job back in 2018 - which matches her timeline of when she claims she had the procedure done.
'One day I think I'll get one because I think about it everyday. But I'm scared so for now it's all about contour,' she told her Instagram followers.
Amid constant criticism over her looks, the reality star admitted on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast to feeling 'offended' by trolls accusing her of '12 face transplants' and thinks the constant hate is 'crazy.'
The star confirmed again that she has had only one plastic surgery operation, her nose job, and she added during the podcast that she 'loves it.'
The author said that she has been very upfront about her nose job and that is why it is so bothered when people have accused her of lying about other work.
'It did use to bother me when people were [saying] I've had 12 face transplants,' shared the mother of one.
'I'm like, "Oh, my God, I have?" I was like, "That's crazy."'
And the claims put her off: 'It didn't bother me. It offended me. I just couldn't figure out why people thought that.'
The Kardashians star has also long been rumored to undergo regular rounds of filler in her lips and her cheeks and went public about the latter after the removal of a tumor that left a noticeable indentation.
Khloe's looks have also changed drastically over the years as she has lost over 30lbs thanks to daily workouts, which she documented in her book Strong Looks Better Naked.
In May 2020 the star caused a huge commotion when she posted a selfie looking totally unrecognizable, leaving her fans startled by her noticeably different appearance.
Khloe was called out over the image again three months later, as her original look appeared to emerge in a scene from Keeping Up with the Kardashians, suggesting the reality star had overdosed on the filters, with some accusing her of using the video editing application FaceApp.
Her visage was once again trending as the two pictures quickly went viral, after an X user posted the side-by-side shots, simply captioning them, 'khloe... girl...' leading to thousands of comments, likes and re-tweets.
'When you move too fast and the filter drops,' one fan wrote, kicking off the criticism over how different the reality star appears.
'Khloe Kardashian in 2020 looks like someone tried to draw Khloe Kardashian in 2019,' another user wrote, alongside the two images.
However, some fans came to her defense, saying that the KUWTK star had no need to change her appearance. 'She looks so hot in the second one anyway. I don't know why she would photoshop herself so much,' one fan wrote.
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BBC News
28 minutes ago
- BBC News
Notting Hill Carnival 2025: The line-up and what you need to know
One of the longest-running street parties returns to west London for its 57th year this August bank Hill Carnival is the largest street party in Europe with more than two million people attending each year to follow the three-mile (5km) can expect an eclectic and dazzling parade showcasing the best of masquerade dancing, soca, calypso, steel bands and sound year there will be a 72-second silence for the victims of the Grenfell disaster, as well as new policing methods. When is Notting Hill Carnival 2025? Saturday, 23 August to Monday, 25 August. What is the Notting Hill Carnival 2025 line-up? Saturday 23 AugustPanorama. The UK's biggest steel pan competition at Emslie Horniman Pleasance Park, 16:00-23:00 BST.2025's competing bands are still to be confirmed. Sunday 24 AugustJ'Ouvert, the paint party which begins just before sunrise, is not happening this year, reportedly because of a lack of bands, but the J'Ouvert bands will play later in the day with paint in the main paradeOfficial opening ceremony: Mas (masquerade) Judging Point, Great Western Road. Traditionally carnival is opened by local residents and participants, accompanied by the organisers and friends at 10:00Children's day parade: Expect family-friendly activities and events, with the main event being children's mas"Dutty" fun mas parade: Get down and "dutty". Just like J'Ouvert, this mas is for those who enjoy the mayhem. Spectators are splashed with brightly coloured paints, powder or even melted chocolateSound systems: Street dancing and sound systems, 12:00-19:00At 15:00 on both Sunday and Monday, a 72-second silence will be held to remember the 72 lives tragically lost in the Grenfell Tower fireLive stagesRed Bull Selector, 12:00-19:00, Emslie Horniman's Pleasance ParkPowis Square Stage, 12:00-19:00, Powis Square Monday 25 AugustAdult's Parade: This is the carnival climax. It's the last lap for another year and your best chance to see the brightly hued costumes and eclectic dances and songsSound systems as Saturday, 12:00-19:00Live stagesStrawberries & Creem Stage, 12:00-19:00 at Emslie Horniman's PleasancePowis Square Stage, 12:00-19:00, Powis Square How to get to Notting Hill Carnival 2025 As Notting Hill's roads will be closed off throughout the bank holiday weekend, you will not be able to get a taxi or catch a bus to get to the heart of the Tube stations within walking distance of the main event including Notting Hill Gate will be closed or exit-only for a large part of the day so try to arrive before 11:00 to avoid impromptu closures to manage stations may open after 15:00 or 18:00. To leave the area before these times, you might have to walk for up to 30 minutes to find an open Tube will be no interchange between the Circle and District lines and Central line on both days. Do I need a ticket for Notting Hill Carnival and how safe is it? The carnival is free for everyone but the police crowd-control a lot and you might not be allowed in to certain areas at certain times because streets get sectioned off. If you have mobility issues or get anxious in crowds, it is better to arrive early and leave response to safety concerns, the police have announced the use of live facial recognition technology at this year's carnival. While the Met claims the technology has aided in more than 1,000 arrests for serious crimes, civil rights organisations argue that facial recognition is less accurate for women and people of colour, potentially leading to racial advise to:Go with the flow of the crowd, don't try to walk against just rely on your phone, set a meeting place with family or friends in case you lose one your belongings with you at all your journey in advance - do not drive your car to the area, know your public transport options and routes to and from the carnivalMake travel plans before you leave - Transport for London (TfL) has a dedicated website showing all the best and quickest options.


Telegraph
28 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Yes, Amanda Knox was maligned and mistreated – but you still won't like her
'It is difficult to understand how this serves any purpose,' said Meredith Kercher's sister, Stephanie, when The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox (Disney+) was announced last year. It is a fair summary of this wayward drama, a luridly stylised, queasily whimsical and aggressively didactic recounting of the events that began in November 2007 with Kercher's murder. Save for a superb central performance from Grace Van Patten, the series offers little but a litany of reasons to feel sorry for Knox, who was wrongly found guilty of the crime. At times, it has the feel of a bad TV movie. KJ Steinberg's eight-parter is based so closely on Knox's memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, that it's a surprise that Knox is credited only as executive producer. This is, soup to nuts, the Amanda Knox show. It begins in 2022, with Knox huddled in the back of a car, secretly revisiting Perugia with her mother, husband and baby daughter, to confront Giuliano Mignini, the public prosecutor who put her behind bars. The scene, which bookends the series, shows us Knox's ability to forgive those who have wronged her, as well as providing the sort of narratively neat moment of closure that Kercher's family will never be able to have. On Nov 2, 2007, Kercher's body was found at her flat in Perugia. The 21-year-old British exchange student had been raped before having her throat cut. Suspicion instantly fell on Kercher's American housemate, Knox, a 20-year-old student from Seattle, and Raffaele Sollecito, her Italian 'boyfriend' (the pair had met only eight days previously). During questioning, Knox, whose Italian was relatively poor, implicated herself and her employer, a local bar owner named Patrick Lumumba, while Sollecito removed his initial alibi for Knox. On Nov 6, all three were arrested on suspicion of murder, though Lumumba was released following a strong alibi. Instead, the bloodstained fingerprints of another man, Rudy Guede, were found on Kercher's bed and he was charged with murder alongside Knox and Sollecito. The prosecution alleged that the killing happened during a violent sex game instigated by Knox. Despite fleeing the country, Guede was arrested and, in 2009, found guilty. In 2021, Guede was released from prison, having served 13 years of his 16-year sentence. In 2009, Knox and Sollecito went on trial, with a second (bizarrely concurrent) trial taking place regarding Knox's false accusation against Lumumba. By this point, the public idea of 'Foxy Knoxy' had taken hold, with the American publicly painted as a sex-crazed sociopath. Knox and Sollecito were found guilty of faking a break-in, defamation, sexual violence and murder, with sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively. In 2011, after having spent four years in prison, an appeal court found them not guilty of murder, with serious doubt having been cast on the DNA evidence that tied them to the scene and to the whole police investigation. The false accusation against Lumumba was upheld, but as Knox had already served adequate time in prison, she was free to return home to America. Knox did not only have to endure frenzied media and public interest, but, in 2013, another trial. Italy's Supreme Court set aside the acquittal and ordered a retrial, for which Knox did not have to return to Italy. In 2014, a verdict of not guilty was returned, although the case was not definitively finished until March 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled that Knox and Sollecito were innocent. A more recent appeal to overturn the defamation of Lumumba was dismissed. The Disney+ drama shows its hand from the start, with Knox telling her fretting mother (Sharon Horgan, struggling with the accent in a leaden role) that 'there's no way we're going back'. Only she isn't looking at her mother, she is looking straight down the camera, with a smirk on her face, at us. 'Well,' announces Van Patten's bouncy voiceover, 'maybe we'll go back a little', before the show treats us to a misguided David Copperfield-esque montage involving a crow hitting Magnini's office window in 1986 and Meredith Kercher's first steps. Knox's initial weeks in Perugia are marionetted in front of us as a mix of Emily in Paris and Amélie. To add to that unpleasant taste at the back of your throat – the night Kercher was violently raped and murdered, Knox and Sollecito were watching Amélie. The best work is done early on, with the horribly throat-tightening scene in which Knox and Sollecito slowly begin to realise something is wrong, as Kercher does not answer her phone or open her locked bedroom door. This is compounded in the hellish first few hours in the police station, with Knox pressed and cajoled by detectives who she barely half understands. The show makes a good fist of portraying the Kafkaesque nightmare that Knox lived through and Van Patten is truly believable, capturing Knox's oddball goofiness and brittle ego. Yet the thing that holds it back is Knox herself, as the show borrows the memoir's propensity for vaguely philosophical mulch, allowing the voice-over to indulge in gnomic blabber such as 'does truth exist if no one believes it?' or 'in the haze of tragedy, I was a deer in the headlights'. Everything is shown through Knox's filter – the police are cruel dunderheads, the media are braying hyenas, Kercher's British friends are pearl-clutching prudes. Worst of all is how those who cared for Kercher are portrayed. Sollecito is a lovelorn artist, unable to live if he does not have her devotion. The prison chaplain is a saintly grandfather figure who adores her and, at one stage, implores her to sing. (Yes, in the Amanda Knox Story, Amanda Knox gets a song.) It's an oppressively solipsistic work, with various characters speaking Knox's truth for her. The chaplain tells her that people don't see her, rather they see 'something they fear in her'. Knox's sister Deanna (Anna Van Patten), chastises their parents for making Amanda see the world the way they do. Steinberg has failed to translate the earnestness of a memoir on to the screen, and moments that should be powerful come across as plain cheesy. When Knox is freed from prison, everyone, from inmates to guards, all but bear her aloft on their shoulders, cheering and crying. At one point we get a literal trapped bird metaphor. It's just bad art. It's all rather astonishing. To take a story in which an innocent 20-year-old is not only found guilty of a murder she did not commit but is also portrayed globally as a conniving slut, and somehow make her slightly unsympathetic is some achievement. So much of what the drama tells us is true – Knox was maligned and mistreated, she was wronged and slandered, she had her life ripped away from her and transformed into something beyond her control and was courageous throughout it all. And yet by shoving these ideas down our throats, by turning her accusers into pantomime villains or bungling idiots, the drama does Knox a disservice. It would be wrong to say that the series forgets about Kercher. But The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox makes her a sideshow to Knox's act of redemption and forgiveness. 'Telling your own story is a sticky, tricky thing,' says Knox. You can add icky to that, on this evidence. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is available on Disney+ now


The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘What the hell should I wear?' The style challenges of a fortysomething man
In September I will turn 44, the supposed first iceberg of ageing. As my own personal A23a approaches, I find myself, when it comes to how to get dressed at least, not older and wiser but but more adrift than ever. It's not necessarily for want of effort. A while ago I tried on a pair of wide trousers: the big blocky sort that have become increasingly fashionable. I hadn't worn anything like them before and wasn't convinced, but was feeling bored with my own wardrobe. When I modelled them in the shop for my wife, she reacted instantly. I couldn't pull them off, she said. You're not an art or fashion person, was the implication. She was right; her advice tends to be sound. As a man, when you push into your 40s it becomes harder to keep up with every new trend and perhaps there comes a point at which maybe you shouldn't. But you might not want to totally give up either. You don't want to seem like the old guy finally catching up with a new trend just as the last helicopter pulls out of Saigon. Equally it can be mortifying attempting to grab on to every incoming style. And so like Clinton or Blair, you scramble desperately for a sartorial third way. Or something that sits with relative comfort as the waistline expands – the middle ground. It always comes with a nagging fear that it doesn't look quite right. There are many greater problems in life, and yet I find myself at home, in the shop, in a changing room wondering: what the hell should I wear anymore? Perhaps this offers a way to avoid the bigger questions. Recently a funny Instagram/TikTok sketch did the rounds. It was a parody of the genre of street interview where one gurning idiot asks another gurning idiot to rank and recommend things. Two men are desperately trying to keep up with the latest in London cool until for one of them the penny drops. 'What am I doing? This is not me,' he says. 'None of this is me and I just feel so tired, all the time.' He gestures at the trendy-by-numbers outfit he's wearing, bumbag, tube socks and all. 'I'm just stuck in this endless stasis of cultural peacocking. I'm a fucking mannequin for people to hang stuff on.' He lands on the crux of it: 'I just feel like, what really scares me is like this idea of what's cool is going to change again, and I'm just not going to have the energy to keep up with that.' Many of us will have felt a piercing element of truth watching this, and there is a more mundane aspect too. Updating your wardrobe requires time, effort and money – and once you've done it, things may have changed again. Not to mention that growing sense that we should all be buying less and reusing more anyway. And so I find myself, along with many men of my age, a little dazed and confused in my search for clothes that suit the time – and me. Some of the certainties of how you dressed in your 20s and 30s start to slip away. Can I still wear Air Max or Asics? Are white trainers now the preserve of Gianni Infantino? Does a band tee still look OK? Why does that sweatshirt make me look like a teenager with grey hair? Should I wear my jeans this wide, or that narrow? Trousers feel foundational to this quandary; it's easy to make a misstep almost without realising. It feels like a style version of a line uttered in Rounders, the late 90s indie film about poker: 'If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.' Trousers have been on a journey of epic proportions in the last 30 years: in the late 90s, wide and bootcut styles were common. In the 2000s, spurred by the likes of designer Hedi Slimane and the Strokes, jeans got ever slimmer. Through the 2000s and 2010s, various iterations of slim-fitting trousers became the norm until tight trousers reached the point of absurdity, as evinced by the 2019 viral photo of four Birmingham lads on a night out, their jeans so welded to their skin you could almost see the outlines of their leg tattoos. Gradually, spurred by the fashion-forward likes of Vetements and Supreme in the mid 2010s, and then suddenly, things changed – ballooning in the exact opposite direction. Now bigger, wider styles abound. Even those Birmingham boys got on board. I hopped on the bandwagon around 2020, with some jeans from Weekday in a looser fit than anything I'd worn in the previous decade. And yet someone more style conscious than me is already charting the way back to tighter jeans. See what I mean? If men of a certain age have always suffered something of an identity crisis when it comes to clothes, the accelerated trend cycle has made things a lot worse. It's difficult to chart a course through these paths, which continually cross and circle back on each other at ever greater speed. 'My husband's a similar age and says a similar thing,' Beth Pettet, head of menswear at John Lewis, tells me reassuringly. 'There's so much information out there, there's so much imagery, there's so much data, there's so many points at which the consumer can access fashion in a way that they couldn't previously that it can be overwhelming.' Plus, she thinks it's 'not so much about a pure trend being filtered down, as it was previously. The customer has greater choice, but with that, they can then struggle to navigate.' Perhaps as a result of this wider and somewhat relentless choice, Pettet believes mainstream menswear is getting more adventurous, if in a gentle way: 'There is a new mood of experimentation and discovery,' even, she says, among core John Lewis customers, who are hardly Colman Domingo. This shift has been catalysed by some traditional big name brands, be it Levi's or Ralph Lauren, offering a bit more variety in size and shape and colour – a rubber stamp that provides a permission slip of sorts. Beyond John Lewis, the likes of the aforementioned Domingo, Andrew Scott and Daniel Craig have been taking menswear for the over-40s in creative directions on the global stage. Seth Rogen, in recent years, has given a rather unexpected template for how to dress well and with personality as a 40-plus man, offering not so much a permission slip as, perhaps, a hypothesis of that third way. Sign up to Fashion Statement Style, with substance: what's really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved after newsletter promotion For some this will be a blessing, though I remain wary. If the choice is broader and the scope for sartorial freedom greater, so too is the possibility of getting it all wrong. Excesses of bright colours and patterns on ageing men can bring some bad associations, namely Chris Martin leaping around the stage looking like a CBeebies presenter on a stadium tour. Or the soft-cancelled Arcade Fire frontman, Win Butler, whose style has eloquently been described as 'drug toddler'. Helpfully for me, the fashion academic and writer Dal Chodha, who teaches at Central Saint Martins, is not convinced things have truly become more adventurous – granted, he's a little more saturnine about it. He thinks that, aside from some creative industries that in theory allow more expressive dressing, most people still work in jobs that herd them into conservative modes of clothing. In general, people remain wary of standing out. 'We love to believe that things have changed,' says Chodha, 'but many of us are not doing anything. We're just talking to each other [in the fashion industry] about how fab someone looks in a pair of tiny silk shorts.' Sure, I do think Paul Mescal looks fab in tiny shorts (even if such GAA shorts bring back disappointing memories of my very average hurling and Gaelic football-playing days as a kid in Dublin circa 1992) – but that doesn't necessarily help me. So how should I approach getting dressed as a nearly 44-year-old man? Chodha says many people gravitate to the classics. 'It's the 501 cut jean, in a very good dark denim.' This has been the route I have taken recently: after a long time bouncing around between denim brands, I landed at the safe harbour of classic 501s in black and blue, straight fit. From here on (I assure myself), it's a straight-down-the-line, comfortable fit that suits an average bloke in his 40s. Admittedly there is a risk of looking like Top Gear-era Jeremy Clarkson, but we beat on. Chodha continues with his capsule wardrobe list: 'It's [with] a good chore jacket that you can have some fun with colours. It looks half-smart and half-casual. It's a good quality T-shirt, a strong pair of glasses. It's Carhartt. These kinds of brands that are workwear. And wedded to a certain type of manliness; we can't underestimate that. Carhartt, Levi's, some of the sportswear brands. They're about a certain kind of virility, testosterone.' This kind of manly workwear has, says Chodha, 'become the blueprint for man dressing. And unless the high street gets braver and queerer, it will carry on like that.' I like a chore coat as much as the next fella and I gravitate to plain white or black T-shirts; the Oxford shirt button-down staple, a reliable polo shirt. But surely I can't just stick to clothes that could be filed under the broad spectrum of high street basics (Uniqlo, Muji), Scandinavian chain minimalism (Cos, Arket) and tasteful mid-range menswear (YMC, Folk) without feeling quite generic and identikit? I'm forever haunted by a joke in the Onion, circa 2006, which offers up a cover of 'The Onion Style Magazine' accompanied by a schlubby and pale white man walking down a catwalk in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, under the headline 'Heterosexual Men's Fashion'. Chodha agrees. 'My issue with all of those brands, and largely what's happened to the British high street, is that there's very few kinks,' he says. There's very few moments where something's a little bit off, a little bit more experimental. It's this neutralisation, this neutral palette, neutral cuts – that's not really allowed men to express themselves. And I think that's a real shame.' Recently a friend told me he was looking for all his shirts in secondhand shops. Maybe more secondhand, replete with some personality, is the answer – it would certainly help my growing unease at buying new. 'I only ever want to wear loose clothes from now on,' he added; the fit of secondhand is often less bodycon/muscle-tight. I had arrived at a similar realisation: a sort of relaxed-fit, semi-casualness. Visually Stephen Malkmus is a good model: especially in recent years on Pavement comeback tours. In a straight blue jean or khaki trousers and a jacket, in all manner of polo shirts and old tennis shirts, or rolled sleeve shirts. In shorts even. He manages to carry it all off – with the same just-so insouciance that characterises his music. It helps that he is tall and lanky. Clothes tend to sit well on him. If, like me, you don't yet have things sussed like the Malkmuses of the world, don't fret. 'It's an anxiety that everybody at some point has to face,' says Chodha. 'I think fashion has always been a very pertinent example of a space where people feel like they are constantly not getting it right.' We're all, ultimately, just floating in the sea, hoping for the best as we get dressed in the morning. Perhaps especially men of a certain age.