Odd piece in the Groan today. Wittering about how everyone is wearing Gypsy clothes but we don’t like Gypsies.

Gypsies, like their
fashion first cousins, "peasants", do the same things as everyone else
– go to the supermarket, drive the car – and they tend to dress like
them too: jeans, jumpers, with maybe a skirt and a bit of lipstick.

Jeans and skirts together? There’s a fashion statement! Call Madonna!

But what gets me are the two references to espadrilles:

Of course, as Kate Moss
flicks through rails of designer Gypsy kit (another complicating layer
of meaning arises from the fact that houses such as Marni or Marc
Jacobs charge premium prices so that rich women can dress up as poor
ones) she is probably not pondering the implications of wedge-heeled
espadrilles.
….
The meaning of espadrilles

I don’t know who to blame. Is it the designers who think they are somehow Gypsy? Or it it the writer and Groan sub-editor who are so culturally unaware? Even Wikipedia has it partially wrong. Espadrilles are Basque, along with jai alai, long earlobes, Rh – blood group and big floppy berets.

Gypsy? My arse.