The pirates of Glastonbury forced me to consider the wisdom of crowds

HUGO RIFKIND There are things which fashion can teach us. Real things. Not just things about puce after a heavy lunch, or the invariable inadvisability of headwear. Things about choice, and belief, and about how we approach the world.

Consider this. Last weekend, slaloming through the Glastonbury fudge, I kept seeing people who were dressed as pirates. They ranged from the modest (earring, bandannas, the faintest hint of pantaloon) to the full Johnny Depp (eyeshadow, dreadlocks, triangular hats). There is an established tradition, I know, of people seeing all kinds of things at Glastonbury, from wizards in caterpillar suits to haute cuisine in a charred fajita full of muddy pork. The pirates, though, were definitely there. Unquestionably they were there. But, like I said, we're not necessarily talking fancy dress here. Some people merely suggested piracy without plunging, as it were, the full fathom. Piracy hovered, as a theme.

I didn't like to say anything. You don't at first, do you? You just roll your eyes downwards, to your own garb. You think, hmm, maybe it's me. Maybe I don't look enough like a pirate. Maybe I never have. Maybe people note. Uncertainty sets in. You brood.

Then, over the heads of the crowd in a dance tent, I saw it glinting in the strobe light.

'Look there,' I shouted to my wife. 'That man. He is waving a plastic cutlass.'

'Oh, ah,' shouted my wife, or words to that effect.

'Have you noticed,' I shouted, bravely seizing the matter at hand, 'that an awful lot of people are dressed like pirates?'

`No,' shouted my wife.

From then on, I should imagine I became rather insufferable. Pointing out pirates became something of an obsession. A scarf as a belt, an eyepatch painted in mud, a beard tied in bows. Eventually it was established that, yes indeed, an awful lot of people were basically dressed as pirates, and yes, I was very clever for having noticed. But what, added my wife, after a time, of it?

Good question. For me, I suppose, the fascination was not so much that some people were dressed like this, but that so many were. A consensus had emerged, that this was a reasonable style to adopt. How? One year, Kate Moss will wear a poncho, and the next year every second woman wears a poncho. One year, she will wear denim hotpants and wellies, and the next year every second woman does the same. This was something different. A few people had seen the new Pirates of the Caribbean, and they had thought to themselves, a-ha (or, indeed, arr-harr), that would be a good way to look at Glastonbury. And they were right. That's the bit that staggers me. How were they? Why were they?

Am I going on about this? I don't mean to. It's just, there is something there, the nub of an idea I can't quite put into words. It has happened before. I'm not much of a follower of fashion, not really, but a few winters ago, I developed a crushing urge for a long tweed coat. Didn't trust it. Didn't get one. Spent the next few winters wishing I had. I remember the wife, one summer, back when she still had 'girlfriend' status, wandering into the living room of a Saturday morning, having chopped the feet off her tights. She couldn't tell me why, but we stared at her feet awhile, as they self-consciously flexed, and agreed that, yes, it looked pretty good. Again, how? Why? Since when?

Forgive me for abruptly attempting profundities, but if we understood this, I suspect, we would understand an awful lot more. When that nice Mr Cameron started chuntering on about the environment, why did it work? Why did it tick all of these boxes, waiting to be ticked, in a way that it would not have done two years previously? Or, to take a wild lurch elsewhere, when Lord Carey called for immigration curbs on religious grounds last weekend, why was that suddenly OK? Two years ago, we would have made him walk the plank.

Big changes happen, and I would love to understand how they do. Shoots poke up from the group-think of the mob, and turn out to be not alone. Whence do these seeds appear? How do they germinate? Why do they bloom? Why were people dressed like pirates at Glastonbury?

There was another chap who caught my eye at Glastonbury, who was not dressed in a particularly piratical fashion. He was the man with the giant cross. He was dragging it over his shoulder, in a rather meaningful way, and occasionally he would stop in the midst of some outbreak of bacchanalia, gather a few friends around him, and indulge in a spot of ostentatious prayer. Tolerance of eccentricity and difference is what Glastonbury is all about, so I flashed him the odd encouraging smile. Still, I couldn't help but notice that his mighty ten-foot crucifix had a well-oiled wheel on one end, to facilitate symbolic lugging. Seemed a bit of a cheat.

The faith of others is always a bit peculiar. Take Lydia Playfoot, the 16-yearold girl in Horsham who has been threatened with expulsion for wearing a 'purity ring' as an expression of her desire to remain a virgin until marriage. Weird thing to want to wear, if you ask me. Mind you, I don't have to deal with being called 'Lydia Playfoot'. When I proffer my Switch card in shops, perfect strangers rarely assume I work in adult entertainment.

It is, claims Playfoot (along with her rather creepily involved father), her 'human right' to wear this ring, as it 'expresses her religious beliefs'. Obviously this is nonsense, even if one thinks religious beliefs are worth expressing aged 16. If chastity is integral to Christianity, a cross would do just as well. If it isn't, then this is not a religious belief, but a lifestyle one. Either way, no ring.

And, frankly, no headscarf, turban or yarmulke either. And, at the risk of sounding militant, I'm not wild on the crucifix. If we believe in free thought, free development and free lots of other things, religious trappings are offensive on a child, whatever their flavour. Well, aren't they? Why are secularists so reluctant to state this openly? Isn't that what the whole debate is about? Shouldn't children be encouraged to be blank slates, until they can sensibly decide not to be? If they too grow up to be pirates, so be it.