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Once we have pointed this out, you will suddenly start to see it everywhere: Hip young guys are wearing terry-cloth wristbands of the kind that were designed for playing tennis. But they are wearing them for no reason at all. These are not necessarily white, either, as the tennis ones mostly are. They are black or checkered or striped or they have brand logos or happy faces or skulls or funny phrases ("Bite Me") or the name of a band on them. Sometimes they are stretchy knitted wool. Nor are they necessarily symbolic of a cause -- like the yellow Lance Armstrong cancer research rubber ones. They are simply decorative, a new and particularly cheap bracelet.

Where do they come from? Most likely, this is one more reference to dance club culture: hip-hop DJs and turntablists tend to wear them to wipe their foreheads with in especially hot clubs. Anything DJ-related confers street cred, so wristbands became secret marks of cool. Then they became portable advertising billboards.

This is one of those fashions that really separates the over-35s from the boys: If you are not wearing jeans with a waistband well below your hipbones, you are unlikely to carry this off.