On the whole, I'd rather climb into a microwave with a pocket full of spoons than have anything to do with the world of fashion.

I used to wear black on the outside because it was how I felt on the inside, now I wear it in the vain hope that it will disguise the fact that my backside is used by astronauts as a homing device when they return back to Earth.

My fashion rules are simple; I wear black so I can get dressed in the dark, laugh in the face of stains, shed my hair like a male member of the Royal Family and still look exactly the same as I do every other day.

And it's so easy to accessorise.

Add a pointed hat and you're ready for Halloween. Add a wreath and you can go to a funeral. Add night-vision goggles and you can join the SAS (night shift).

I have no idea why absolutely everyone doesn't wear black all the time.

Additionally, my pathological hatred of fashion and clothes shopping means that the moment I chance upon a garment I can bear, I instantly buy six identical garments and then rotate them until I find something else that's just about acceptable.

Due to this very fact, I shunned trousers for 15 years because I was working my way through dozens of entirely identical skirts.

Flagrantly ignoring the Bible's warning – 'women shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man…for all that do are an abomination unto the Lord thy God' – I finally bought myself a pair of trousers and experienced an immediate sense of liberation I hadn't felt since I discovered the mute button on my phone at work.

Suddenly, I could ride a bike without risking life, limb or dignity. I could sit with my legs splayed. I could dismount from my horseless carriage without showing even an inch of petticoat.

It was like getting the vote all over again, and I immediately went back to the shop and bought six identical pairs.

I imagine, therefore, that the new clothes dictionary from Debenhams was not created with me in mind – pouring fashion into my brain is like describing the finer points of opera to the contents of a Petri dish.

Keen to demystify the incredibly complicated world of clothes, the department store has published a guide that helps fashion illiterate buffoons such as my good self distinguish their cardigowns from their whorts.

'No one understands the plethora of new descriptions and phrases emerging from the fashion industry,' says Debenhams.

'It's now easier to understand Sanskrit than some of the words commonly used by commentators within the fashion industry to describe garments.'

The guide shines a light on all manner of ridiculous new words which have been invented by the shady overlords of fashion to describe clothes which, frankly, should have remained on the drawing board.

Coatigan. Cardigown. Whorts. Mackets. Mandles. Shoots. Mubes. Treggings. Skorts – it sounds like a deleted scene from A Clockwork Orange, but is in fact a list of names which blend two articles of clothing together to make one really horrible one.

A coatigan is a cardigan that looks like a coat, mackets are a cross between a mac and a jacket, mubes are maxi-tube dresses, whorts are too-short shorts worn by whores (hang on, apparently they're winter shorts made of wool. My mistake).

Heaven knows what kind of fudiots come up with this nonsense – probably the kind that wear mace (lace for men) meggings (leggings for men) and a pair of mandles (sandals for men).

Debenhams' new fashion guide is all the justification I need for remaining in black for the rest of my days: let's just say that I'm in perpetual mourning for fashion designers' self-respect.