Everyone has their fashion idols. Kate is always up there, Chloe Sevigny is often a penultimate winner for pure indulgence and mine was always (secretly) Patricia Arquette in True Romance. Yes, I wanted to look like I shopped in Vegas and turned tricks. Amy Winehouse has dominated the ‘show your own bra-strap’ look, so I’ve left it behind for a bit and have found a new favourite.

Slightly more obscure than the three fashion champions mentioned above, Iraina Mancini is a lead singer of a band that I first discovered on T4 Mobileact Unsigned (dire program with the usual spectrum of the deluded and egocentric) and loved from the word go. Which was unfortunate, as I then had to watch the whole series. Its only saving grace was Alex James, who seems to have made a pact with the devil and exchanged beauty for cheese.

I’ve seen her in sequined hotpants, gold lamé leggings (American Apparel?) and always in faux fur coats when arriving at gigs in obscure bars. I quite admire people who can pull of fur coats with aplomb – it takes courage and really high heels. She looks a bit Bardot and a bit Jerry Hall.

I predict Mancini will do very well for themselves and I’m glad, because quite frankly I’m sick of pop looking and sounding so tedious. Leona Lewis at the recent Olympics performance resembled a toilet doily (designed by LCF – what were they thinking?), Duffy is Dusty without the flair or talent and KT Tunstall looks as boring as her music sounds.

Mancini will be scrambling all over the radio later this year with their new single, and an album due out the beginning of 2009. I wait in trepidation for rises in the fashion stakes and release from the tedium of chart music.