Why do you dress the way you do, instead of in, say, boot-cut jeans and Affliction T-shirts?I've always had a form-follows-function approach to these issues. I wear a motorcycle jacket because I ride motorcycles. I often wear cowboy boots because I sometimes ride horses, and the cowboy boot's design is entirely structured by issues like the shape of the stirrup and the need for stiff leather to resist thorns. I wear a hat when it is raining, but because I now go everywhere on motorcycles, I have given up the old Stetsons for hats that can be stowed in the saddlebag when riding.
There's a certain type of character your clothing presents. I drink Scotch, play classical music, read philosophy, smoke a pipe, and these things drive a particular persona. You don't want to read Kant while wearing Aeropostale.
How surprising to learn that I've been going about it all wrong. I would promise to rethink my errors, except that I don't think I have it in me. A man's got to know his limitations.
And then there's your attire for the 3rd weekend of each October!!!
ReplyDeleteWell, that follows function too. It's hard to re-enact Scottish history without a good kilt. :)
ReplyDeleteFor me they're not really either "fashion" or "choices," just whatever pair of generic pants and t-shirt is on top of the pile in the drawer, or sitting in the dryer. I wear pretty much the same pair of sandals (easy on the plantar fasciitus) every day all year, except that every year or so I buy a new pair and save them for Easter Sunday and similar events until I forget and wear them in the garden, too. For church I may upgrade the t-shirt a bit and wear a scarf. This wardrobe has to make do for whatever I'm reading at the time.
ReplyDelete"In the bar (in the bar),
Where I smoked my first cigar,
And I gambled all my money clean away,
"It was there by chance
That I tore my Sunday pants,
And now I have to wear them every day."
I do try to match the wine with the dinner, though.
Form and function, indeed. I started wearing wide-brimmed, low crown hats long before they became popular (and when they did, my hats often were confused with Crocodile Dundee hats).
ReplyDeleteThe reason I started wearing them is because of the environment in which I lived while a student at Drake University. The walk between my apartment and my rat lab was densely tree-lined. I got the hint, finally, the second time the ... birds bombed my shoulders. My first wide-brimmed hat protected my shoulders (oddly, my head never was hit--maybe too small) twice the month after I got it.
The wide brims also make excellent, convenient umbrellas.
Eric Hines
Any wine goes with dinner. The important question is whether you have a good beer.
ReplyDeleteThat article is a load of hooey. Craptastic Hipster fashion. It is inflicted on me every day where I live.
ReplyDeleteHe says he's not a hipster, though! He's doing something else, somehow. While reading Kant.
ReplyDeleteIt's just amazing to me, because I never stopped to think about this at all. "Why don't you wear something else?" Well, just because anything else would fail to be the right clothes for the functions I'm asking of them.
From the NYT link:You don't want to read Kant while wearing Aeropostale.
ReplyDeleteWhen working in Venezuela I have flown on Aeropostal, and was surprised to find out a while back that one could wear Aeropostale. I am in the neither Aeropostale nor philosophy - too lazy- crowd. Though I have plenty of T-shirts- which I believe is where I have seen the Aeropostale brand.
On reading that article, the first quote that popped in my mind was, "I cannot abide useless people". Maybe a bit unfair, but that was my first impression.
ReplyDeleteYou don't want to read Kant while wearing Aeropostale.
ReplyDeleteHe must not have gotten to the part where Kant asks, "What if everyone were a vapid narcissist with warped priorities?"
A person who needs to get dressed up to read obviously doesn't read much, and has not yet gotten much out of what little he's done.
ReplyDeleteValerie
My "readin pants" are whatever is most comfy at the moment. Be it old pajama pants, a pair of shorts, or nothing at all (especially if I'm reading in the bath). If you're putting on an outfit to read Kant, then you're not reading Kant to learn anything, you're reading Kant to be SEEN reading Kant in an effort to appear erudite; which just makes you the most vapid of fools.
ReplyDeleteSilly me, all this time I thought clothes were determined by the weather...uh, global warming.....uh, climate change...oh hell, hotcoldwetdry. How else does one explain the constant nagging one's mother did when but a tiny pain in the ass..."Put a coat on, you'll catch your death of cold." "It's too hot for that, go put something else on."
ReplyDeleteAlthough, it doesn't matter what I'm riding or driving, you'll get my Stetsons from me the same way you'll get my guns and knives.
heh
Grim, you do know that Stetson makes a crushable hat, right?
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Yeah, I've got a couple of crushable hats. My favorite one, though, is leather and made by Minnetonka.
ReplyDeleteIn the author's defense, I do sometimes pair history and fiction readings with location. Frontier stories out in a house in the woods, that sort of thing. It's kind of the 'ghost stories in the graveyard' thing.
ReplyDeleteUm, okay, that's not really any kind of defense of the author.
DL, the new term is Climate Condition Guilt.
ReplyDeleteT99, does that mean that hotcoldwetdry can now be bastardized into a *guilty* pleasure?
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*Looks down at well-worn moleskin jeans* Oops.
ReplyDeleteI believe my fashion type is faculty-lounge-ecclectic with a dash of heavy-duty-fighting-off-rose-thorns work clothes.
LittleRed1
Tex --
ReplyDeleteI like it. :)
Tex,
ReplyDeleteThat was a most excellent way to bring to end a less-than-stellar day.
Thx for the belly jiggle.
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