Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Dork

Denim suits are dumb.

So is this one, in the practical sense.

Taylor Stitch has a denim suit for something like 350 of only slightly inflating dollars.

You could, and should, wait this one out.

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The blue is the blue of pleated denim.

See there, I didn't even have to give you a value judgement for the pleated denim and you got the value associated.

Yet, as I sneer, if you wore this, my third party would slow clap. Maybe.

Dress like a dork. Dress like a professional bocce ball player. Dress like you drive a '93 LeSabre and smoke grape cigarillos -- but not in the house for either of those activities.

Dress like those things here.

Don't worry, we definitely won't be wearing the same thing if we see each other in public.

Monday, May 6, 2013

The Despair of Street Style and WIWT Shots


I am most often reminded of it when I’m riding in a bus – a charter bus with big windows. When you ride in a bus you are have this odd removal from space and time. The non-linear continuum hums loudly and has A/C, which is not what most physicists would suppose since, y’know, noise operates within time. I see it through the tinted windows that I rest my forehead on. I see it in unimportant people scraping happiness out of their free time. It’s when I see a middle aged man in a camo hat awkwardly step down an embankment with his fishing rod by the river to get to a better fishing spot. He’s enjoying his free time, trying to find a little bit of sweetness in his passage of time. Maybe he has a bunch of annoying kids, trying themselves to continue the joys of youth by pissing away the afternoon, but now I’m just positing a reality on such a man. I see it in young women walking down a street in the middle of the day to enjoy the bodily things of an ice cream parlor or a quick stop at the salon. I just see it for a second, removed from the world by a bus trucking through the small town that we happen to pass through. This is straight forward, name-it-as-you-see-it, DFW, Sartre, Camus, and bunch of other bullshit writers that tumblrs like to pretend they are, despair (Did you know that there are thought catalog girls who sign their articles Johanna de Silentio? What the fuck is that? You think you’re the female Kierkegaards? Wait, you just write about the philosophy of relationships non-ironically? Get the fuck off the internet.) This is despair is "weightlessness," or "smallness" -- y'know -- an existential crisis  impending over their heads just waiting them to come up for air out of their small pleasures. It makes me a little sick because I know I’m taking my own notion of reality and pushing it upon these characters that I just glimpse. The sort of sick where your lungs feel deep and heavy and like they’re falling out of your chest. 

Menswear bloggers take pride in how they look. WIWT pictures are a great way to consult with others about what should be worn together and how garments should work. Bloggers learn from one another and spend time enjoying garments. It’s great. Enjoying a hobby that is no longer considered “fruity” or “emasculating” is something that, with our free time, we find a lot of joy and fulfillment from. Some men are even able to make a job out of it and pursue this pursuit of menswear aestheticism for a major portion of their lives. Sometimes I see a WIWT picture and I see someone who takes a lot of pride in their hobby. Sometimes I see a street style shot and I see someone who is meticulous about their presentation to others. It seems to be a subjective happiness a lot of those guys have. That’s good and that’s great because subjective happiness is a sort of apex about how you should approach your free time.
            
But sometimes….

Sometimes I just see a self-conscious guy taking a photo of himself, dying in the despair of his small hobby that he toys with just to save himself from the real world. Sometimes I see a street style shot of someone who pursues the small things, tries to make a jump into the real world of taking about small things for a job, and can’t fill those lungs that are falling out of his chest. Sometimes I just see a bunch of small, petty, sad men.

I’m probably just creating this idea for us. Hell, I’m writing it. But, heh, I know you guys.

It could very well be true.

The problem with street style and WIWT shots isn’t that they’re full of peacocks or people who want to distribute sartorial ontologies to get themselves into a position of blogging volume, even though many people would have you believe this. The problem is that we just are hiding from the fact that we are so small. 

Can I be happy with being small? 

Can you be happy with being small?