Spring Cleaning

When he sent his kids off to college, his wife demanded that they clean out the attic. No longer would it be messy and full of crap they didn’t need. Who knew what they would put in there but they were consumers, he was sure that they would find something. He opened the door to his attic and the smell of sawdust and must flowed out, as the fan in the adjacent room pulled the air towards itself. He creaked up the steps in his socks and when he reached the top he stopped to look around. Dozens of cardboard boxes piled on top of each other and made the project look much more formidable than it previously had. He started with a top box of a pile way in the corner, opened it up, creaked down the steps with it in his arms, and threw it into the back of the car. He did the same for the rest in the pile until he had reached the last one. When he reached the last one, he noticed that it was dusty and hadn’t been opened for some time. It figured. He had realized at his first child’s first birthday that he was not the nostalgic person he had once thought he was. He read the label. “Italian” was scrawled in a sharpie across the front. He opened it and looked inside. It was full of cut-aways and no break trousers that he had stopped wearing long before his first child was born. He shrugged and closed the box back up and took it out to the car.

When he started to take the second pile out to the car, he read the label of the top box. It read, “Americana/timeless”. He didn’t even bother to open it up as he picked it up and took it down the stairs.

Reasonable

Perhaps out of a desire to write about new things, to be first amongst amateur menswear reporters, we forget about simple things like LL Bean and other mid-range brands.

“Nah, brah, even my undershirts are three figures.”
“Was it a custom order for Context?”
“My jacket was inspired by Shackleton’s doomed expedition but I’ve never been out of Maryland.”

No doubt these things are cool, but tend to feel precious because of their price tag, despite their rugged intentions. Now a decent coat on the cheap? That, most people can get behind. Orvis offers the best options when it comes to gear that would fall under what some people call cool and at the same time, something that you can trash. They carry a good amount of Barbour but also offer a line of their own that gets little to no face time. Most of the items are under $250, which in comparison is cheap. Medium is as small as they go, so fashionistas clamoring for a slim cut can bug off to H&M. For inspiration on how not to look like a soccer dad when you wear these, just look at Tommy Ton’s winter photos. I’m sure you’ll find something.

Out of class and into the hall

Pat sat in the lecture hall staring at the off-white, or diseased white, ceiling tiles. The professor, yacking at the class, sallowed in the sickly glow of the florescent lighting. Class was seconds from over and the professor’s pant legs flopped everywhere unnaturally. If the professor had any sense or knowledge he would have had them tapered to 15”. Or at least 16”. 15” perhaps was a tad aggressive for a man of his girth. The man’s imperfection irritated Pat and Pat had the desire to never do a single problem that the professor assigned out of the textbook. Grades did not matter if your social knowledge was better than everyone else’s. Class dismissed and everyone filed out of the lecture hall except for Pat. The professor collected his things and scurried out the door to indulge in his fascination with tying fishing flies. Pat sat alone, lost in his ruminations of tapered legs, as he had the class after this in the same room.

Students slipped into the classroom, unaware that others were there, and began taking out their books. Comfortable in his chair, Pat slouched back and observed his sartorial superiority to the other boys in the class. In their defense, they didn’t have the knack; the know. The professor of this class was in the know. Tailored sportcoats and trousers abounded in his wardrobe. The man walked as though he had never known a tie from Sears. The professor strolled to the front of the class and set down his old leather briefcase, full of papers, which happened to be full of knowledge and full of nobility. Today, the professor had a button missing from the collar of his button down. Normally, this would be non-chalant, as if by accident. Y’know, natural. But something was wrong, something felt off with what the professor was wearing today. Acid rose in Pat’s throat. The lost button wasn’t natural at all. The whole thing was a sham. It was a huge horrible lie and Pat had fallen for it. He got up quickly and moved quickly towards the door of the lecture hall, using the desks to balance himself. Students looked surprised, as Pat usually carried himself without a care. With both hands, Pat pushed out of the door without the professor even noticing. He stumbled to the grey oversized trashcan in the hallway and retched over it. The coffee and Doritos he had eaten for breakfast came from his throat, around his teeth, and out his mouth. Pat heaved twice to get the remnants from sticking to his tongue and then breathed heavily as sweat collected on his brow. He heaved again trying to vomit out his own elitism but the beer he had drank before he went to bed was the only thing to come out. Perhaps the second professor was not natural at all. Maybe it was the first professor, with the wide pant legs and fly fishing fetish, that was the true natural person. Pat probably wouldn’t ever be able to find out. He still had the sickness, deep inside his gut.

J. Crew X Jesus Christ

J. Crew announced a new collab today between themselves and Jesus Chirst, known around the blogosphere as JC. Together they will be producing a tunic that will make you look good while being nailed to a cross or for sitting in a sweltering church over the summer. Recently risen, Jesus Christ released a few comments about the collab. “I think this will improve the image of both brands. Evangelists will flock from everywhere to pick up a tunic, which is great for J. Crew. Plus, consumerists will become more aware of the fact that I died for their sins, which is always a plus for me. Seriously, pants won’t save your soul. I’d like to continue this relationship with J. Crew but we’ll have to see how this tunic sells.” J. Crew plans to do an exclusive online J. Crew X Jesus Christ look book. We were unable to contact Frank Muytjens (pronounced Muy-dooby-booby-gens) for comment on how successful he thought the collab would be but sources tell us that he was a doubting Thomas.

When Jesus was asked what trend he saw those three days he was dead, he responded, “Boot cut jeans, those are just bad. Peter wore those all the time. I can’t believe I trusted my church with him.” I concur.

Happy Easter. Enjoy the time with your family and your friends.

Photo from NB

White Pants

You’ve got questions to answer. People are demanding your attention with trite questions that they could find out with a google search. It frustrates you that this occurs but alas, you certainly wouldn’t want to lose followers. Your mother has asked you to get off the white couch with your new selvedge, as the indigo gets everywhere. But questions come first. You answer the easy ones first, where to get spiffied up (duh), what to wear with a black tie (one thing), and how to put on a shirt (tag on the inside). Halfway through answering a question about where to find a tailor (they’re typically in a place called ‘the tailor’s’) you are notified that you have a notification. Under your mp3 upload from Beck’s Mellow Gold album some bro is calling you out. “hay man. Your probably 1 of those ppl who started to like beck after guero your so cool.” Oh man, you hate petty arguments like this. You’re totally above them and morally superior to people who think they know music better than you do. You’re a cultural genius. You are all knowing. You are always first to the punch. Someone else makes it? You sure as hell let everyone else know that they made it and that you reblogged it. Well, this fucker was trying to show you up. You respond, “Yo, wanna’ have this argument? I started listening to Beck when Mellow Gold dropped and have followed him since. I have always been a Beck fan.” This would show this fucker that you’re superior to him. None of it was true, but it didn’t really matter. You actually didn’t start listening to Beck until after Sea Change but it’s the internet. You were still pooping your diaper when Mellow Gold dropped. No reason to tell the truth on the web. Ever.

Your mother screams at you to get off the couch. “If you’re gonna’ sit on the couch, put those white pants I bought you on,” she yells from the kitchen. Well, you had finished complaining about your life to your followers, you figured you’d play the martyr and change your pants. All the females who followed you and were under the impression that you actually dressed well (well, you did dress well. Just not as well as you were comfortable with) offered their sympathy when you waited until the last second to do your homework and griped about it on the web. This always made you smile. Someone did care about you, even if they were 1500 miles away and completely incompatible with you in real life. You stepped out onto your back porch to smoke because if you changed pants before you smoke, you might forget your cigs in you pant pocket and leave them upstairs. The house next door looked exactly like yours. Big, plastic, landscaped by the same people who landscaped everyone else’s, with a Land Rover sitting in the drive. The other house next door looked just like the house next door and that one looked like your house. Your house looked like the house across the street. On the back porch of the house next door stood a neighbor boy. You never learned his name even though he was the same age as you. He was wearing white pants and was smoking the same cigarettes as you did. Good thing you hadn’t changed into your white pants like your mother had asked. Individual. Thunderclouds rolled in and prepared for a late afternoon crash, boom, and shatter. You could hear the grumbling of the sky’s gut. The thundercloud’s rage built up like your elitism. Maybe this was the kid who had accused you of not liking Beck until Guero. Maybe, just maybe. Maybe this kid had a gun. A little one. Like the kind you see on EDC. Maybe this kid would freak out like those kids in the news, walk across his lawn to your back porch, raise his pistol, and shoot a bullet through your shirt that you wore on Fridays, into your chest, out your back, and through the other side of you shirt. Maybe he’d put you out of your misery. Maybe you'd never have to reblog anything ever again. Maybe he’d redeem you from your couch. Maybe he’d vault you into a story in the news. Maybe he’d just take all your followers and tell them that you hadn’t heard of Beck until Sea Change.

On second thought, you hoped that boy stayed right where he was, played lacrosse rather than answer questions on the internet, and had never listen to Beck once in his life.

Epochs of MW

My first semester in college I had a choir professor teach me about art. Well, more specifically, how to look at art by not attaching any adjectives that carried relative weight to different people. It was an easy class. At the end of the semester he presented the comment that the current epoch of music was coming to a close. At the end of every epoch, musicians just take what people have been doing in the past, and mix it all up. With the arrival of mash-ups of a few years ago, pop-music was going to evolve into something else. It will become something not pop. As a random author from some online music magazine once said, “pop will eat itself.”

I’d like to think that menswear would evolve in such a way that music does and that we are nearing the end of an epoch. Who knows what we’ll be wearing in 30 years much less 5 months? Maybe we’ll be wearing jumpsuits in 3 weeks. One can certainly say that menswear has been a mash-up of history after World War II. From this I’d love to say that menswear is unpredictable and we cannot say where it is going: all forecasts are off.

Menswear doesn’t resemble the model I presented. Many people do not find joy in clothes. Much of society finds joy in music. Music is for most a means to happiness. For many, clothes are a means to covering yourself up and keeping warm. Clothes are too functional to resemble music and its evolution through epochs. However, I think that the menswear mash-up of the past 70 years should be observed and my model taken into consideration. It would be pretty awesome to be right.

Corduroy

I remember the first time I wore my corduroy shirt. Now it's faded and one side has taken on a bleach-y orange hue. It's "hobo-chic" as the fruitcakes would say but I'm sure somewhere would try to sell me the same thing for three figures. But back then, it was crisp and clean, straight out of the LL Bean catalog. It was approaching the holidays and my mother bought my brother and I the same shirt, only different colors. I had a lot of red shirts, I have a dark complexion, and my brother usually wore green or blue, he has a light. My mother was a bit obsessive about things like that. I don't remember why, but we switched it up when we got those shirts. I took the green corduroy shirt and my brother took the red corduroy shirt. I was probably about 10 years old.

The first time we wore those shirts was to a Christmas party. It happened to be a Mennonite Christmas party. I'm Presbyterian but my family knows a number of the Mennonite families as we homeschooled at that period in time. My mother was a homeschool "organizer", you could say. The Mennonites that my family know run a boy's camp. It is a camp for troubled boys who act violently towards their parents and peers and are no longer able to be in their local schools. It is a last resort before kids got shipped off to a detention center. I always imagine the Mennonites talking to struggling parents, "We understand. We know that institutionalizing these boys probably won't work. Let us give them a little love and a little responsibility and see what happens." There the boys go out into the woods and live in tents with Mennonite conselours. They live in the woods for a number of weeks in hope that the new responsibilites they acquired will shape them into well-behaved young men. Some boys do better and some don't. The Mennonites do not make a lot money, and what they do earn goes to support their families and the boys camp. Selfless doesn't really seem to describe the Mennonites. Recently, in order to help support the camp, the church opened a ice cream parlor. All the girls who work there volunteer their time and all the profits go to the boys camp. All the Mennonites who volunteer their time to the boys camp aren't hoping to add the hours to their college application, they're hoping to better other people's lives.

Before we headed up to the lodge, my parents explained how the boys camp worked to me, my brothers, and my sister. I don't remember much from the party. The food was good and the lodge had a big fire. After dinner I remember playing tag outside in the cold and dark. I think it was that night that I realized that Mennonites weren't different than us because they always tucked their shirts in and the women always wore skirts and caps. Mennonites are different than us because they are genuinely good and kind people. They don't count your faults, they don't judge you for your political views, and they don't judge you for the world that you participate in. They're not out to evangelize every Joe Schmo, they're out to make the world a better place, regardless of the world's religion.

I hope that there's a heaven. Not for myself. I'm probably too materialist to make the cut anyway. When I die, I'm fine with just turning off like a TV. Ceasing to exist doesn't seem like a bad thing. I haven't done anything special to deserve anything else. I hope that there's a heaven for the Mennonites. I hope that when they reach it that someone is there waiting to shake their hand and say, "Thank you. Thank you for caring about human beings. Thank you for caring about me."

And that was the first time I wore my corduroy shirt.