Boring. Boooooooring! That one word pretty much sums up my fashion sense, if you can even call it that.
I vaguely remember — in the seventies — having a “parachute jacket” that I thought was pretty cool. All I can remember now is that it was bright yellow (probably not quite as bright in reality as it is now in my memory, or maybe it was brighter!), had zips and press studs and the texture of the material out of which they make parachutes — hence the name. And I think I probably bought (or had bought for me by my parents) a few pairs of jeans that were probably fairly cool back in their day … flares, stovepipes, pockets galore with flaps and/or zips, etc.
But these days — and for most of my life from my teens onwards — my attire has been pretty utilitarian. Truth is, if the law and the weather permitted it and I had somewhere to put my wallet (a sporran perhaps?), I’d walk around buck naked all day. So my default attire in public is shorts (I mean real shorts, not those stupid “short trousers” that go all the way down to your knees, or further!) and T-shirts and slops in the summer, and jeans, T-shirts and shoes & socks in the winter. In the winter I’ll take a jacket if I’m driving somewhere (I’ll actually wear a lighter one if I’m walking), but it will likely stay in the car until my return home. (Friends are always asking me, as I leave their places after an evening, “Didn’t you bring a jacket?!”) My use (or lack thereof) of jackets is a topic unto itself for another time.
I do own khaki pants, golf shirts, plaid shirts and other long- and short-sleeved collared shirts, dressier black Oxford Brogues than my current, everyday, brown Derby-type shoes, a sports coat, suits (double- and single-breasted), about two dozen ties (ranging from plain black for funerals to far more ostentatious and whimsical ones) and half a dozen bow ties. However, the dressier things get the fewer the opportunities I have for wearing them, especially considering I work from home. Actually, I really do lament that as I do like to dress up (and I think I rock a well-fitting suit, even if I do say so myself), but I can’t make up events that don’t exist and I’m too practical to put on a suit just to go and visit friends for the evening.
I do care what I look like when I leave the house, but I don’t care enough to go to ridiculous ends and spend ridiculous amounts of money and time on my appearance. And I mostly will not wear what mainstream fashion tells me I should wear, so I’m a bloody-minded contrarian to boot.
The reason I bring this up is an article on “lumbersexuals” on The Daily Beast. One paragraph really spoke to me:
But the rough-looking, dependably butch lumbersexual, despite his honest-guy uniform, is a drag queen, just as we all are. On go our costumes every day, and so it especially is with those whose uniform is dedicated to looking like they care least of all what they look like. The lumbersexual is the biggest drag queen of them all.
Now, I have never until today heard the term “lumbersexual”; I own two plaid shirts that I rarely wear (and only one of them is flannel) and it is quite clear to me that the guys I have seen pictured in articles I have now read about them spent a lot more than “20 minutes of [their] morning[s] delicately trimming [their] beard[s] in the bathroom mirror“. I have also grown full beards, although I’m not that fond of them. But I squirmed uncomfortably at the thought that maybe the attire that results from my “studied disinterest” (to quote my father) in fashion is, in itself, a fashion statement.
If it is, I may as well pull out my wallet and head to the nearest trendy clothing shop and ask someone there to dress me properly in some hip new threads. (Irony intended.) The problem is, I just can’t stand waste, and I’ll still be wearing in five years what is trendy today. I can’t win!