Humor by John Christmann
Dressing For Success
Last week was Fashion Week in New York City. I missed it. In fact, I have missed every Fashion Week since One Million Years BC, when Raquel Welch modeled a skimpy Wooly Mammoth.
But I suspect I was not invited to attend, even though the event was open to the public. You see, I am not exactly what you would call a fashion icon, unless cargo pants and a Chicago Cubs T shirt is your idea of couture.
This is OK by me, since I don’t get invited to the Academy Awards either. But my lack of fashion sense is embarrassing to my kids: they don’t want to be seen with me. Fortunately for them, my wife has style, even if she did marry me. Unfortunately, they may one day be dressed in my hand-me-down genes.
I can trace my own personal fashion disaster to the eighth grade. This was the year I became enamored with the music of The Beatles. I loved looking at the photo of the Fab Four decked out in psychedelic Nehru jackets. I pictured myself wearing a fitted collarless jacket and singing like Paul McCartney. The self-image I adorned was that of a hip pop star who wore skinny pants and shades.
Of course at the time I played trombone and thought that Indie Rockers came from India. At the time the only shades I wore were glasses held together with adhesive tape. At the time I was thirteen and my voice squeaked.
Fortunately, judgment was not in style that year, so I decided to make a personal statement by sporting a groovy Nehru waistcoat to my Junior High School graduation. I would show those girls who never looked at me that I was much more than a gangly kid in a Cubs T Shirt who played trombone and wore pants that didn’t fit.
But they didn’t sell Nehru Jackets in the Midwest, or anywhere else for that matter. Not even, I am guessing now, India. No, there was only one place on earth to pursue silly retro fashion trends: Los Angeles.
So on a family vacation to Disneyland, during Fashion Week in LA, I dragged my parents to every trendy clothing store from Manhattan Beach to Beverly Hills until I found a white muslin garment with tidy buttons which plunged pristinely from a starched Mandarin high-platform collar.
I had my Nehru Jacket!
On graduation day I slipped on the neat snow-white coat anticipating the stir I would create. I examined myself vainly in the mirror, first surveying the long buttoned front, then spinning around to critically eye my stylish reflection over the shoulder.
I envisioned myself strolling coolly down the catwalk stage in receipt of my diploma, my pouting jaw thrust forward, my hands posed inexplicably in my pockets while the flash bulbs of a thousand persistent photographers battled to freeze my unique look, my sought after style, my ultra-hip persona.
But I was disturbed to hear the feverish whisper gossip of designers dressed in black below my feet: “He looks like a waiter!”
Maybe dark sunglasses would help. Nope. Fashion Week in Medellin, Columbia was not quite the event I was dressing for. But maybe if I wore an icy pink plumed hat and grew a mustache and learned to play guitar and sing . . .
When my name was called I bumbled across the stage smiling comfortably in a casual blue blazer, a paisley tie I borrowed from my dad, and a pair of flood pants that rose to my shins.
I was, after all, just a gangly kid who played trombone and wore broken glasses. And I felt comfortable in my own skin knowing that the Nehru Jacket hung limply from a coat hanger in my closet never to be worn again.
This, then, is why I am not invited to Fashion Week in New York. Or Mumbai. For in my vain pursuit of fashion I painfully learned that contrary to popular wisdom, clothes do not make the man.
Still, on occasion, I do find myself on the right side of fashion. Like when I forget to wear a belt and my jeans slide low over my boxers, or sometimes on Halloween.
Heck, somewhere in my closet I even have an elegant Armani tuxedo that needs to be let out. My wife picked it out years ago. It’s a classic look that will never go out of style she tells me.
But so as long as the Cubs keep losing and ultra cool men like me have to put cell phones and car keys and invitations to the Academy Awards in their copious cargo pockets, I will never have to worry about going out of style either.
But just in case, I am ready when Leisure Suits come back.
© 2011 Dadinthebox.com