By: Elizabeth Johnson
Submitted: 2009-09-17 06:03:44 | Word Count: 993
I sat the other day in my house of worship a long established religion that is probably similar to yours if you have a house of worship net to a guy wearing flip flops and running shorts.
Now, to be fair to the guy, he did not smell. I don t think he jogged to services, and nor do I think he came to services right from his cardio workout. In fact, the flip flops alerted me to something amazing: he likely had no intention of working out at all.
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This means, of course, that this was how he decided to dress to worship the god of his choice. His only saving grace, besides being at services that day, was that his T shirt was not equipped with an advertisement for Hooters.
When I was a kid, you dressed up for weekend services. In fact, you dressed up for a lot of events. Little boys might, in some areas of the country, wear jeans to school but never out to dinner, unless that dinner was coming in a bag and partnered with a paper crown or a clown hat. You went to a wedding or a funeral in a dark suit, and you knew that seersucker suits were items only for summer.
There were just standards.
After noticing flip flop guy over the weekend, I went to dinner with a client at a very upscale restaurant and noticed that there was a table of guys wearing shorts and golf shirts. I reiterate this was an upscale place.
So upscale, in fact, that the tab was higher than my electric bill in July. My client and I were wearing suits it was the end of the day, and we d been working. Maybe just maybe the golf shirt table was just back from an impromptu day on the links and had decided to brave the wrath of the chef by showing up looking like a Dockers ad, circa 1997.
I guess what I m getting to is that Americans really dress appallingly. The 1960s was about tuning out, and there were a lot of people out there dressed like bums or hippies or both, though Madison Avenue and Wall Street still had their dress codes. By the time those norms trickled down to Middle America, however, they had become polyesterized and rubber soled.
By the time the 1970s had come around, America did the world the biggest fashion disservice in the history of menswear. We were, after all the inventors of that most dire of dire garments: the leisure suit.
Why would you wear a suit during leisure times when you could wear slacks and a shirt or a sweater? How on earth does wearing a two piece outfit with matching turtleneck or open necked silky shirt equate to anyone s definition of leisure? Think back on that outfit. Go ahead close your eyes scroll down the poufy haired guy, take in the gold chain, and reflect upon the horror of those loafers.
Fast forward a bit. America did not invent the track suit or jogging suit, or whatever you choose to call it but we did make it ubiquitous. That polyester stuff with the racing stripe think Adidas in the 1970s and early 1980s, and then the version that became known as the wind suit. That style was so bad. No one looked good in it. In a track suit, your butt looks like two hams or two Twinkies, and your chest looks like it is being held up by your gut. And yet, in America, we just keep on reinventing it through Tony Soprano and the velour versions, and right back to the racing stripe version. Go USA.
Don t even get me started on the women s version with words across the rear end. Who doesn t want to use their posterior as a billboard?
I don t know if all of these quite match up to the trend for the last 10 years of so of wearing pajama bottoms as pants. I actually saw a woman at my son s parent teacher day wearing a black tank top and a pair of fuzzy pink PJ bottoms with black skulls on them. Her husband was wearing flip flops and a T shirt with the words I didn t do it written on it.
Well, to put it bluntly who would?
Clothing shouldn t just doesn t cover your body. It s time for America to take control of itself before we turn into a nation of poncho and diaper wearing barbarians. Because really wouldn t that just do the trick?
For men, the proper thing to wear to dinner, to funerals, to weddings is a suit. Buy yourself a dark colored suit in a light wool and it will do the trick for the entire year. If you re feeling like taking a splurge and can pull it off, try something in linen or seersucker for summer.
To accessorize this brilliant suit, buy some beautifully tailored shirts in a good quality cotton, some silk ties in patterns that look new and striking, and a pair of non clunky shoes preferably with laces, as they are more traditional.
If you really are trying to make an impression and not one like flip flop guy buy yourself some good looking cufflinks Cufflinks can dress up or down a suit, and they really are like jewelry on a woman the perfect finishing touch. If you buy a pair in gold or silver match your belt buckle think about adding your engraved initials. If you want to add a dash of color, but are concerned about appearing gaudy, try getting a pair in enamel or a semi precious stone that matches your favorite tie.
And while you re at it, remember the basics of hygiene. A haircut and a shave may cost more these days than two bits, but the impression you ll make will be priceless.
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