As the esteemed Manolo has requested that his internet friends discuss the fashion "don'ts" that drive them batty, I have chosen today to address an oft-ignored hive of fashion villainy: the sartorial sins of the mens. For men, the fashion bar is not set terribly high. If a man manages to leave the house on a semi-regular basis wearing clothing that was (a) manufactured in the current decade for (b) a person more or less within his size range and is (c) not splattered with an array of tidbits from his last six or seven meals, he's considered a reasonably stylin' dude. In other words, men have the luxury of garnishing high praise for mere competence. And yet, so many of them fall so short. Here are some of the male fashion felonies I spot all too frequently, resulting in much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
>> Cheap leather jackets: Are you a dealer in Naugahyde pelts? No? Then it is unnecessary to wear the passenger seat of my mother's circa-1985 station wagon on your back.
>> Sagged pants: Every man who sags his pants appears as though he suffers from an incurable medical condition involving an unfortunate partial failure on the part of his pituitary gland, resulting in a state of affairs where his upper body and torso have achieved puberty, while he's left with withered little hairless child legs.
>> Big, doofy white sneakers: Nothing says, "I ride the short bus" quite so eloquently as the sporting of shoes the loss of which the Marshmallow Man has been mourning for these many weeks. This misstep is particularly egregious when one considers the abundance of stylish alternatives.
>> Brown shoes, black pants: Some of you have degrees. Several of them. Advanced ones. Why is this so confusing for you?
>>High-water pants: A few of you have just recently mastered the aforementioned "socks" concept and want to show the world how well you did. While we applaud your coordination skills, please limit the demonstration to your home environment. If you have no plans to embark upon a cheerful wading expedition, dress pants should hang to the top of the heel, while jeans may fall to the heel's bottom. No exceptions.
>> Enormous shapeless t-shirts: Another roadmap for the perplexed: size labels? Are placed in garments for a reason. If you are entirely lacking of social consciousness to the extent that you suffer from genuine confusion regarding the nature of your proportions, feel free to take all four flavors of cotton goodness into the fitting room for a test run. Professional assistance may also be available; consult your local retailer for details. It is a researched and proven scientific fact that the donning of an oversized and ill-fitting garment will not cause you to magically gain four inches of height and thirty pounds of solid muscle. If that doesn't convince you, perhaps this will: a garment pulled over the head, covering the torso, and dangling to the knees is known, my friend, as a "dress."
>> Manpris: These make unicorns cry.
I had to do a google search to find out what manpris were. I'm sorry to say that those are the only shorts you'll find in the stores these days, so blame the designers. Personally, I don't like them because I think they make me look shorter. But what's a guy gonna do?
Posted by: anonymous guy | January 16, 2006 at 08:37 PM
...and hey, even though we may have advanced degrees, some of us are just too damned unconcerned with fashion to own more than one pair of shoes. :D
Posted by: jaime | February 28, 2006 at 11:20 AM