I’m traveling again, short trip to visit family, so I’m doing something a little different for Friday. This month the church’s writing group’s topic was, “What do my clothes say about me?” So, here are a few one-liners about fashion followed by my slightly humorous essay on the subject of clothes. I’ve been thinking about changing up the format of my Friday wisdom posts to include some longer content. Honestly, there are only so many one-liners out there and after doing this for four years, even I’m starting to feel I’m repeating myself. Let me know in the comments if you’d like longer (most likely not as long as today’s) or short wise things on a Friday like I’ve been doing.

Yoga pants rarely go to a yoga class.

Cabbage patches – what a farmer uses to mend his pants.

I’ve read a lot about how fashionable skinny jeans are. Personally, I just can’t get into them.

I tried working with a fashion designer once, but it didn’t work out. He was so clothes-minded.

Did you hear about the Incredible Hulk’s new fashion line? It’s all the rage.

Did you know that for fashion week they covered the Eiffel Tower in camouflage? Let me be honest, I don’t see the attraction.

Clothes

What my clothes say about me? Well, likely they say something like, “You never left the 70’s, did you?” or perhaps, “Did you know that there are socks in colors other than gray?”

Seriously, I haven’t change what I wear since 1972 — as in style, I actual change my clothes daily, and wash them — okay, Heather washes them, but before I was married I used to wash my own clothes — Okay, I took my slacks and shirts to the dry cleaners, but I did wash my socks and underwear — well except for the 5 year period when I had a housekeeper who would wash them — and yes my mother used to wash my clothes when I was a child, but other than that it was all me.  I have also bought new clothes when stuff wears out, but only in the same mostly 1972 style.  I’ve never seen a reason to change.  Clothes just aren’t that important to me.  They only serve practical purposes like, keeping me warm, have pockets to carry things in, keeping my skin out of the sun so I don’t get those horrible, painful, cancer causing sunburns and for … modesty.  Trust me, you don’t want to see me naked.  I’ve seen my self naked, you don’t want that in your mind.  It would take years of therapy to overcome that. Just trust me …

Now from time to time I do wear certain articles of clothing to make a statement.  Like the time a woman at church said men shouldn’t wear pink shirts.  Yup, I went out and bought two pink shirts, one short sleeve and one long sleeve and wore them to church regularly after that.  I will admit that I failed to rise to the challenge of wearing flowery summer dresses to church — honestly I just couldn’t face shaving my legs. 

A long time ago I started wearing loud flowery Hawaiian shirts to work on Fridays.  I didn’t make any memorable announcement about it, I just started doing to see if anyone would notice that I didn’t wear a plain, blue button down shirt (I bought them from JC Penny’s half a dozen at time, before I was married. I would also buy white shirts).

When people started to notice that flowery shirts was a Friday thing for me along with the bagel and cream cheese I’d have with a cup of tea, they started to ask why I did that.  I’d give a variety answers like:

1. Didn’t you get the email asking everyone to wear Hawaiian shirts?
2. The company sent me to Hawaii once so I wear these hoping they’ll send me back.
3. It’s a Federal law.
4. I’m supporting the Hawaiian shirt industry.
5. I wear happy shirts to prove to everyone that I’m really happy on the inside, unlike my face which makes me look pissed off all the time.  

Come on, we all have to admit that at most times I have a resting bitch face and look like I’m either totally disinterested in life or am about to attack someone.  Well, a girl I dated once said that one time.  It still hurts.

But at least I have a whole rack of flowery shirts.  And I checked, they were in existence as far back as the 1920s, so even though I didn’t own a Hawaiian shirt until the 90’s, it would have been possible for me to have one in 1972.  I didn’t have one in 1972 because I was only 12 and my mother bought all my clothes — manly clothes, she wanted to make sure that I grew up to be a man so I got manly clothes: button down shirts with collars, slacks, plain white tee-shirts, bell bottom jeans and corduroy pants to wear to school.

She stopped buying me bell bottomed jeans when a friend of hers at church said that hippies wore bell bottoms.  Sadly, that ended my young hopes of getting a tie-dyed tee-shirt.  I do now own a tie-dyed tee-shirt that I made myself.  I rarely wear it, but I have it.  I have thought about having it framed and hanging it over my writing desk.

I might be giving my mother too much credit for how I was dressed back then.  I doubt she really paid that much attention to it.  She only bought me new clothes once a year in August.  Just before school started she’d take me to Jeffers Men and Boys Wear in downtown Campbell and would tell Mr. Jeffers that I need school clothes.  Mr Jeffers then cast his eye over me, took a couple of quick measurements and then started going to the racks and laid out clothes – pants, shirts, socks, underwear and one new suit to wear to church complete with a brand-new clip on bowtie — always red, I not sure if Mr. Jeffers only had red bowties or if mother insisted on red.  Often they were red plaid bowties, not a solid color.  Maybe plaid is more manly than solid red.  I don’t know.

The only input I recall my mother give on the whole procedure was to send me to the dressing room from time to time to try things on and correcting the number of items Mr. Jeffers put out, “He needs five school slacks, but only two pairs of jeans.”  Mr. Jeffers had shoes too and I got three pairs a year, “good shoes” for Sundays, school shoes and sneakers for Saturdays.

That was it. She never selected what I wore day to day, other than Sundays when I had to wear my suit to church or during the first two months of school, I wasn’t allowed to wear school clothes on a Saturday.  My father never made any comments on my clothing.  Well, he was color blind and likely had no idea that my plaid bowtie was red.

It’s highly likely that this early experience with a total lack of fashion education that has led me to just want to buy my clothes by the dozen and not really care what I’ve put on.  These days though, I rarely buy clothes.  Heather does all of my clothing purchasing.  Which I feel is fair, after all she’s the one that has to look at me day in and day out so she might as well get me things she’s willing to look at.  I mean, she knows that if it was me, I’d just buy a dozen red flannel shirts for winter and a dozen yellow with orange flower short sleeve shirts for summer if it was totally left up to me.

I guess if we’re going to be really honest here, what my clothes say about me is, “at least he’s wearing pants.”