Confessions of a Starving Artist

Only great minds can afford a simple style.  ~ Stendhal

Once upon a time, I was a fashion aficionado.  I like that term better than “metro-sexual”, though at the time, I was probably closer to the later.  Metros somehow got a bad rap along the way as I think that the first wave of men who started to dress with the times were just trying to break out the humdrum wardrobes of Old Navy and GAP.  Then suddenly The Powers That Be decided that what was in style was also to be less-than-maculating in form and fit.  However, this whole phase of my life came and went before the label of “Metro” became vulgar and associated with semi-queers and quarter-fags everywhere.

Thankfully, metros have regressed into a more youthful demographic.  For a while there, middle aged men in their thirties and forties tried to give the smedium tee-shirts and vintage faded jeans a run to a sharp degree of non-success.  After a year or two, circa 2005, even men in their late-twenties figured out that dressing in drag was a bit of a stretch when trying to work the bars and single clubs.  Nowadays, the only real people who you see dressing in the prescribed androgynous avant guard are men in their early-twenties and late-teens who can’t really be faulted for following something trendy.  We all did it once or twice to some extent or another.  After all, who are we to be trend setters at twenty-three?  It’s not like we are Justin Timberlake… but then again, who is?

Nonetheless, it has become increasingly hard for men to dress their age in a fashionable and still manly manner.  Our role models are seemingly few and far between.  Hollywood continues to provide leading men who are pushing fifty and looking twenty-seven.  The new bloods like Shia LaBeouf or Michael Cera who show up on the silver screen look like the proverbial college-aged smart-asses who needs an ass-kicking or a few more days in shop class rather than someone who could dispense an example of any kind, let alone fashion, toward those of those of us out in the real world of a wartime wintery economy.  TV sitcoms, 24-hour news stations, and even the music and sport world provide hideous examples of what a modern man should look like.  Is it any wonder why men dread turning thirty and women seem to bask in it?  Women ascend at the thought of being thirty and looking twenty.  Men would rather look like an oaf in ill-fitting jeans than look like a boy of twenty these days… and many opt for just that.

I am no different… minus the oaf in jeans part.  I was just remarking to some of my younger colleagues that in fact I had not purchased any significant new clothing in over a year, aside from a new pair of running shoes, due to a straightforward lack of want.  My wardrobe has become one of simplicity, though well-fitting and coordinated simplicity I would add.  Single color sweaters and conservative-cut jeans have been the hallmark of this winter’s line, allowing my sunglasses and petty-coat to do much of the talking for them.  Still, it’s a classic look; clean and up-right.  And while it’s pure, I would have you take note that it’s increasingly hard to shop for clothes that fit into this line of though within today’s malls filled with trendy prints and oversized knit beanies.

The overall point to all this is that despite the fact that I don’t flaunt my fashion sense in a boisterous or flamboyant manner, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have one.  Actually, I would consider my discretion to be the more experienced mark of propriety; that is, the ability to observe the trends and rather than swim with the current, maintain some level of solidarity and self-made manhood.  So I was a bit taken back when yesterday as I was wondering through the local mall running an errand for a friend, I happened to note the change in season through the display and wear of the new spring sets in the various store windows.  In a word, I was horrified. 

In an effort, it seems, to completely ignore the lessons learned in the 1980s, those absurd skinny legged jeans did come back with a vengeance this past fall and winter.  Whatever, I can deal.  But it would appear that rather than going softly into that good night, there is a further genesis to those awful denims as I noted a young teenaged man wearing what would at a glance have been thought to be his little sisiter’s capri shorts.  Yup, that’s right; “the man-pri” style of shorts are going to the part and parcel of the young emo-look this summer.  And just as I finished shaking my head, I was left reeling again as yet another fashion blunder walked by.  This time it was a moppy-headed young hippie fellow with mid-thigh shorts rolled further up, cuffed and in the manner of a male version of the classic whore-shorts, the daisy dukes. 

I truly hope that our fair mall is the exception to the rule, and that you, faithful reader, will be not be troubled by this latest fad as it is a troubling eye-sore that left me confused and concerned.  Perhaps it is a regional thing.  Who can be sure?  I guess I will find out as these days and months continue to warm up.  So, unfortunately, will you.