Sartorial Advancement
When I watch the first few minutes of a “draft” show with the sound off, I think about how repugnant and objectionable professional sports can be. Millionaires, soon-to-be-millionaires, and wannabee millionaires at all levels of dressed-for-show and commentators sporting hooker chic looks remind me of how I have always hated those who flaunt money on clothes and a “dress for success” and how I look mentality have never been big concerns despite a creative eye for how to be noticed.
When I was in high school, I was not tall enough (I hated that coach, but am over it now) to make the basketball team and settled for a spot on the “anybody that shows up makes it” tennis team as the way to earn a varsity letter and play the BMOC tool with a varsity jacket and obnoxiously strut the school hallways showing off fashion that said I was an athlete. Sure to impress, when I planned what to take to college, “Catskill Jacket” sure to impress, topped the list. Dream on.
The last place a naive country mouse from upstate, small town New York should go to college is the “city.” The guys (male, female, and other) there were “hip” and what they did, said, and believed defined “style.” Not surprisingly, the sight of a tightly-wound 115 pound nameless-sport letterman boasting here and there did not impress and to make a statement he hoped would tag him as “bad” and as defiant as protesters participating in then contemporary draft card and bra burning demonstrations, I hacked the sleeves off the jacket and loudly proclaimed, “Catskill Sucks” as I tossed them off the Towers dorm bridge. In continuing acts of anger toward everything, I cut the sleeves off and slashes in most wearables. I cut the bottom off a “muscle shirt” just below the boob line and tried to convince Jessica from Guild Hall to wear it braless. I cut the legs off my jeans and tried to convince “Annie Fannie” to let me do it to her “tighter than could possibly be easy to get on or comfortable but wonderful to view” designers.
Always trending, I stuffed only the front of my dress shirt into my pants and created the “French Tuck.” I stuffed only the back of my dress shirt into my pants for a different look and created the “Greek Tuck.” I created a disheveled look resembling a bahnhof bum–sporting untucked flannel and wore formal shirts not designed to be worn untucked; and, years later, a friend from Boston used the look to become a “dress like nobody is watching” icon. There were times that my pants hung so low that the bottom of my wallet pocket scraped the ground and the vision from behind gave full meaning to unsightly crack, crevasse, and intergluteal cleft.
