If Your Clothes Could Speak

I enjoyed Shalom Auslander’s piece in the New York Times magazine. There were a couple of sections that made me chuckle so I’ll share them with you. BTW, it is worth reading the whole column.

“My feeling has always been that if you need your clothing to speak for you, it might be best for everyone if you said nothing at all. Unfortunately, you can’t tell a suit to shut the hell up, which is what I want to tell the suit I am wearing.It’s not Tommy’s fault. Let’s not get angry with Tommy. If you’ve seen certain young men walking around of late looking as if they tried to launder their suits at home and accidentally left them in the dryer for a few cycles too many — cuffs ending midforearm, pants ending midshin — then the person you want to blame is named Thom Browne. Not only did he start this trend, but on his label he also puts a period at the end of his name, so that even if I hadn’t put the name Thom Browne. at the end of the previous sentence, I would have had to use a period because that is the way Thom Browne. likes it, with a period after Thom Browne. It seems fitting — a sentence-fragment name for a man with too-short pants.

Tommy throws a coat over my shoulders, a black three-quarter-length rabbinical-looking coat with a wide mink collar. I look in the mirror. I look like an Orthodox Hamburglar. I look as if I need a slap.

and

“Monkeys, it seems, have it easy. From what I can tell, you want respect in Monkeytown, you beat up some other males, impregnate a few women, climb a tree and waddle out to the end of a branch where everyone can gaze up with awe at your magnificent genitals. Humans, having only partially evolved, still communicate the same messages, but are forced to do so by employing the clumsy metaphor of fashion. Thus, yellow socks. And shrunken suits. And designers whose names carry periods at the end.”