The Garment Renaissance
I’m amongst the French, who are a fashionable people. There are those who call them a petty people, forever obsessed with ses amusements, their fashion, their romantic rituals, their food, their cigarettes. Others call them a romantic people with an well-developed sense of fun, play, and possibility. Whatever they are, they sure as hell please my eye.
Play the game. When in Rome, etc. My hideous and worn clothes are a dead Anglo giveaway. No matter where you are from, it is not right for one to frump his way down a Montreal street in unstrategically ripped jeans and bulky polyester blends, so I’ve decided to upgrade my wardrobe a little. Buying clothes is the most demoralizing of human activity. You see, clothes have long ago ceased being mere swatches of fabric intended to cover the body. Clothes are an extension of the id—an expression of one’s aesthetic preferences, an instant and unmistakeable brand on the self, a lightning rod for stereotypes, and a demographic survey all in one. To dress in a certain manner is to pick an enclosure of styles from which you are subsequently not to deviate. You are immediately and unintentionally granted access to a subculture of which you may or may not want to be a member. Baggy pants mean you’re a skater or a long-haired galoot, no exceptions, if you wear sports-team clothing you’re a perpetual adolescent, and hats mean you’re trying to look like some erstwhile man of letters. Only PR whores wear crisp dress shirts to work, and leave the seizure-inducing wool sweaters to The Cos.
My current dress style says: “this man sits in front of a computer all day”. You don’t need me to tell you this is bad. High-tech is not an easy place to be fashionable. A coworker of mine claims himself as a strict adherent to the dress style called “Old Navy clothes, as purchased by my mom”. This is what I’m up against.
I desperately need a new pair of jeans. My favourites, an ugly pair of Bluenotes purchased on a whim years ago, have frayed around all the pockets, as if the white outlines around my wallet and cell phone were burned into the denim itself. Their shape is lost, and they are terrible.
And the clothes-buying process is so relentless and ugly. You trudge into a clothing store downtown, the hyper-stylish kind, a fresh wave of chic hitting you in the face as you stand there pigeon-toed in your tattered jacket and Winnipeg Jets t-shirt. A fleet of impeccably groomed salespeople flits about, hoop earrings wobbling side-to-side as they hang things, itemize things. Your plan is to grab the jeans and get the heck outta there. Your face gets warm as it hits you how out of place you are, and you briefly consider turning back, until a girl hooking a shirt on a nearby rack leans over and asks if you need help. Her hair is brushed across her head in a big, round sweeping arc, like she’s wearing a beetle’s carapace on her forehead.
“Looking for jeans.”
“Did you have a particular style, in mind?
“Don’t really know what I’m looking for.” The confession of a hapless feeb.
A rundown of styles, cuts, and stitchings ensues. She shows you to the Wall of Jeans which sits on the far end of the store, underneath framed posters of long-haired people in cowboy hats. She slings six pairs of pants over your shoulder, half of which you hate. This one’s too skaterish. Too tight. Not the right shade of blue. Way too fucking expensive. Too much acid- in the wash. Too evocative of 80s movies. Too budget. The first pair was the best but I didn’t have the heart to tell her up front.
“She will try to sell you two pairs,” you say to yourself in the changeroom while bunching the other five pairs, “and a belt, and shirts.” Pushy mall salespeople make us keenly aware of our own susceptibility. It is a hostile relationship, I think, and one with total disregard for the role of the customer, who is in the store seeking a service, and not to withstand some gruelling rite of passage.
You make a break for the cash register and face the gauntlet of extra deals, two-for-one offers, and reward point programs. Exhausted, you slink off, bag in hand, to get the damn things hemmed.
Repeat.
Fashion is hard work, no doubt. Ideally I will not do this again for five years, but two or three seems normal. I think I lost my interest in fashion when jeans suddenly went from $40 to $80 in just a couple of years, and haven’t returned. Such an arbitrary price. Such an arbitrary industry. At least homeless people won’t look down on my attire anymore, and who knows, I might even cause someone to strike up a conversation with me in French for once.
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(4 comments)
If you want, you can come shop with me while i’m there–i’m an expert and can smell a sale from miles away.
Heh. You feel my pain. Alas, shopping-wise, this is not a good week for me I’m afraid. Thanks for the offer! If you see any bargains, pass them along.
will do–see ya Thurs? (now, off to iron and pack)
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