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Thursday, October 19, 2006

That certain MWR flair

Wandering through Nordstrom today I considered, not for the first time, how thoroughly I have internalized some rules for choosing clothing—actually, ironclad reasons to rule things out—and how relatively easy shopping for certain articles becomes when 90% of everything I see is excluded from consideration. All of these rules are the result of thoughtful reflection, bitter experience or some combination thereof. A sampling:
  • No shirts with button-down collars. The look is a little fusty. It's less versatile than the plain-point style, and paradoxically more constrained yet less formal.

  • No clothing with visible labels. There was plenty of time for that in high school ("Why, yes, Hana Mandlikova does wear these fine shirts . . . but so does Vilas."). I used to have a Patagonia exception to this rule, and maybe I still do for the right garment. Certain on-seam labels can be removed with care and a knife.

  • No shirt buttons with writing on them. Like C-3PO with Jawas, I can't abide them. Amazing how easy this makes some decisions. I've yet to find even a polo shirt that seemed special enough to warrant swapping out the buttons.

  • Only black leather goods. There is only one shade of black leather, so this is largely just a practical step. If you standardize on black, you won't have to worry about whether that brown belt is close enough in hue to those brown shoes, and you won't have to agonize over whether or not you look silly wearing a black leather jacket with brown shoes.

  • None of those shoes with very rounded toes. I think they are unflattering and silly looking.

  • No shoes with excessive ornamentation. This is what a proper loafer should look like (not that I wear a lot of loafers). The worst is multiple levels of ornamentation on the same shoe. Yuck.

  • Prejudices. At some point I decided that Kenneth Cole shoes looked cheap (don't even start with something like Rockports). Ergo, until recently I had never even set foot in their store. Columbia Sportswear: they took a label that looks like it should be on the inside and put it on the outside. No dice. There are other examples.

  • Only solid-color socks. What does it say about you if you are trying to make a statement with your socks? And if ever you should get a second chance to make a first impression, I promise it will have nothing to do with fancy or clever socks.

  • I think I could go on . . . let's see: no knit or elastic paired with leather . . . a million other shoe rules . . . .


posted at 12:43 AM

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