We Wear It Well

We Wear it… well?

The finest clothing made is a person’s skin,
but, of course, society demands something more than this’
Mark Twain

I am sure that most of us can recount with some degree of accuracy the tale of Snow White, resplendent with the dwarves, the wicked queen, and the famed question

“Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

We all have been exposed to that story from a young age, its kiddy fodder, a tale that is pretty much mandatory ingestion for any kid who expects to collect £200 and pass go upon reaching the age of 7 or 8… if you haven't heard or read Snow White, or seen the movie / Video / LD / VCD / or DVD you either haven't left primary school, or haven't entered it yet.

We all know the concept of mirrors; we know that they work, know where to buy them, perhaps even know the physics of how a mirror successfully produces a real yet transposed image of the reflected article. We know these things.

Why is it then, in households the world over, rich and poor, educated and not, that mirrors don't seem to work anymore? They can’t be operative, can they, or people wouldn't go out looking the way they do? The wearing of clothes isn't so difficult a thing to get one’s head around when you think about it. There are, albeit unwritten perhaps, but nonetheless, there are some basic rules that we can just see, with our own two eyes, about what clothes work, on whom, in what circumstances, and coordinated with what.

There are kids’ games where, as a primary school grader, we were given the task of matching the head and hair to the clothed torso and clothed legs and waist. We all managed to get this right unless we decided that a deep sea diver would look much better with the legs of a Parisian Can Can dancer (admit it, we all did those silly transpositions, and we all laughed at them as kids). It is quite unfortunate that we are no longer kids, and that similarly ridiculous getups are still often preferred - except this time it’s other people who are laughing, AT US!

Why oh why do fashion designers keep coming up with clothing ideas and thus fashion trends that are singularly suited, and can look great, on overly svelte people alone? There’s no problem with this of course, provided that men and women with figures that are ill suited to these outfits are prohibited from buying them. There should be laws in this regard.

It could be exploited by fashion houses the world over “buy our crop top if you are licensed to do so” or “our low cut jeans are restricted R unless you have the hips, backside and abs to carry it”.

That would be better, wouldn't it? The fitness fanatics would have something else to strive for, it could become elitist for those brand slaves out there, and none but the more suitably figured men and ladies could be seen out sporting these cuts… way more pleasurable.
Now we know that women are not any more or any less optically challenged than men, don’t we?

Why is it then that many of them choose to wear clothing that is singularly ill suited for that person, and as an extension of their choice, unsuitable for anyone in the near vicinity, anyone who even knows someone in their near vicinity, or indeed the human race at large? Come on girls, it isn't that difficult. It’s the shiny reflective thing where you live, which the wicked queen and Alice talked about when you were a kid… Please, please, oh please stand in front of it and SEE FOR YOURSELF.

And for the love of God don’t ask your male partner for his opinion. I mean, really! What do you think he’s going too say?
“Well honey, it doesn’t look too bad. It kind of reminds me of the first time I ever made love to a girl.”
“You mean it makes you feel sexy? I look sexy?”
“No – I feel very apprehensive, I am afraid of failure and ridicule, and I am wondering if perhaps this isn’t a very good idea after all.”

Wake up girls! Most men aren’t going to tell you the truth about how you look. You don’t want to hear it, anyway… honestly. Plus, the ensuing carnage isn’t worth anticipating or inviting from our perspective, so we say what you want to hear and pray that no one in the universe who has even as much as laid eyes on us in our life time, will be encountered when you go out with us, looking the way you do. Men are going to lie to you, simple as that.

They won’t tell you that in those low cut jeans they can’t hear traffic when you walk because your arse cheeks are being squeezed, abrading repeatedly and kind of rhythmically, and sound like they are effectively applauding at the last night of the Proms. No man will tell you that.
No man will congratulate you in wearing low cut jeans because if his right hand is holding shopping, he has a Cornetto ice cream cone in his left hand, and he needs to get out his car keys, your butt cheeks in low cut jeans have provided the perfect temporary ice cream cone stand, even though you are in an upright position.

No man will view, or dismiss for that matter, fat layers in low cut jeans or crop tops as mere love handles. They may tell you they do, but they definitely won’t. Love handles we can cope with, but industrial strength handles, the size of which George W Bush would need in order for him to get a handle on eloquent speaking, are stretching the threshold girls.

No man is going to look at your crop top and ask you if this type of clothing is, despite being ok on you, designed purely for a different size or shape of person… Persons such as Olympiads, people with eating disorders, or successful post liposuction patients, for example. They aren’t going to ask that question.

A further consideration when looking towards low cut jeans or crop tops is that the shape and appearance they have whilst you’re standing, is materially different from the look they create when you sit down. They are universes apart, in fact. Put a god damned chair in front of the mirror and check it out girls.

Then you will know why we aren’t hungry whilst at lunch with you and don’t want coffee or don’t want to consider even one short, sharp, fast, respite where you being in a seated position is a prerequisite.

It also isn't reasonable for any person with stretch marks to wear low cut jeans or crop tops. It isn't reasonable for any person with post birth or post slimming loose skin to wear crop tops either. You may partially get away with it when you are standing, but when you are seated? Men know what an over ripe Clementine orange’s skin looks like, as we’ve seen them since childhood via the leftovers after Xmas.

This look isn't endearing girls, even on an orange, and you think this is a more enamouring look when your midriff has this loose rippled effect? If men want waves for thrills girls, they will take up surfing.

And if you are a tad challenged in the mass department, if your bathroom scales utter a groan when you have placed just the first foot on, when your ideal weight in pounds is now closer to your weight in Kilos, when you start removing not only clothing but jewellery as well pre weighing, AND you take care of ablutions pre weighing, then don't wear these body hugging cropped and low cut clothes, PLEASE.

Some of us may see you after we have recently eaten - and that just isn't fair.

There should be some sort of BMI (Body Mass Index) indicator on clothing, as it appears we no longer understand what clothes sizes actually mean. It seems we need a new indexing system for clothes of some kind, which allows people to lose all past frames of reference for what clothes size they were (and, for many, apparently still think they are).

What’s with all this nostalgia? We don't get nostalgic about wars, disease et al, do we? So why is it that beyond a certain clothes size, we lose the ability to either count or add upwards? This is very simple mathematics, isn’t it? With clothes sizes, there are no provisions for anything other than whole numbers, and when referencing the equation between body and clothes sizes, the resultant answer should invariably be 1.
It shouldn’t be 0 point something, 1 point something, nor there be any fractions involved.
At the end of the day, a size 10 dress divided by a size 10 body equals 1… and one probably hell of a good look if the cutting is half decent. Size 12 into Size 10 doesn’t go, now does it? Nor do men’s large into medium or 40 inch waist into 36 inches divide with an outcome of ‘1’ either.

Clothes have sizes written on them because clothes come in different sizes… to fit people of different sizes. And people become different sizes, don’t they, for a variety of reasons.
Clothes sizes on labels must be the greatest act of hypnosis since money was invented.

How do we know that a 10 pound note is worth ten pounds? According to whom? It’s just generally accepted, isn’t it?
“Please pay the Bearer the Sum of…”
If the Bank of England is that respected and credible, maybe they can feature on garment labels? Clothes sizes should have some similar statement…

“Please SLAY the WEARER if, upon wearing this garment, you may offend others; you shouldn’t be wearing it and all civil rights and currency will be forfeit upon entering a public place wearing this garment, assuming you survive”.

People buy clothes often in the size that some sadist in their subconscious says is about right for them. What is ‘about right’, anyway? ‘About right’ is more often than not ‘about wrong’ if you ask me. Why is this sadistic advisor oblivious to time and change?
The result is that people are constantly buying and going around in clothes that are singularly sized for a space in their memory, yet that person of memorial reference is unfortunately in a different space / time continuum, is maybe a different person altogether, and in some cases, is maybe even a different species. How can one not notice this? Those mirrors simply can’t be working, can they?

People don’t grow into clothes once you are past adolescence and your older brother / sister has left home. And people don’t shrink into them unless under the most extreme of circumstances, so why are these sizing decisions being made? Who is providing input, to whom, and on what basis when clothes are being ‘fitted’.

Instead of these advisors creating the greatest work of fiction since corporate vision statements began to include the statement ‘People are our greatest asset’, wouldn’t it be great if people actually told the truth?
“Wow, that’s a nice crop top!”
“Thank you… does it look really good?”
“Potentially, yes. I presume there is a history of irreversible eating disorders in your family which usually starts around your current age then?”
A clue, Sherlock!

There are many analogies and truisms that may be useful to reflect upon in this regard….
It’s very difficult to get toothpaste back into a tube, isn’t it? What do you do with the mousse or hair gel when you have squeezed out too much of it? Can you put it back? Moreover, try getting a reasonably inflated balloon, and squeeze it into an hourglass shape. Doesn’t work, does it? The part you squeeze emerges elsewhere and not in the exact proportion you would actually want. And some people believe that girdles actually work? In the main?

Sure women and men can “sculpt their shape” into something that is closer to the shape they want. But meanwhile, whilst wearing a monstrosity like that, all your organs are being compressed and compacted to the rhythm of what ever movement you are engaged in at the time. And that’s just so comfortable, huh? Not.

This is all about our human ability to misunderstand basic physics, I am sure. We know that a gas is a substance that expands indefinitely to fill a space or container. We equally know that elasticity is a measure of how an object under pressure can be stretched and still return to its original dynamics. I guess people perhaps think they will futuristically become gaseous, or their purchased clothes will become infinitely elastic, and so when selecting clothes, they just figure they’ll either expand into them indefinitely or the clothes will do likewise to accommodate them.

But these concepts just do not work. It seems people are unaccustomed with making the distinction between attire, and a tyre (or several). People in clothes that don’t fit are like the toothpaste, mousse or gel… you just can’t get it back into the container, so it is totally out of place, makes a mess generally, there are spare loose substances that really don’t belong anywhere and look pretty awful unless you get rid of them. Buying tighter or ill fitting clothes won’t get rid of them… most of the time clothes of this ilk, either through size, cut or design, are effectively highlighting and accentuating all you want to be hidden. If you want a decent rule of thumb, it’s this…

“Clothes should be comfortable enough so as not to leave reminders where they have fit on your skin, after you gotten undressed. You’re an adult. You don’t need apparel placement cues.”

Men are no better. In fact, men are usually much worse.

Men do not understand the concept of stripes at all. If you are on the ‘chubby’ side, then stripes can work in your favour, or, shape wise at least, render you pretty much naked.
An overweight person wearing horizontal stripes is a formula for looking even wider than you actually are. It is as plain as the nose on your face. Then again, you can’t see the nose on your face, not without a mirror, and the mirrors aren’t working, are they?

Some of the clothing decisions men make totally baffle me. When it comes to business attire, this is exceptionally true. It seems we, literally, get dressed in the dark half the time. It isn’t that difficult to lay a tie on top of a shirt and see if the combination of colours and patterns works. This isn’t hard to do, and your own eyes just tell you if it works or not. It isn’t just about whether a shirt / tie combination works, either. It has to match the jacket too. It is possible to lay the tie on the shirt and put them both inside a suit jacket… this will tell you all you need to know.

This shirt / tie matching is totally lost on many men in business, or so it seems. I think a lot of it has to do with where their shirts and ties come from. Who buys them, and in what way?
Many guys at Xmas are given shirts and ties as gifts, and these gifts are given in good faith, no doubt. When the tie enters the clothing collection, it often must be apparent to them that no shirt they own, have ever owned, or ever will own, matches the tie they have been given. Surely this is true? So why do they end up wearing them then?

And as for suits? It seems guys haven’t picked up on the concept of cutting at all, and this is very important. They probably think cutting is something hacked out of a newspaper or taken from a plant in their garden, which isn’t entirely helpful. Men not only come in different sizes, but shapes as well. There’s all the difference in the world between being straight, pear shaped, ruptured pear shaped, inverted pear shaped, etc.

Suits just don’t accommodate all of those different shapes in one style and cut. How can men not notice this? Half the time men wear suits to the office and it is blatantly obvious that the cut just doesn’t work for them. A jacket that is the wrong fit for a man hides nothing. It sticks out like the dog’s proverbials. The suit either just drapes off them, or is effectively wool Clingfilm, and looks awful… how can you not know? Plus, if one is outside, a strong wind will accentuate all of this poor cutting by a factor of at least 10 times. An ill fitting suit instantly gets transformed by a strong wind into either a shroud, or a hang glider.

Another thing that constantly amuses me is the number of men who think that a suit, once the trousers have worn out, automatically converts into a sports coat or blazer. It doesn’t. So many men end up then continuing to wear a jacket that quite obviously used to belong to a pair of trousers, but the trousers are missing. People are viewing this look thinking

‘I wonder what happened to the trousers? Did they get tired? Are they dead?’

Why do guys not realise that trousers wear out before the jacket in a suit? How can they not know this? Half the time when the suit is sent to the dry cleaners, the jacket doesn’t need cleaning… a tad of touching up, pressing, reshaping perhaps, but not cleaning. Surely it would be sensible to buy extra trousers if you buy a suit???

Quite often in previous corporate roles, I would have the occasion to dress formally at a black tie event of one sort or another. Men are either comfortable in putting together formal dress, or they are not. There appears to be no middle ground. Men who are not used to the formal attire tend to be noticeable.

Weddings are particularly a place where you can easily witness this. Sure the groom is in a tuxedo and looks the part… he bought a new tuxedo and probably was fitted for it. But why are his supporting cast asked to participate in the same style of dressing, when they have no clue, and probably no desire, to wear this type of clothing. A hired tuxedo usually looks like a hired tuxedo.

And if you do hire a tuxedo, you cannot wear ordinary shoes with it. You can’t. If the shoes are not highly polished, the look won’t work and the attendees will spend half the day looking at your feet. Ideally a tuxedo calls for patent leather shoes.

I have seen wedding photographs where black tie outfitted guests are sporting the latest shoe accompaniments, from penny loafers, to Dr Martin’s airwear shoes. How can anyone wear a black tie outfit, hired or not, with Dr Martin’s shoes? What the hell is that about? What is this person thinking? These are industrial shoes (that some people wear as casual as well).
How can this be explained? What role is this person undertaking in this attire? Is he going to formally demolish a building? Formally kick in the heads of opposing soccer club’s fans?

What is it with guys and shoes anyway? They have no problem at all paying top dollar for the latest and greatest sports shoes, but shoes for business? Nah – cheap and cheerful.
This is nuts. Good shoes last. They last for years and years with a bit of effort.

I have Church’s business wingtips that are almost fifteen years old and they still are in perfect condition. Sure you have to look after them, but if you do, they last… they don’t disintegrate to coincide with next seasons fashion collection, that’s for sure. It may be a pain to use lighter fluid and set fire to the shoes to strip off the polish and get down to the bare leather. It then may take effort to replace the polish evenly and restore the shoes to their showroom splendour. But when you have done that, you again have great looking shoes that are worth
hundreds of pounds, again, and again, and again. You get fabulous quality and actually get to keep it – this is very cool. But if you buy cheap shoes, you get cheap looking shoes that last five minutes… where is the sense in that?

Then there are the other suit accompaniments. How come women never seem to be able to leave their house wearing odd coloured stockings (OK – so tights help in this regard)? Yet men seem to regularly be able to wear odd socks. How does this happen? And black shoes go with black belts, brown shoes with brown belts. This isn’t hard to get your head around, yet men manage to regularly mess this up.

Go to a casual environment and many men lose the plot completely. There isn’t a business uniform to hang their hat and coat on anymore, so anything goes potentially, and it seemingly does too. That same shirt / tie matching issue reappears… for the entire clothing worn in casual environments. And if that’s not a problem in itself, various events get labelled as to the kind of attire that should be worn… Morning, Black Tie, Formal, Cocktail, Business, Lounge Suit, Smart Casual, Sports Casual, Casual are but a few of the descriptors used to enlighten people as to what type of attire will be suitable for an event. Women seem to figure this out – they pick up the phone and start asking every single attendee whom they know what they are wearing to the event.

Guys don’t do this… they have preconceived ideas about what these descriptors actually mean…
Morning - Someone died and we have to mourn? – Black
Black tie - tuxedo, or someone else died – check first
Formal - This could be black tie, but a dark suit is safer
Cocktail - Hmm… pretty long legged waitresses, can’t wait
Business - Same day to day crap I normally wear to office
Lounge - Velvet jacket – Liberace like
Smart Cas - Blazer and trousers (Alan Partridge?)
Sports Cas - Alan Partridge… AH HA !
Casual - Nike or Adidas everything


Not all guys have these preconceived ideas, but usually at each event there are a few that have no clue as to the code.

Women are smart in this area. They know that the person who wrote the invitations hasn’t got a clue about the codes either, and so rather than ring that person, and risk embarrassment, they and their friends / associates agree amongst themselves what their code will be – safety in numbers. Women know that even if you are dressed inappropriately at an event, you can get away with it if there are enough people similarly dressed to you.

I attended a New Year ball at the Aberdeen Marina Club in Hong Kong a few years back. The theme was the roaring twenties, and the invitation explicitly said that it was better to theme dress than purely wear formal black tie attire. I figured it would be fun to join that crowd dressed as a Chicago gangster, so sure enough I wore a pinstripe dark suit, very soft paisley silk tie, gangster style trilby hat and spats. I left home and arrived at the venue, and met up with all of our friends.

There were about 600 people there that night. 300 women in cocktail dresses (many of which had those tassels at the bottom, how very ‘Charlestonesque’). There were 299 men in black tie attire. And then there was me.

I had followed the instructions to a tee, and looked like the biggest plonker this side of ‘New York, Paris and Peckham’.

If only I had phoned a friend. But, men don’t make those phone calls, so when you see a man in the room that looks about as good a fit as an American emcee at an Al Qaeda conference, you can surmise he will fit into one of the following categories…


He is beyond help
He is single, lives with parents and further beyond help
He has a wife who hates him and getting divorced
He has a wife who effectively hates him, still enjoys his earnings, but isn’t ready to leave him yet… so his dress sense is future legal ammunition for her

Many men, and I don’t think I am one of them, (ah, the delusion is nurtured further), apparently need a woman’s input as to what the man should wear. This is kind of funny, especially when their mirrors aren’t working half the time.

Women have developed interesting ways in communicating with their partners when it comes to the clothes men wear, or so it seems…
“Ok, very funny, now what are you really going to wear?”
or
“Surely you are not going to wear that, are you?”
These questions have massive implied meanings. And you can’t make a joke out of it either by replying
“Yes I am, and don’t call me Shirley.”

Basically, they aren’t questions at all… they are statements intrinsically connected to whether you get to stay in the relationship or get to go to the event… accompanied by her.
The real message is “I didn’t know you still had those clothes… they were hideous the first time around… was the Salvation Army closed?”

This is not a good message for any guy to receive – assuming they actually receive it. There are two choices of action here… either ask her for advice, or call the Samaritans. If you ask her what she thinks would look good on you, then you are safe in the knowledge that at the event there’s at least one person who has to be on your side… both during and after the event. This may well be advantageous, as having her on your side is a mighty fine thing.

If you phone the Samaritans, well it’s probably pointless. If the event is of any size, then one in three of the other guys attending the event are already speaking to them – the line will be engaged.

It isn’t just during business or more formal events where men are seemingly totally oblivious to how they look.

Golf is a sport that apparently has a uniform attached to it… a bizarre uniform much of the time. Visit any golf club and you’ll recognise that overweight men believe that they can continue to wear the same waste size whilst their belts take on the goal of becoming a piece of high tensile suspension apparatus. If your stomach gets bigger guys, so does your waist. That means your trousers or shorts need to be bigger.
Creating a new cut of pants by having the backside covered suitably and then having the front waistband in a low slung position to support a virtual abdominal basketball just above knee level isn’t a particularly good look guys.

You just look massively herniated at best. Plus your golf swing looks like a camel having a drink, at least from a postural perspective.

I can only imagine your golf game will suffer… what a waist.