I Feel Pretty, Oh so Pretty

I was hipped to this great article from the NYT concerning men my age (20's and 30's) dressing much nicer than they used to, and more to the point, dressing much nicer than their fathers did.  They cite this as being a sort of rejection of the casual Friday lifestyle, a way of rebelling against their fathers.  As a tie-wearing guy who takes a great deal of pride in stepping out well-groomed, well-dressed, and always in damn shiny shoes, this article made me prick up my ears and pass it along. 

Why go to all the trouble of shaving every day, moisturizing every night, keeping my shirts neat and wrinkle-free, and owning more ties than socks?  The number one reason is that girls like it.  I look good in a suit - everyone does - a well tailored suit is customized to your build and accentuates your best features. It tells the world that when you got out of bed, you decided to to go through a little extra effort just so you wouldn't disgust all around you by showing up in a ripped T-shirt and sweatpants, both stained with liberal smears of nacho cheese. 

When you go out looking good, you are telling the world that you have arrived, or at least are ready to get underway.  A suit lends you confidence because a suit is the uniform of authority.  Many men's sartorial traditions have their roots in military dress, and not the modern work-a-day, remote-control robot-murder army:  the cavalry army, the officer's army, the gentleman's army.  These traditions carried over to the professional world, and so suit = boss, suit = power, suit = in control.

The article from the NYT is spot on in pointing out that it was this mode of dress that our fathers, the boomers, rejected.  They force-fed themselves this sort of anti-establishment faux egalitarianism, convinced themselves that style was effeminate, and started shlubbing to work in khakis and dockers.  I don't know what the big deal was - wanting to look more workmanlike?  Wanting to look like you weren't part of "the system?"  I don't know - knowing would mean that I want to hear a whole load of excuses that grown men have made for dressing like children.

Men of my generation were taught that that was how you were supposed to dress, and in that way we were initiated into the Cult of Blah. But as the guarantees and givens of society started slipping away from us (house, car, job, education), we started to see that membership had lost its privileges, and so our own mod revolution has begun.

Those of us who embrace style, fledgling as many of us are (myself included - financial circumstance dictates that I only go well dressed 4 days a week), do not want to dress like our fathers because we want to be more.  Indeed, those like myself from working class families don't want to dress like our grandfathers either.

No, we are dressing like our grandfather's bosses.  Certain whiskey ads would have you believe our fathers were swinging hip cats - they were not. These are the people who brought you Woodstock, Wal-Mart, and the SUV.  They were the people who roundly rejected the trappings of Western aristocracy and sought to knock it down.

Well now they have it - they've made a good, if quixotic, run and wound up in the suburbs, upside-down on their homes with a titanic collection of disposable plastic crap.

So those of us who want nothing to do with that sort of lifestyle have picked up the uniform of the old elite, the aristocracy, the upper class, and this makes for a complex fashion statement.

As we take up these clothes, so too do we say that we are embracing a way of life, one which honors authority and discipline (our fathers, who so roundly rejected authority, are hard pressed to in turn earn what they themselves would not give over) - we are in fact ready to take our turn holding the reins of empire.  We are ready to push the whole cultural anomaly of the last 60 years out of the way.


But even as we say that we are ready to pick up the old mantel of command, we are well served to remember that the gentrified social order fell out of fashion in large part due to its own fatal flaws - racist, misogynistic, and exclusive, "the system" worked so well for so few that its cruelty and avarice became inexcusable and many would-be gentlemen refused to play along.

So to my fellow aspirants in the order of silk-and-wool, let's not be silly about our suits.  In re-embracing these fashions, so too do we lend lip service to the lifestyle that spawned them:  martinis and cigars, big business, leisure and gentle pursuits, yes, but also oppression, cruelty, and unwavering devotion to old flags and false morals.  Let us move forward into a more just and equitable gentle persons club.  Let us be more tolerant, more enlightened, and more generous than our great and genteel forebears while still looking just as good.