Saturday, March 17, 2007
The Trouser is Dead; Long Live the Trouser
I just bought two pairs of trousers. Unremarkable, you might think, but no. These are the first trousers I have bought in years that were not part of a suit and I bought them because of an old episode of Top Gear. I had become lost in a wilderness of jeans, interrupted only by occasional outcrops of suits. Then I found myself watching this ancient TG and I saw not the cars but three middle-aged men all dressed the same: jackets, untucked-in shirts (perhaps not Clarkson) and jeans, unstructured modern ones intended only for the young, whose still intact bodies require no expression or concealment in structured tailoring - witness the boyfriend trouser phenomenon. The spectacle was made even more grotesque by the show's penchant for low camera angles that make the hapless trio look like random piles of fabric. Trousers it is, I thought, and, like Captain Picard, I made it so.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Ah, trousers. Funnily enough I bought a pair of pleated grey 'slacks' (Brooke's Brothers) the other day. I feel very grown up in them (normally not bothering with anything other than jeans, suits and a very long black cape) but Mrs Dark hates them. Says I look like an elderly QC at a birthday party. Agree about the 'Top Gear' effect. Very crumpled.
ReplyDeleteClearly you are a man of action and swift decision, Bryan.
ReplyDeleteI would like to say something profound about modernism, literature and a global monoculture in the post below, but my brain is telling me to go for a crafty forty winks instead.
Nothing swift about it Brit. I have been living in a land of jeans for far too long. Love the elderly QC, Dark, exactly what the wrong trouser can do to a man.
ReplyDeleteOne meets so few self deprecatingly self righteous people its hard to know if they are funny or not .
ReplyDeleteJeans always go through a bad patch- before you know it they're cool again. Iconicized from Clarkson to Kurt Cobain-jeans in the end triumph over khakhis and other conformist shite.
ReplyDeleteI've been wondering that myself Newmania. Seriously. Any persona can seem hateful, this one included.
ReplyDeleteAh you've seen the light at last! I, on the other hand, recently took a lurch for the dark, from trouser to jean. Having long maintained that no gentleman over 40 should go near 'jeans', I decided an exception cld perhaps be made for a scissor-legged and paunchless specimen like myself. What's worse, I bought the things in Gap, despite a solemn vow never to set foot in that accursed place. In mitigation, I can only say that they are nedle cord - denim might still be a step too far - and they look pretty damn fine. Also I see my sharpened leg profile is now pretty much in line with that enjoined on us young dudes this season by the excellent So London magazine.
ReplyDeleteN.Ige
The trouser is dead; long live the trouser snake.
ReplyDelete