thought of the day: so you can ‘break’ their backs, but can horses break their noses? most of their head is long, hard bone, especially the long plane leading down to the soft, rubbery nose. but what’s under all that jiggly snout, and can it be broken like human noses?
next, i wanted to rant a bit about clothing. you see, i used to love shopping for clothes, and would spend plenty of money in some of the trendier stores for clothing that really spoke my personality visually through textile design. however, most of my favourite spots in the past couple/few years have been drowned by what i consider a slump of really crap fashion.
a&f used to be the top dog, but then all they seemed to carry were pink polo shirts with disfigured collars and jeans clearly rescued from storage lockers where small rodentia likely fed upon the clothes, leaving the “destroyed” remnants to be sold at a premium, as if a&f themselves had put extra labour into intentionally damaging the clothing for design reasons. rubbish. i’ll gladly pay 70 bucks for a pair of jeans, but not 2-3 times that for a pair unsuitable to wear anywhere except the local skating park or under-bridge homeless development.
then there is the amazingly schizophrenic express for men stores which just confuses me on a quarterly basis. i loved the brand back when it was known as structure, when it carried a nice balance of younger, preppy clothing with more sophisticated stuff for when the frat boys had church to attend. ever since being transformed into express for men, it seems obvious to me (and others from those i’ve asked) that the brand has been struggling to find itself and its audience. first, it underwent a dramatic facelift not only in decor, but also its merchandise….to something of a snobby uptown gay chic, not that there’s anything wrong with that! then, about every 3-4 months, their product line’s style and audience seemed to change noticeably… to more everyman, back to a more metrosexual neat, then almost a&f, now it’s onto some grittier rock star vibe, which not surprisingly appeals to me.
but i digress, the reason for this rant is less about fashion trends and more about what’s become a bit symbolic of american culture: big. this past weekend, i decided it was time to revisit my love of exploring cool new clothes, and visited the closest mall of value, where nearly all of my favourite brands are represented with storefronts. by the end of the day, i was an exhausted lump of depressed human.
i’ve decided upon thorough exploration of clothiers that my favourite spots for denim are in fact the two companies i mentioned earlier, and while in the past they’ve had a fairly balanced line of styles and fits… from traditional, to boot cut, to relaxed, to low-rise, etc. however, the trend emerging over the past year to year and a half has been that of ultra slim fit and ass-crack revealing low-rise. now i’m not overweight, but i’ve got more of your traditional superhero dimensions… wide shoulders/chest and large upper leg musculature… a physique apparently well suited for spandex costumes, but not t-shirts and jeans; even at my skinniest–10-15 pounds underweight–my body never has nor ever will fit well into the slim style pant. for american-designed clothes to fit an ever-bigger american population, it’s rather mind-boggling that both companies have pegged 70% or more of their denim to this waif-like euro-model body style, frustratingly so in my case. so of the 3 or 4 more relaxed styles of jeans (total) between the two stores, none really grabbed my attention. no big deal.. i still had shirts to whet my appetite.
then toward the end of my day, i entered a more upscale boutique store, with exotic brands that seemed distinctly foreign, which in many ways is good, for variety’s sake. you know the kind of store; one that sells stuff that is subtly better in certain ways, but priced outrageously and disproportionately higher. a pair of jeans for example might run you 4-500$, and be of slightly better design than your average a&f pair at 65$. after thumbing through the shirts, i found one that almost literally screamed “buy me!”. since my shirts generally run the “medium” size, i grabbed an M and an L size just to be safe. so much for safe. i couldn’t even squeeze my arm into the medium, and while i could get into the large, it was a bit like a frozen pizza in the clear plastic shrink wrap–complete with my nipples like little pepperonis showing through, and had i needed to tie my laces, the seams would have surely split apart. to get the proper fit, i would have needed an XXL, which is simply preposterous…. and depressing.
i’ve never been one too outwardly confident with my body, but that really was a shock to the self-esteem meter, despite knowing that whatever country this shirt came from is probably one whose population is generally more petite than your average american, thus the disparity of sizes. maybe the european ‘medium’ is on the metric system, and ours is the ‘english‘ system? either way, the smug tosser at the rack could have let on that unless my pedigree was decidedly emaciated, that their size chart was graded on a grossly distorted curve, or lack of curves as it were. from what i have heard, many americans travelling abroad–even those of proper fitness–find it difficult if not impossible to find clothes that fit should they want or need them. forget travelling to rome for that suit you’ve always dreamt of, or of finding a souvenir t-shirt in tokyo.
depressed, i threw in the towel, and came home empty-handed to sulk in self-loathing for a bit. after a good night’s sleep, i realised that while i may not agree with more and more of american society and culture, i am who i am, and there is nothing wrong with that. i wear an american medium, and if that’s twice the size of your average parisian man, so be it. and if both american and foreign clothing companies aren’t interested in clothing me, i’ll just have to go about naked, and we’ll quickly see all the above race to remedy that!
listening to:
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring – The Complete Recordings
Howard Shore