Since we were high school students and he was a high school teacher, naturally the class thought this was about the lamest fashion choice ever. It was the '80s! Why didn't the old guy buy some new clothes? Didn't he know about the mall? Didn't he know about Chess King?
OK, truthfully few of us actually shopped at Chess King, I just put that reference in there so I could use that amazing ad. Man, look at that dude in his Chess King clothes and Walkman all ready to fight dragons in the future! And after that chick from the Bangles uses her knife on the future dragon, they're totally gonna do it!
Anyway, I was reflecting on this lame-o a couple weeks ago when I realized that he was sort of right, and not just because now I'm proabably only a couple years younger than that fossil was at the time.
Now I'm not advocating wearing the exact same thing every day, that's still sort of lame. Unless of course you have a job or heist where you get to wear one of those bad-ass Bottle Rocket/Devo jumpsuits every day.
But the more I reflected, the more I realized how hard it is to find a picture of me from my mid to late twenties where I'm not wearing black jeans, these awesome brown wingtips I bought for 3 bucks in Atlanta and a button down shirt in some shade of yellow, orange or green.
Actually, I tend to avoid cameras like Nosferatu avoids sunlight, so it's fairly hard to find photographs of me from that period anyway.
After that I went through my guyabera phase which was kickstarted when my mom unloaded all my dad's shirts on me without his knowledge. After retiring, Dad pretty much wears overalls 24/7 anyway, and I think my mom realized that my borderline OCD personality would cause me to gradually phase out the yellow shirts, which for some reason my family really hated.
Most of my guyaberas are missing buttons or stitching now, or have that weird grease/soot from the grill, so I've hesitantly been moving into striped polo shirts, but I'm not sure if this will be another 5 year fashion phase or just a quick spring/summer detour.
Although the more I look at that ad, the more I'm thinking of bringing back the Chess King look.
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2 comments:
The first time I remember coming across this dress-the-same-everyday concept was Jeff Goldlum in "The Fly". At the time, I thought his system was kinda cool, and I still do. Of course, you're always going to look classier wearing suits everyday as opposed to the ususal jeans and tshirt combo.
On the minus side, if I recall, those suits were all complimented by red skinny ties. It WAS 1986, after all. Anybody who wants to adopt this sytem for the oughts may have to fatten those ties up.
If you search Google Images for "Chess King Clothing," your blog is now in the top ten results. Awesome.
But don't get too full of yourself. If you search Google for "David Carradine Buffalo Shot," I'm number one.
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