The problem with fashion is it’s a moving target. To remain fashionable, you have to regularly invest—the money, obviously, but also the time people-watching, browsing magazines, scanning store racks and checking out online trends.
If you love it, the investment is worthwhile. Who doesn’t love a stranger stopping them in the street to say, “I love your look!”? Many crave social media recognition. Post that selfie showing off that prized vintage find or your haul from Mr. Turk and glory in the uptick in followers and “likes.” If you’re single, you may even be approached by the right kind of guy—confident, professional, indisputably sexy—in a café, gallery or pop-up seaweed tapas restaurant—these are places fashionable folks hang.
It you don’t love it so much, any effort can feel expensive, exhausting and exclusionary. That is, if you even bother to let any of it register beyond the spectacle of the Oscars red carpet and the Met Gala. Events like that are accessible to all because they are so over-the-top. Nobody is going to go on Etsy to track down a knockoff of the meat dress Lady Gaga wore at the 2020 MTV Video Music Awards. Billy Porter’s black tux gown worn at the 2019 Oscars would accidentally(?) get stepped on umpteen times if you wore it while walking any sidewalk or hallway. (It looks like it would serve double duty as a sidewalk sweeper.) And, if you tried to buy online an approximation of Bjork’s swan dress from the 2001 Oscars, your computer would probably crash as a preventative measure.
Most men ascribe to a Clark Gable view of not following fashion: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” (Update in 2024-speak: “Fuck that.”) A football sweatshirt has all-year versatility. (In a heat wave, it can be laundered as the beer tee is pulled from the dresser drawer or, more likely, the heap that takes over the other half of the sofa. This incarnation of Clark Gable doesn’t have a person with whom to share the sofa, go figure.
At least, let the t-shirt promote Bud Light.
As a teen, I wanted to be fashionable. The desire arose from a need. I desperately wanted to be seen. Popular, if I dared to be so honest. I didn’t come close…to popularity, to exuding a fashion sense, to registering. Silver lining: invisibility spared me from bullying. (Seriously! I wasn’t a target because I was never in frame.)
When I began college at Texas Christian University, a decidedly conservative upper-middle class private institution in an even more conservative state, it was the height of the preppy era. I’d been gifted not one, but two copies of The Official Preppy Handbook for high school grad. It was easy to build a wardrobe, if not to stand out, then to fit in. With a full rainbow of Izods and Ralph Lauren polo shirts, a few pairs of khaki pants in varying shades of taupe and a growing collection of topsiders, I was like everybody else, which was a more reasonable aspiration for an introvert than standing out.
I hit my groove not long after moving to L.A. Presumably, preppies, if they still existed in Southern California, kept to Orange County and enclaves near San Diego. I spent a lot of time as a finally out gay man in West Hollywood, but I didn’t conform to the gay looks of the time which all seemed inspired by the mantra, Less Shows More. No, I didn’t have “more” to show. I went with clean, somewhat baggy clothes—“in” at the time among non-gays, at least—solids instead of patterns. Lots of linen, band collars, dark colors (olive, navy) with an occasional go at something brighter. (Wish I hadn’t worn out my peach Girbaud shirt and matching socks.)
Fashion mattered. Neither popularity nor blending in was a factor anymore but, being gay, I absorbed the expectation that I was supposed to have style. Most fashion designers were gay. Every man working at Barney’s, Bloomingdale’s and Fred Segal was gay, right?
Being fashionable was supposed to earn my GAY badge. And also my longtime companion. That was the term of the time for a relationship that evolved beyond “boyfriends.”
My efforts proved, uh, fruitless. No badge, no boyfriend. (In hindsight, “longtime companion” was far too lofty.) But the takeaway was that I made the effort. The biggest letdown once becoming part of the gay community? It might be inflammatory, but I stand by it…Here comes the big reveal:
Gay men are not fashionable.
Yep. I just said that.
I suspect the original notion arose out of a whisper campaign from straight men. “Yo, bro. Watcha doin’ wearing designer clothes? You gay?”
Portraying the gays as fashionistas was the excuse men needed for not giving a damn. A pricey shirt would put a dent in beer money. Fuck that. Why let a new wardrobe get in the way of football tickets and a versatile jersey, allowing you to pretend you’re AIKMAN (a garage sale steal!), BRADY or MAHOMES as you shop for a bigger toolbox at Home Depot?
Deep fake from the dudes. The concept had nothing at all to do with gay men. It was a scheme to validate being a slob, based on an injection of homophobia. (Presumably, metrosexuals were early anti-vaxxers before that got taken over.)
From four decades out of the closet, homo closets aren’t noticeably more stylin’ than straight men’s. Maybe the difference is we use hangers. For every stylish gay man, there are ten who aren’t. I’ve been to gay pubs. I’ve had umpteen coffee dates. I see the photos on Grindr…the ones with clothing. (Less Shows More has never gone out of vogue.)
I don’t know how to classify myself these days. Pushing sixty—that’s so hard to type, but I refuse to lie and acquiesce to the pressures of ageism—I don’t need to give a flip about fashion. What the hell would I do with a badge? What the hell would I do with a boyfriend? I’d only lose both.
The good thing about a good number of decades being in the rearview mirror is that no one expects me to set a style standard. To those of a certain age for whom fashion is still seemingly of vital importance, I am absolutely invisible. I say that with a mix of humph and hurrah. Finally, I can embrace a quote from Marlo Thomas—“Who?” Never mind. Go back to watching your fave TikTok style influencer. I can say to myself and my aging gay brethren, we’re “free to be you and me.”
Happy dance! (I recommend you celebrate that declaration, shimmying to this song. (Maybe stretch first.))
A few days ago, CBC ran a “news” item entitled, “Apparently, ankle socks are the new sign that you’re old, and millennials are done.” (I assume articles like this are offered as easier consumption for readers who don’t care to grasp the reasons for a carbon tax and are bored with “that stuff in Ukraine.”) I clicked because, only two hours prior, I’d bought three new pairs of offending socks. What compelling reason was there for me to surrender my purchase to my nonagenarian neighbor?
Good grief, skinny jeans and the hair with a side part were passé as well.
Cancel culture has gone too far!
But, yes, isn’t fashion constitute the forefather of cancel culture?
Penalty: Oblivion!
The most humbling takeaway—okay, I found it humorous—from the article was Gen Z wrath didn’t even apply to me. They were calling out “30- and 40-somethings.” Okay, then. I’m wearing a pair of my new ankle socks as I write this. #TeamClarkGable! (“Who? What? Um...you should not be hashtagging.”)
Sometimes the fashionistas get it wrong. So glad I never felt the slightest pressure to wear cargo pants, Crocs or ripped jeans which then evolved to jeans with giant knee holes.
The one constant is every fashion trend has an expiration date and an objective indicator for time of death is when the trend is embraced by forty-somethings or teens in Taos or Tulsa. (Oh, Taos. I will miss you for many reasons but not the hair, makeup or clothes.)
I still care about how I look. I don my glasses as I scoot closer to the bathroom mirror, ready to mow down ear hair and rogue eyebrow strands before they curl.
I don’t ever pull out a favorite garment from the dirty clothes hamper. (Once you pass twenty-five, you should have a hamper, guys. Your stinky gym gear does not belong in a hump on the floor, the guest chair or strewn on your otherwise empty (gasp!) bookshelf.) I throw out socks with holes and undies with tears below the waistband. (No corresponding story to warrant saving them as a souvenir.)
I like matchy clothes. (Alas, they don’t make Garanimals in adult sizes.)
Trends for spring/summer '24
according to British GQ.
100% I can't carry off any of them.
I love color, even if it’s not this year’s designated palette. For Spring/Summer 2024, Vogue France is big on “futuristic silver” and “transparency” as in see-through—Aack! Sparkles, too. Not a color but a reason to be glad I’m not twenty-two. I can’t carry off any shirt transparency—retro shout-out to Less Shows More?—any better than I can adopt a French accent.
I care about what I like. What everyone else thinks? Not so much.
Whew. It’s about damn time.
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