Tristan & America Get Their Groove Back

It appears that the heav­enly bod­ies have aligned against me in a cos­mic joke.

Let me explain. The trends at Tristan & America this sea­son are actu­ally sen­si­ble, and this is coin­cid­ing with the first time in my life that I’m in debt.

I used to shop at T&A years ago. With ribbed sweaters and sharp silk ties, they always had a clas­sic sense of fash­ion. Around 2002 the style turned into what I can only describe as urban cow­boy. Dress shirts were adorned with tas­seled fringes and pre-worn edges. Mannequins even had the Texan string tie. For the next four years they exper­i­mented, what I’d con­sider a strong euphemism, with dif­fer­ent styles, until this season.

The spring/summer col­lec­tion has gone back to it’s clas­sic roots, with a lovely blend of earthy tones. I like to stay with neu­tral colours — though noth­ing pas­tel — because I don’t like my clothes to make bold state­ments. I pre­fer to hide my per­son­al­ity, what I’m think­ing, and let my actions speak for themselves.

New clothes are def­i­nitely more of a want than a need, so it’s hard for me to jus­tify going fur­ther into debt to add more to an already full closet.

Maybe I’ll wait until it goes on sale at the end of sum­mer. The prob­lem, espe­cially at T&A, is that the small sizes dis­ap­pear within days.

The cos­mic gods, they’re laugh­ing at me.

Khaki Ressurection

The zip­per on my khakis jammed and promptly died at a rather inop­por­tune time (well, I guess there’s never really an oppor­tune time for such a thing). When I brought them in to get fixed, I real­ized that I didn’t have a backup pair.

I only buy khakis at Randy River, the store with the wiiiide-legs that nearly cover my foot with shoes off. Even the Dickies relaxed-fit work-wear series aren’t wide enough, and they’re too stiff for my taste. They also lack a double-reinforced back leg cuff, which I like cause all my pants touch the ground.

The only prob­lem with R2 is that the small­est size they have for pants is 30. As I found out when get­ting mea­sured for the wed­ding, I’m actu­ally a 26 waist, but I pre­fer 28–29 max so I can wear them low on the hips. When they’re 30, I have to cinch up my belt because oth­er­wise they’re really low.

This sea­son, the R2 khakis are all very dark with slight orange tones, and cargo pock­ets or frayed edges. Really not my style. At least I got my cur­rent pair back within a week. Hopefully they’ll sur­vive me until next season.

Fall of the Ben cut

They dis­con­tin­ued the Ben wide-leg cut from Bluenotes. Instead, they’ve come out with a new Walker boot-cut. Off the shelf, the Walker cut really reminds me of the flare they put on girls jeans back when I was in high-school, but I only say this cause I like to give Aaron a hard time about it. They look good on him, but he can pull off anything.

Bluenotes is the only place I buy jeans, and jeans are the only thing I buy at Bluenotes. It’s because of the Ben cut that I go there (and cer­tainly not their pop-culture silk-screened shirts). When I found out they aren’t being made any­more, I had to buy the last three pairs on the rack — two 29s and a pair of 28s.

Oh Ben. You define me.

What will I do for jeans now when they all wear out? For the last cou­ple years I’ve done preppy tops with skater bot­toms, but maybe my style will change by then.

I just real­ized that years of wear­ing school uni­forms, and the asso­ci­ated free­dom from hav­ing to decide what to wear, has made me fash­ion chal­lenged. Anything I wear is hit or miss, and I always have a hard time dis­tin­guish­ing between the two. There are tons of things I just can’t pull off, but not being able to actu­ally see that actu­ally makes such a fact important.