I was in Washington, D.C. recently on a family vacation. At the Smithsonian American History Museum we saw a display of large model ships. A black woman was pointing out the cargo hold in one of the ships to her daughter, telling her about how slaves were transported in the ships and how terribly human beings treated fellow human beings. Next to them, not five feet away, and without any apparent awareness of the Gulag or a wall people risked being shot to climb over, an ignorantly hip white boy-man of about 19 was wearing this shirt.

Tags: fashion & clothing, politics & government by Scott Stein
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The local KMart store in my area has closed, it has apparently been there in Brooklawn, New Jersey for over thirty years. It has definitely been there for as long as I remember. And for some odd reason, I am bothered and saddened by this. I have this weird nostalgia/comfort zone thing where I hate to see businesses go under, and especially something that has been there forever. I almost had a stroke when the restaurant my grandfather owned for over 50 years (and that I basically grew up in) was getting gutted by the newest owners. My relief came when I called my grandmother to tell her and she said “things change Marty”, which is ironic because her shore house has not changed once in my 34 years of life! [Read more →]

Tags: fashion & clothing, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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I was struck with déjà vu the other day when in a local Kohl’s I spied a rack of ‘Member’s Only’ jackets. I hadn’t seen one in years. My last memories of the MO jacket were of my dad wearing his long after it fell out of fashion. For those unfamiliar with the iconic 1980s windbreaker, it was the American fashion industry’s answer to the question: what does one wear to a Cold War? Its military styling — it’s cut like a bomber jacket, complete with epaulettes and a front label resembling a military ribbon — was highly symbolic of Reagan-era cold warrior mentality. No other piece of men’s fashion better commodified U.S. foreign policy or made a clearer statement of where its wearer stood versus the Evil Empire. We were at war and in need of proper attire; and in hindsight it was a war worth having. Being a member of a ‘Member’s Only’ club that helped bring down the wall is something in which to take pride.

I don’t know how well the MO jacket is selling these days. Poorly, I hope. [Read more →]

Tags: fashion & clothing, terror & war by Jay Baldwin
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I dig Wal-Mart. As much as people hate on Wal-Mart, I go for therapeutic reasons. I have been down in the dumps lately — work has been busy, money is tight, and I have spotted a few grays in my precious golden locks. But instead of going to a shrink to help me work out the kinks, I just jump in the car and go to my local Wal-Mart to make myself feel better. I cannot imagine what it costs for a session in some professional’s office to help you sort yourself out, but at Wal-Mart it’s free. (Well, it was $15.67 for the cashews, apple juice, Willie Nelson clearance priced T-Shirt, and pack of gum.) Once again, Wal-Mart has saved a consumer his hard-earned pocket change. [Read more →]

Tags: all work, fashion & clothing, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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Tags: fashion & clothing, his & hers by Glenn Giangrande
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Pedophiles across the UK today mourned the loss of the Paedo bikini as it was removed from the shelves of discount clothing store Primark. Padded bikini tops for kids as young as seven? Really? That’s just disgusting. What is wrong with people? Why would anyone in their right mind want to sexualize a child by helping them appear busty at the age of seven? SEVEN! I’m glad Primark succumbed to the pressure to remove the bikinis, but really? How about a knee to the nuts of the company that manufactured them in the first place? Oh, to be a fly on the wall of the conference room where these sick bastards brainstormed ways to market this disgusting product. I wonder how many of them, if any, have daughters. Douche bags.

Tags: family & parenting, fashion & clothing by Jaclyn Roth
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I was sitting around (in Africa still) having yet another great conversation with a friend of mine, Rob. It went something like this (any facts I get wrong are a result of my faulty memory and not a lie on Rob’s part):

Rob: “So I noticed you’re wearing a Matix T-shirt”

Me: “Yeah. Funny thing is, I don’t know where I got it. I didn’t buy it. And someone, I don’t know whom, sent it to me. But I liked it and so I’m wearing it. Why? Who are they?”

Rob: “Every pair of pants I own are made by Matix. They are a great grassroots company that I used to work for. I trust them.” [Read more →]

Tags: fashion & clothing, money by Jeffrey Maryak
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And so The Itchy and Scratchy Show goes on for at least another week. The Eagles playoff victory over the New York Giants today guarantees that I will be both uncomfortable and unsightly at least until next weekend, pending the outcome of the NFC Championship game between the Eagles and Cardinals. At least until then, and possibly longer, I will be wearing my Eagles victory beard, as shaggy a shaggy dog story about this football season as ever there was to tell. Or as Fox NFL pregame court jester Frank Caliendo (playing Tony Soprano) said before kickoff yesterday, “Did you notice that Andy Reid is growing a beard on one of his chins?” I first noticed the reddish stubble on Reid’s chinny-chin-chins during that unbelievable Sunday when the Eagles came back from a fourth-and-fuhgeddaboutit chance to make the playoffs and then proceeded to blow out the Cowboys. It was during the fourth quarter of that sweet stomping of Dallas that I declared (unfortunately in front of witnesses at a Grays Ferry bar called the Krunch Inn), “I’m not going to shave until the Eagles lose.”

Growing a beard is a rite of passage that most guys go through at least once in their lives. Usually with disappointment the first time out in their late teens or early 20′s. There are those “patches” issues to contend with. That’s where the first-time beard grows luxuriantly in certain places and barely at all in others. The net effect is that the young man’s beard comes in looking like a dogleg par four complete with sand traps on the back nine at Cobbs Creek. That’s when he discovers that mom’s mascara isn’t just for girls anymore. It’s the beard equivalent of a comb over and it fools no one. In later years, say in his early 40′s, a man who decides to grow a beard discovers to his amusement that gray hair shows up in his face hair before his head hair. This gives him his first taste of youthful salt-and-pepper maturity, which gets old real quick. And then there is the man of a certain age, say a man of about my age, who when he decides to grow a victory beard to support his team in the NFL playoffs, learns that his formerly salt and pepper beard is now nothing but a foaming white sea with occasional lonely dark flecks resembling lifeboats after a ship wreck.

This is the beard I see when I look in the mirror. It makes me look like a hobo hunched over a gurgling crackling cauldron in some train yard. The only thing worse than how it looks is how it feels. What is it that makes me think that wearing such a hideous hood ornament will help the Eagles win a Superbowl? What do I know that Andy Reid doesn’t? Apparently not a gosh darn thing.

Tags: fashion & clothing, sports by Clark DeLeon
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I have wealthy cousins — men — who judge others by the shoes they wear. When I was a teenager, I remember hearing one of them advise that you could tell if someone was really rich by looking at his shoes.

Shoes were the last thing I was thinking about when my grandmother died on Christmas day, 2006, two days before her 95th birthday. We were at my aunt’s, just starting her Christmas party for family and friends, when my father’s cell phone rang with the news from the nursing home. I was just finishing my first deviled egg. [Read more →]

Tags: fashion & clothing, reflections & recollections by Scott Stein by Scott Stein
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Dear Ruby,
My thirteen-year old refuses to accept any clothes from thrift stores anymore. I totally can’t afford to do the mall thing. He’s completely unreasonable about it. What do I do? I feel like his entire future social life depends on me dipping into our home equity fund to buy him Abercrombie.
Cherry

Oh, Cherry. Oh, Cherrrrry. Does anyone miss Steve Perry like I do?

Sorry, the point is that except for family funerals and weddings and professional portraits, thirteen-year-olds are legally emancipated from their parents’ fashion decisions as long as they’re not skanky. You can’t make them wear anything, really, and yet you must clothe them. Like, that is soo totally unfair.

You are required to clothe your children. You are not, however, required to clothe them in the style to which Tori Spelling is accustomed. Try to put $100 together and take yourself and your little ingrate to an acceptable mall, preferably with an outlet. And then you may have to sit in Starbucks while he wanders around in an agony of indecision and overstimulation until he finally blows it on probably only one piece of unattractive and inappropriate clothing. Then go home.

If there is any money left over, go to a very cheap outlet type place for whatever else he needs. Repeat when you can scrape together $100 again, twice a year is plenty. You may find that he will accept hand-me-downs from older, rock-star-type cousins if he has any. You may want to go find some new ones. Oh, and don’t ask his father to intervene, he won’t be any help.

The boy will get the message, or he’ll change his tune, or he’ll get a job. Win, win, win!

And, Cherry, baby, stop buying him anything right now. It’s painful, there are so many little polo shirts that would look darling on him, but it’s time to stop for a while. Whatever you buy — no matter how cool — he won’t wear. You’ve left your mark on it and to him it glows like a crime scene in black light.  He’s got to buy his own ugly crap for a little while — yes, with your money, more’s the pity.

The good news: rejecting free stuff from your parents is a phase that is over almost as soon as it starts.

Got a conundrum wrapped in an enigma and slathered with cheese sauce? Ask Ruby.

Tags: advice, fashion & clothing by Ruby Mac
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