#84 At-tired

One of the unexpected consequences of our designer society is what happens to perfectly good designer clothes once there fashion life has passed, even though their wear life still has quite a few more years. Now, I used to work in the men’s fashion industry, and I would be the first to proclaim that all menswear needs to come with an expiration date. Most men will wear a favorite article of clothing till the threads are barer than their scalps. But maybe the most effective strategy, instead of a freshness dating system, like old milk, would be to use a tread depth indicator, like tires, to let men know it was time for a change—or at least a rotation. They could call it a thread depth indicator. It’s barely likely that men may respond to this, being far more conscientious about auto accessories than fashion.
Anyhow, the big problem with fashion fashion is the other way. Things that are too fashionable need to be discarded too quickly. It’s a small step from “I want this year’s Air Jordan to I want this month’s Air Jordan. And if I’m going to plaster Tommy Hilfiger across my butt I want this season’s Tommy thank-you-very-much. All of which explains why the other day, as I was driving past an off-ramp, I saw this hobo all decked out in a perfectly good FILA jacket. My first thought was he was a former soccer player who had fallen on hard times. You think being an ex-basketball player is bad. Try landing a job doing TV color commentary for soccer.
But no, he was a legitimate hobo. His puffy red nose and generally scraggly hair style, not to mention the bottle-shaped brown paper bag he was clutching, pretty much indicated he was a classic King of the Road. And clashed just a bit with his one article of designer attire. The whole effect looked a little at-tired as it were.
In the radio biz we sometimes talk about the dangers of newspaper ads—your business name is out there so bold and fresh and crispy when it’s first printed, but so badly soiled at the bottom of a bird cage. Or we point out to clients how buying a billboard usually means their name is going to be displayed where billboards are, and therefore associated with the dingiest and most industrially ugly sections of town. Or, if they buy the back of a bus, it means their potential clients will connect their name with a noseful of stinky bus belchings.
I’m thinking the same thing is happening here. Tommy, Calvin, and Gloria are all being indecorously draped on drunks, derelicts and ne’er-do-wells, their fine designer names forever associated with the dregs of society. From upper class to underclass to not-even-showing-up-for-class, all in one season. Woe to the would-be fashionista who appears at a soiree in yesterday’s Tommy, only to be confronted by a panhandler parading the same designer’s duds. She’ll wish she had one in the car when he says: “Spare Change?”
America, ya gotta love it.