Fashion Blindness

It used to be that when I was young, strong, and had hair, just walking in front of a group of women would make them stare. Now when the women stare it is usually because something is wrong. I’m not saying that I look bad in a swimsuit but last year while walking on the beach in Cancun the women secretly dressed me with their eyes. It’s because I have fashion blindness.

My wife says that she is glad for my fashion blindness. Since I wear my jeans for three weeks between washes and have two shirts — a winter and a summer one — it’s easy for her to describe to the police what I was wearing just in case I end up missing.

I have repeatedly found my 35-year-old shoes in the garbage can. How does Cheryl not understand that these are old friends? They are now more like a pair of hardened clogs than the slip-on Georgia Boots I started with.

But enough about me. I am concerned about the direction of fashion that the world is heading in.

Many a weekend I have driven up and down city streets throwing suspenders out the passenger window of my car to boys who obviously have too much change in their pockets. The crotch of their pants is down around their knees exposing their plaid boxers. Don’t they have mommas who check them before they leave the house? I know my momma did.

Mom would warn us kids, “When you get home from school go directly upstairs and change out of your good clothes before you start playing. I paid good money for those pants, and I don’t want them torn!”

Now people are paying big money for pants that have been driven over by a riding mower. Ripped jeans — the more exposed leg skin the better.

Cheryl gave me the scowl-face the other day when my granddaughter came into the house from school. She was wearing pants that obviously had been in a knife fight with the Tasmanian Devil.

“Did you just get off the bus or were you dragged home from school behind a pickup truck?” I asked.

“Don’t mind your grandfather,” Cheryl jumped in. “He has fashion blindness.”

Mom would also scream when I got either bleach, or battery acid on my pants.

Today, it’s not enough to have ripped jeans. You pay more to have them bleached and torched. What was I thinking by not saving my torn jeans as I was growing up? I could have made quite a bank roll on eBay selling them today.

I started developing an acute case of “Fashion Blindness” in the 70s when mom started sewing most of our clothes. Mom was an experienced seamstress.  Experienced to the point of teaching tailoring classes at both our house and the Technical School. For the most part, the ladies in the classes did well with their sewing homework each week although there was one woman who declared that her husband said his suit jacket did not feel right in the sleeves. As it turns out, she had sewn the right sleeve on the left side of the jacket and vice versa. It fit better if he wore it as an apron.

The fabric of choice in the 70s was double knit material. The models of choice for mom’s creations were dad and me. We each had multiple dress coats and double-knit pants which she tailored for us. When I look back at photos of those days, I realize mom was honestly preparing me for a job as a game show host. I had to break it to her easy.

“Mom, I know ‘THE PRICE IS RIGHT’ but ‘LET’S MAKE A DEAL,’ I’m not going on ‘THE DATING GAME’ and ‘TO TELL THE TRUTH’ I don’t like these suits.”

To which dad, who was hiding behind the living room curtains added, “What he said!”

There wasn’t much to talk about though as mom responded, “You both have fashion blindness. You’re wearing them!”

Don’t accuse me of not trying to develop fashion trends. I started one at work which lasted almost a month. On Friday of each week, I would bring home my dirty work clothes to wash for the next week. My helmet liner which has Velcro sewn in several spots was washed each week also. I have since learned that work clothes should not be washed with any other household clothes, especially my wife’s. Monday morning upon returning to work and dressing, I slipped on my hat liner and helmet and walked through the plant to our pre-shift safety meeting. Upon entering the room of men and women, all eyes looked to me, and the giggling started. Apparently, the Velcro had attached itself to other clothing in the dryer and for thirty minutes I had walked through the plant with a pair of my wife’s panties dangling over my shoulder.

Word of this spread rapidly and soon other guys were also hanging women’s clothing from their helmet liner Velcro.

Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” But I just think they were mocking me.

Even my grandkids worked at transforming me into a man who changes with the fashion times.

One night I fell asleep while watching TV with them. The lights had been turned off in the house so when I awoke, I stumbled upstairs to bed. In the morning, I went downstairs in the dark, grabbed my lunch, pulled on my socks and shoes and left for work. At the end of the shift I went to the locker room to shower only to realize, after I had removed my socks, that all my toenails were painted cherry red. This delighted the rest of the men in the shower to no end. A few said that since I was such a fashion trend-setter they might also go home and paint their toes – although none did.

Fashion blindness and color blindness are quite similar.  Most men have an X and a Y chromosome. Most women have two X chromosomes. You need one good X to have fashion sense and good color vision. If a woman has one bad X, she still has one good X, so she is fine. If a guy has a bad X, he only has a good Y, so this means he will have both color and fashion blindness. Therefore, women are the interior designers, paint color pickers, clothing buyers and everything else that has to do with looking good.

I have the bad X chromosome. My color blindness was discovered with the Ishihara Color Test. My fashion blindness was discovered shortly after I could make my own choices.

What does this mean? I am not allowed to pick or comment on fashion, color, or design. And, my wife, kids, and grandkids tell me what to wear for everything other than work.

Stupid defective X chromosome!

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