Hipster fashion apocalypse

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I don't understand fashion at all. It's like high-school type peer pressure, elevated to a cosmic level. If you don't wear this style, this year, this way - well, you're dead.

 

 

About a month ago I was walking to work and I saw a skinny local hipster waiting at a crosswalk. Shorts, porkpie hat, glasses.

 

 

He looked uneasy.

 

 

And, at a glance, I could tell you why.

 

 

He was last year's hipster. He was just a little too out-of-date. And that's pretty pathetic for someone in his (probably) mid-twenties.

 

 

How did I know this? I don't know. I am horribly unfashionable myself. But I keep up, and I read things. (Mostly the New York Times and New York magazine. Holla!)

 

 

This guy looked a little too ready-made. He looked like a product. There was absolutely nothing daring or original about his clothing, His ensemble was dull. The hat was yesterday. The shorts were just embarrassing. The glasses – well, doesn't everyone have those now? My friend Janet has those glasses now!

 

 

(Mind you, I was wearing a broadcloth shirt and pants from Kohl's while I was observing this. I do not pretend to hipness.)

 

 

(But I can still judge others.)

 

 

(Holla!)

 

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I dress myself

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I DRESS MYSELF is the slogan on the front of a t-shirt my friend Apollonia recently gave me. It features a picture of little Ralphie Wiggum from “The Simpsons,” wearing his bright-red pajamas upside down. “It made me think of you, babe,” she grinned evilly as she gave it to me.

 

 

Most of my friends think that, um, I don't dress well. Last week, I was wearing a lilac shirt with a nice purple sweater, and I thought I looked lovely. Apollonia called me “Purple Boy,” and later, “Eggplant.”

 

 

And stylewise: for me, it's like Edina said to Saffy on “Absolutely Fabulous”: “Darling, that blouse would look wonderful on anyone else in the world! Why does it look so terrible on you?”

 

 

My mother never trusted me to dress myself; she dressed me, and chose my clothes for me, for an embarrassingly long time. I never really learned colors, or style. And now I am the zhlub you see before you.

 

 

Partner knew this when he married me. When he gives me clothes as gifts, he doesn't just give me one thing, but two, like a matched shirt and sweater. The message is: wear these together. “But maroon and green don't go together!” I squeaked last birthday.

 

 

“Just do it,” he said. “It'll look nice.”

 

 

He was right, of course. He has a much more precise sense of style than I do, and a better sense of color.

 

 

(But I forget sometimes.)

 

 

Here's what I know of fashion:

 

 

• I like cashmere. It's soft and nice. But it's bloody expensive.

  
  

• Black makes me look like a seventeenth-century Lutheran clergyman. And sometimes I like to look like a seventeenth-century Lutheran clergyman.

 

• A Facebook friend of mine told me that my profile pic made me look like the president of an obscure Eastern European country. I was so absurdly pleased by this.

  
  

• I favor shirts in Easter-egg colors, but (strangely) most of the people around me think they look odd.

  
  

• I also favor bright solid colors. Why not?

   

 

I had lunch with my friend Patricia last Christmastime. I walked into the restaurant wearing an orange shirt with a brown sweater, and as soon as she saw me, she hollered, “Happy Halloween!”

 

 

I give up.

 

 

From now on, I buy only clothes in blue, gray, and black.

 

 

And maybe lavender. And teal. And magenta.

 

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