December 05, 2006
Day 13, belated
This is the outfit that sustained me through the weekend -- and at one point inspired a cheerful black woman to exclaim in the elevator, "Now that is a refreshing outfit! It wakes you right up." I'm pretty sure that was a compliment.
This shirt was given to me quite a while ago by my friend Charles, who has a fashion sense that is different from yet still akin to mine. He doesn't wear ties, but he does like the loud shirts -- and every once in a while, he miscalculates about whether a shirt is really his style or not, and he'll ask me if I'd like to give it a good home. This was one of those shirts. I loved it right away, but I had no tie that came anywhere near matching it, and doubted I'd ever find one. (I think I wore it once with a plain black tie, but I didn't really care for that.)
Then, one day, Rose and I were in a Walgreens, of all places, and Rose pointed down the center aisle at a rack of ties with a look of amazement: "Francis! I think one of the drugstore ties on that rack is actually cool!" At a distance of several aisles, she had spotted the rainbow lizard tie seen above. I rescued it from the rack of crappy, boring ties and took it home posthaste. And while I was hanging it on the tie rack, I thought -- wait, I think this tie matches the unmatchable shirt! Hurrah!
Finds like that (I repeat -- a Walgreens! What the fuck!) remind me of the guy at the rental car place in Boerum Hill that we used to frequent who said, apropos of a combo I was wearing that he thought was particularly swank, "Where do you shop for ties?" I replied, "You are never not shopping for ties."
Posted by Francis at 12:50 AM in TiesThat goes directly into the Good Answer Hall of Fame.
Posted by: Charles at December 5, 2006 08:12 AMI accidentally made a pattern similar to that shirt a few years ago: http://www.suberic.net/~dmm/gimp/ (it's the "Oilslick" pattern).
Posted by: rikchik at December 5, 2006 09:21 AMOoh, I like those backgrounds a lot. Is GIMP a program that makes it easy to create tiled patterns for backgrounds? Because I've actually been wanting a program like that for a while.
Posted by: Francis at December 5, 2006 09:30 AMThe woman on the elevator had it right. I bet there are people who never say anything but every day actively look forward to seeing what you'll be wearing.
In fact, I also bet there are people who tease or mock you about your ties and shirts who secretly wish they had the courage to wear them and would be sad if you stopped.
And of course, there are people who think you should wear pale solid coloured shirts like they do and they are more desperately in need of being confronted with alternatives than anyone.
Posted by: David Scrimshaw at December 5, 2006 10:48 AMSadly, as a wearer of bow ties (which, I am suddenly reminded, is all your fault in the first place) I am almost always not shopping for ties.
Thanks,
-V.
Wow, that's kind of an eye-popping shirt, but the tie works really well with it.
Posted by: Janice in GA at December 5, 2006 03:13 PMV: That was my doing? Really? Somehow you seem like the sort of fellow who was fated to end up being a wearer of bow ties.
Posted by: Francis at December 5, 2006 04:05 PMThat's as may be, but I'm pretty sure that you were the one who actually taught me how to tie the thing. I could be wrong. It was long ago, I was young and irresponsible, I needed the money.
You, on the other hand, I would have guessed to dress, well, more like your Six Things stand-in. You have grown and changed. For one thing, you used to wear pants.
Thanks,
-V.
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Posted by: wow gold at October 23, 2013 05:58 AM