too much typing—since 2003

7.31.2008

shorts-circuited

According to this article in The New York Times, it's now okay in some places to wear short pants to the office - so long as they're "dress shorts" accompanying a sufficiently formal ensemble. Uh, no.

More proof, as if any were needed, that "fashion" is a sort of large-scale performance art piece involving dares, bets, and provocations to see just how ridiculous and humiliated fashion victims can get.

The Times
helpfully accompanies the article with three photos.



Now, the first gentleman is almost acceptable. The shirt is properly unbuttoned, matching the inherently casual character of shorts - although he loses points for nerdishly tucking in the shirt, and the tight fit of the pants makes him look a bit Pee-Wee Hermanesque.



This man looks unaccountably pleased that he's wearing the sartorial equivalent of the mullet: business on the top, party on the bottom. There is absolutely no reason to wear a jacket and tie with shorts. None. Sorry. Go home, put on a pair of pants, or put on a nice casual shirt and enjoy a fun round of golf.



What can I say about this guy? He's not helped by his goofy facial expression and incipient beard; he looks rather if he'd just been awakened, told to put this outfit on, and now is having second thoughts ("are you sure this is what you want me to wear?"). Who can blame him? Let's see...what look like dress shoes, with no socks...pants nicely creased that abruptly cut off an uncomfortable interval above his knobbly knees...a jacket that looks a bit small...and a shirt that, given its slight sheen, open collar, and straight lines at the bottom (obviously I'm no clotheshorse or I'd know the technical term for this...), reinforces the "just woke up" thing by looking rather like a pajama top: I think this isn't a model at all, but a fellow who was very, very hungover, who wandered out the door and was set upon by photographers before he got the chance to realize just how incompetently he'd dressed himself. Go back to bed, sleep it off, and when you wake up, assume it was all a very bad, very silly dream.

5 comments:

Steve said...

I sometimes wear shorts to work in the Summertime to beat the heat, so I'm not understanding the shorts+sportcoat combinations. But I am writing this while sitting in the office.. and wearing short pants!

2fs said...

I've got nothing against shorts, or even people wearing them to work...but please, don't try to make them "formal" or "fashion." What's next - dress flip-flops?

Anonymous said...

Bachelor #3 looks like a 5-year-old, whose body growed up, but whose clothes stayed the same.

And put that clip-on tie *back on*, young man!

Unknown said...

No. No. No.

The worst part is that all of these men are wearing dress shoes without socks, which is at least as dorky and wrong (and unwise, blister-wise) as wearing socks with sandals.

Anonymous said...

I just returned from Bermuda where Bermuda shorts are of course all the business fashion. The big difference between these pictures and Bermuda is that Bermuda shorts are always worn with long socks. I was surprised that it didn't look as ridiculous as I thought it would.