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On the horizon: a thesis, months in the making, on lapels.

In summary, tuxedos have, in their century and a quarter of existence, featured all three shapes of lapels known to man. Today, all three coexist. Fortunately, I now have access to all three types, and work can continue.

Initially I was only concerned with this topic insofar as it applied to tuxedos; but, as I contemplated the matter, I realized that, because this topic had evolved into a much more significant problem, I must conclusively establish a prescription for the lapels of coats, not only specifically for tuxedos, but for upper-body outerwear in general.

And I will address the issue of botwies as well. Self-tie only, though–pre-tied bows are for Christmas presents.

A Color to Avoid

Far too often I see men of all persuasions today sucked into the ephemeral popularity of the color pink. The color pink is absolutely unusable in garment construction. This has nothing to do with manliness; even women look bad in pink. It is a color that matches the mucous membranes of the body. It suggests the nail beds, the lips, the inside of the eyelids, sunburn, dropsy, nipples, etc. None of these should be echoed in the color of clothing. For the pale, pink clashes with the skin tone. For the sallow, pink clashes with the light brownish or yellowish tan of the skin. Blacks and Indians (not Amerindians) are the exception to my rule–their different skin tone and mucous membranes can harmonize with pink, and I have seen Blacks and Indians whose pink clothes did in fact balance with their bodies’ hues. My statements about pink do not apply to these races.

I have no problem with the femininity of pink. Even women and gay men who are not Black or Indian should stay away from pink. The hues do not harmonize.

The day will come that I no longer see frat boys strolling in their pink shirts. I only wonder what they will be bothering me with next.

Mea Culpa

I must admit that today I trespassed against my own principles. This morning I donned a pair of light greenish-gray pants and a gray herringbone sportcoat. The hues distorted by rosy-fingered dawn, I, sensing a contrast that would not in fact translate in purer lighting, thought this was a good idea. In the end, it turned out to be a terrible mistake.

The contrast between coat and trousers is essential for the man who does not wear a suit. The similarity and especially the relative drabness of the shades suggested truly poor judgment on my part, or at least some deficiency of my X chromosome, a deficiency that had effected colorblindness in me.

One of the more interesting debates I have had is whether the trousers should be lighter than the coat or vice-versa. There are theoretically principles by which the corpulent, thin, short, and tall can accentuate their proportions favorably by varying the relative darkness of their coats and trousers.

But they would fare poorly to wear similar but not matching trousers and sportcoats. It’s like all the blandness of a suit without the crisp, impressive uniformity. I’ll try not to make this same mistake again.

A Reflection on Refraction: My New Glasses

Eyeglasses: no longer are they made of glass, so perhaps “spectacles” would be more apt a name. As I peer down at small texts close to my face and drink from the swollen-to-bursting udders of knowledge, first the lenses in my eyes contract, then eventually my eyeballs lengthen until finally it is required that my spectacles’ lenses thicken, further isolating me from the world of light.

My Winter Solstice visit to the ophthalmologist (a phlegmatic man in his late 50′s with a handshake limper than a latex glove partially filled with beef trimmings) confirmed that yet another iteration of this process had occurred, and that I would need new lenses if I wanted the visual acuity to read the street signs three blocks away and not just two. And so today I retired the frames that I have worn every day excepting two weekends since April of 2003. Everyone I know I have seen through these frames, and all of you have seen these frames. Dozens of you have even tried them on. It was difficult to let go of them, but they are worn out and corroded.

When I embarked on the journey to find new frames, I decided that I did not like today’s frames. Current aesthetics favor thick, plastic frames. So, naturally, I set about obtaining the exact opposite: thin, gold-filled wire frames with rimless lenses, rounded at the top but cut into an octagonal shape at the bottom; and I bought some old American Optical frames from the 40′s in the “Numont” style. I recognize the concerns of buying used glasses, but, after thoroughly scrubbing them with soap and water, I deemed them just as clean as any frames that have been handled again and again by dozens of prospective buyers at an eyeglasses store. Perhaps the true contamination lies in what the previous owner saw through them. For all I know, someone died wearing these glasses, which now are forever-imbued with the afterimage of death.

I could not replace so important an article as my glasses all willy-nilly. This was an excrutiating decision, backed by no fewer than nine months of deliberation and contemplation. No amount of rational inquiry alone could bring me to this conclusion–I required the full endorsement of “raw feels,” which take months to crystallize. Also, there was a slight problem in that nobody in town will actually make the lenses for these frames, which require drilled holes in the lenses for mounting. So that was a slight hangup.

Anyway, my friends, as I set down the glasses that have truly been for the past seven years a more permanent fixture on my face than my face itself, I can only look forward to a future of seeing all of you and writing more posts from behind my ever thickening lenses.

New Glasses: When one realizes how scratched up the old ones were