In Defense of the Tuxedo

The tuxedo isn’t quite an endangered species–there are plenty of tuxedos in existence–but like the typical American, the tuxedo isn’t getting out much. In the same way that the American sits on couches and accumulates excess body fat and loses muscle, the tuxedo hangs on hangars in closets, acquires blandness and loses its interesting features. We don’t read books anymore. Sure, we may be exposed to short blasts of information over the internet in the form of tweets, Wikipedia introductions, and blog articles, but we tend less and less to read long, substantial books. And let’s face it: how much can you really say in a Wikipedia article? My opponents might retort that at some point books become long, recursive, winding roads of information that accomplish their goals inefficiently, and that’s true. Usually I can’t remember the beginning of a book by the time I finish it. So I guess books really are just a waste of time.

Anyway, I’m about to forget that I’m trying to discuss tuxedos. We probably spend as much money on clothes today as we did a century ago, but we look much worse. The technology for making clothing has been getting better and better, and so our clothes would reflect improved methods in sewing. Instead, we invest in the brand equity of designer labels who churn out flimsy garments that are made to look shabby. I’m still not talking about the tuxedo, am I?

Yes, the average man should own a tuxedo. It’s not a complicated garment. Moreover, a tuxedo is likely to last a man his entire life. The style is slow to change, so a tuxedo bought today will probably not look out-of-place half a century from now. The way I imagine it, a man buys his tuxedo roughly around the time he finishes high school and begins college. By this time, most men have reached their maximum height. Perhaps they will gain weight as time goes on, but this can be allowed for in the seams after the initial tailoring. Furthermore, it is around this age that a man is expected to begin wearing black tie to semi-formal events, for a man of this age is becoming an adult and is striving for independence. And in my imagined world, the man keeps this tuxedo for the rest of his life (of course there is always the possibility that it gets destroyed in a fire, lost in a move, ruined by spills, or ripped to shreds by nymphomaniacal women, and in these cases the man would, yes, sadly, have to replace his tuxedo). Thus, a man’s age is reflected in his tuxedo. It isn’t unheard of for what we wear to reflect our age–many men wear their college or high school class rings, which are typically stamped with the graduation year. Thus, at a black-tie event today, one would expect to see old tuxedos on the tribal elders, new tuxedos on young men, and slightly old tuxedos on the middle-aged men. Naturally, there would be some older men with newer tuxedos. These men perhaps suffered one of the aforementioned tragedies or simply became tired of their old tuxedos. And there would be younger men with older tuxedos, or older men with superannuated tuxedos. These men perhaps have an affinity for older styles or are honoring a similarly-sized ancestor.

So the tuxedo is immune from the ephemeral tides of fashion. The tuxedo is as sound an investment as a US Treasury Bond (although not quite as fungible, hence why China does not invest in tuxedos).

There are some who contend that the tuxedo is too ostentatious, too bold for stoic, manly men. These men prefer to wear a subtle-colored suit. Perhaps they rise above their norm and wear a neck tie (probably not a self-tie bowtie, though). Regarding these men, I wonder what agent of insipidity whitewashed their personalities away. The tuxedo, resistant to the momentary urges of fashion endemic to women’s formalwear, is an icon of stasis and masculinity. Compare the tuxedo to the extravagant dress of the Renascence. The tuxedo is more Puritanical than it is ornamented. It is all black; it drapes over the body with simple, geometric lines; there are no poufs, frills, billows, or other emasculating features. The tuxedo’s laudable achievement is that it looks festive at all. The ancient Romans prided themselves that their toga was a simple garment*. We should pride ourselves that our tuxedo is a simple, yet practical, ergonomic garment.

*Of course, part of the Roman’s pride was that the toga could not be worn for fighting. Indeed, James Bond might have had a harder time wearing a toga. Caesar was, nevertheless, stabbed by toga-wearers, and war-unreadiness is not a trait we seek in our formalwear. We should not be ashamed of how practical our tuxedos are.

Some people have the opposite problem: they consider the tuxedo to be illiberal. It comes only in one color (two if you count midnight blue, two and a half if you count the white linen dinner jacket for summertime, and the midnight blue is somewhat out of place today since midnight blue was introduced only to counter the inadequacies of early incandescent lighting). My rebuttal is that the tuxedo’s uniformity is a good thing. On one hand, it suggests humility. No man thinks himself so special that he may deviate from this one standard. Moreover, black does not clash with any skin tone. Certainly individuality in clothing is allowable and even encouraged in informal settings; but gentlemen understand that the solemn color black is reserved for special occasions. Plain black suits are generally out of place in informal daywear. My plain black suit is only worn to funerals, which call for the solemnity of black without the tuxedo’s flair. In short, the tuxedo’s color palette is narrow because this narrow palette of colors is reserved for the kinds of special occasions to which tuxedos are worn.

Do you want to help me revive the tuxedo? The first step is simple: never watch the Academy Awards. The only winners you were even marginally interested in will be in the paper the next morning. You’ll be better off not looking at those communists and their drab travesties of tuxedos. The second step is to buy one. Don’t get a lame one. Don’t listen to the salespeople. They push the lame ones. You’ve read my posts on tuxedos. You know what you want. You might even try looking on ebay.

This next step is very important: convince your friends to buy tuxedos. This may be difficult. If you need help, I’ve always considered cannabis users to be the sages of peer pressure. Then, you and your friends should wear tuxedos to events. If you’re afraid, opera and symphony concerts are good starting places. Go to a restaurant beforehand. Walk around afterwards. Invite your friends to black-tie house parties on special holidays. There’s strength in numbers. In concluding this post and in trying to instigate the revival of the tuxedo, I’ll quote Arlo Guthrie’s song “Alice’s Restaurant”:

“You know if just one person does it, they may think he’s really sick, and they won’t take him. And if two people do it, in harmony, they’ll think they’re both faggots; and they won’t take either of them. And if three people do it, can you imagine three people walking in, singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? They may think it’s an organization. And can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day, walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends, they may think it’s a movement. And that’s what it is. The Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacree movement. And all you gotta do to join is to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar. With feelin’.”

The Bearded Man’s Apology

Despite the appearance of unanimity, I, like any totalitarian state, am rife with internal conflict. At some point nearly every day I ask myself the question, “What do I think of this beard?” Now, because a beard is quickly removed but slowly regrown, I have a procedure for dealing with these sorts of inquiries to weed out the frivolous, in much the same way that there are procedures in place for the writs of habeus corpus.

Generally, the initial inquiry filters in, let’s pretend it’s on the first of the month. I say to myself, “Well, I’ll think about this for a while, and see if ongoing debate leads to a conclusion in a fortnight.” Due to my internal conservative bias in all matters (i.e., laziness), the burden of proof rests with the plaintiff, namely the argument in favor of shaving. The fortnight passes, the morning of the fifteenth comes around, and I say to myself, “Well, I guess that’s that.” I’ll take a break from the idea for a few days, then revisit it on the eighteenth or so. This cycle has been repeating itself since July 2009 or so.

During my periods of debate, I think about the topic daily. There are advantages to being clean shaven. For one thing, during the summertime it would be much cooler. For another, it can basically be objectively stated that, except perhaps for some with exceptionally scarred faces, a man generally is more attractive (especially to women) without a beard. And of course there’s the association of beards with radicals, Unabombers, and other scary people.

Honestly, I can’t refute any of these points; they’re all quite valid. Nevertheless, I’ve maintained this beard for a year and a half now, and I’ll tell you why.

Sure, it’s cooler in the summertime, but I’m going to be madly overheated anyway. It’s my curse. People say to me, “My God! Aren’t you uncomfortable wearing a long sleeve shirt with a tie and a sportcoat in the summertime?” For this I have two responses. First of all, I now have silk sportcoats for summertime, so they’re quite cool. Second, I have always been sweaty during the summer here, even when I wore t-shirts and shorts all the time, and honestly I don’t feel significantly less comfortable now than I ever have. If anything, the beard keeps my cheeks from getting burnt.

Second, if I look like a radical, then it’s probably just because I am one.

Third, if people, specifically women, think it’s unattractive, then I have no apology to make. Women and children don’t have beards. I am neither. Why should I try to look like one? The neat look, with short hair and no beard, as popularized by Julius Caesar, is not my self-image at this time. At some point every man decides that his mother should not have a say in his appearance, and it was at that point that I started growing this beard.

I will divide a man’s facial hair options into five categories:

• Clean-shaven. I’ll admit that it’s a very good, clean look, one that allows a distinguished face to shine through to its fullest. This requires frequent maintenance, however, and strikes me as a repressive imposition upon the human form.
• Partial facial hair. These I define as sideburns, moustaches, goatees, chinstraps, soul patches, and everything else besides just a full beard. With the exception of moderate sideburns, goatees, and moustaches, these are ridiculous novelties which I believe are almost universally disliked by women and a good number of men, and which I myself would never cultivate. I’ve never imagined Satan with a full beard–always with a soul patch or something. I personally had sideburns for a long time, but these were the only form of facial hair permitted by my high school’s strict dress code, and I do not know if I would go back to having them.

  * There is no surer a hallmark of the pedophile than an anemic moustache.

• Five o’clock shadow. I suppose this allows the man to accentuate his masculinity without obscuring his other facial features. I’ve always found such an appearance to be uncomfortable. I don’t know if it looks good. I never look like that on purpose.
• Untrimmed growth. Not a look I’d recommend unless you’re a serf or clergyman.
• Full beard. The appearance I have settled upon. It requires maintenance every two weeks, approximately. It is a way to maintain a neat appearance without repression.
  
  
  
  I guess that, despite these reasons, I still only have the beard because I feel like it. Perhaps some day I’ll do away with it; and, if and when that happens, the official reason will be “that I needed to get a good seal with a gas mask,” but the real reason will be that I just didn’t feel like having it anymore.

  And for the reactionaries who have problems with beards, just remember that 60 years ago it was conservative to have a beard. Beards know no allegiance to any philosophy, and apparently these reactionaries are too myopic to see beyond their own brief lifetimes, or else they would understand what it means to have a beard.

Tie Restraints: For Your Safety

I once worked with a butcher whom I knew only as “Earl,” a very interesting fellow. As he would go about his end-of-day activities, his bloody coat sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and he would drench all of his equipment in bleach before rinsing away the most tenacious blood, he would pass on to me interesting butcher stories. E.G., the time, back when he was working at Delchamps in the early 90′s, his dress code dictated that meatcutters wear ties. At the end of one day, he had removed his butcher’s coat, and was working on the meat cuber.

This is a meat cuber. It's basically like a paper shredder, except made for meat.

I don’t know if he’d already cleaned the blade guard, or if he was dealing with a particularly large piece of meat, or if he just was feeling dangerous, but he had the blade guard removed and propped up on the machine so that the safety magnets were still allowing the machine to run. Then, before he knew what was going on, he felt a pressure around his neck, and his airway was more constricted than a young nephew in the boa-constrictor embrace of his obese aunt. Earl was being strangled by his own neck tie!

Yes, as we all could have predicted, his neck tie had dangled right into the clutches of those blades, and he, unable to breathe and disoriented, was being led to sharp doom. The other butchers looked up, probably twitched their mustaches for a second or two as they mustered up a plan, and then, in one fell swoop, unplugged the machine from the wall, cut the necktie from Earl’s neck right below the knot, and then ripped the band from his gasping neck.

As a man who wears neckties frequently, I rarely face certain death at the hands of deadly butcher’s equipment; but I am, nevertheless concerned about unrestrained neckties. As a tall man, I must stoop considerably to reach sinks; in fact, I have to stoop quite often. And, as I stoop, my necktie succumbs to gravity and strives to maintain verticality. For quite a while, I was irked by my necktie’s excursions from its intended placement.

Fortunately, I found a solution in tie clips. Some of you may have problems with tie clips. Perhaps you consider them to be obsolete; perhaps you don’t like the way they look; perhaps you associate them with old men. Well, I can’t really convince you that they look good if you don’t think so already, but I do wish to differ with you on the matter of old men. If you were actually old enough to have any sense of history whatsoever, you’d know that tie clips, neat, sturdy, simple, trim, and linear, are the young man’s accessory, and that tie chains, looser, delicate, complicated, and sagging, were for old men (notice any parallels?). That was true even up through the Reagan years (Reagan, the best-dressed president since Eisenhower, wore tie chains [example], and he was definitely an old man), so if you think that tie clips are for old men, you are historically nearsighted.

So, anyway, I became fond of tie clips last Autumn. Initially I just had a simple ridged one that I wore all the time . . .

My First Tie Clip

. . . but I’ve started to get some with my surname initial, S, on them.

Hickok tie clip with initial S in Blackletter.

Gold plated on mother of pearl with initial S in Roman Majuscule. Sadly, the plating is rubbing off, but I doubt anyone will complain.

I like the initial directly over the tie's axis of symmetry.

I don’t really know what message goes with wearing your surname initial all over the place, but I do like my surname, and I think S looks good on tie clips. Actually, I think that these letters make good initials for tie clips and cufflinks:

A
D
E
F
G
H
K
M
N
P
R
S
W
Z

As for why I left out the other letters, I am not sure why. I really just can’t picture them looking good on a tie clip or cufflinks. B, C, J, O, Q, and U are just too curvy. L, T, V, and Y have awkward angles. I is just too narrow; it’s like a sideways H, but with the proportions all wrong. Maybe I would work, but it’d need to be a carefully chosen typeface, maybe a blackletter. X carries connotations of death, failure, or whatever, and I’ve never met a person whose last name started with “X” who wasn’t Chinese, and wouldn’t a Chinese fellow rather have his name in Chinese characters on his tie clip? Sure, maybe they don’t make tie clips with Chinese characters on them, but would he really want some Roman letter that can only clumsily approximate his Chinese name? Maybe so, but anyway he’d probably have a hard time finding an X tie clip anyway. I think A, F, H, K, M, and W are the best looking initials. I guess it’s because they’re very angular. A G with a spur would look cool, as well.

Anyway, I also wanted to point out that I am considering a paradigm shift. I have colleagues who disapprove of tie pins. I initially was intrigued by the idea, but I was turned off when I discovered that the pins damage silk ties with their pin marks. However, I have since discovered that wool ties are not susceptible to such damage. I am, therefore, considering adopting wool ties as my casual standard and reserving silk ties for informal attire and nicer casual. The wool ties would then be worn with tie pins. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with this idea, but it’s an interesting one.

A Tie pin, placed about where I would want to put it, securing my Black Watch wool tie in place. With ancestry from every nation of the British Isles, I feel comfortable doing this.

One of the problems this would address is the problem of width. Wide ties overwhelm tie clips (which often force the tie to hang somewhat off-center), and narrow ties are overwhelmed by tie clips. Most wool ties are narrow, so they would be well-suited to a tie pin. I’ve considered getting some thin, square-ended knit ties, and these would benefit in the same way. Wide ties are perhaps better suited to tie chains, although I have yet to contrive a good solution, since I am currently operating under the assumption that tie chains are, like elbow-patch sportcoats and mustaches, reserved for those with more seniority than I.

Here's a closer look at the tie pin--the color is a bit warm so just remember that it's supposed to be silver.

So think whatever you will of tie clips, but at least I don’t look like Dilbert.

My End-of-Year Activities: Ironically Unrelaxing

The first thing I did when the spring semester ended was to go up to my dorm room, remove my pants, and put them in the freezer.

Yes, yes, I am guilty of a sensational introduction. Anyway, some gum-chewing fool decided to stick his spent wad of mouth-cud underneath the table I sat at to take my accounting exam today. I was unaware of this until I shifted positions and realized that my trouser leg was sticking to the table.

I’m really quite upset though. How much trouble is it, really, to just go get up and put it in the trash? I personally am an avid gum chewer and aspiring economist, so naturally I have performed a thorough cost-benefit analysis.

The ideal solution is to retain the paper gum-wrapper (which that disgusting litterbug probably just dropped on the ground somewhere, polluting our good city with his unsightly rubbish). Upon finishing the gum, the chewer simply jettisons his gum into the paper wrapper, which can be pocketed and discarded upon the next passing of a garbage can. This has several advantages:

• The chewer does not dirty his hands with his mouth-flora. This prevents the spread of disease.


• The chewer does not have to fumble with getting the sticky gum on his fingers.
• The chewer can minimize his DNA trail. This may not be advantageous for the average person; but, for serial killers, saboteurs, and incompetent plumbers, this is of paramount importance.
• The chewer does not have to litter the world twice with his paper trash and gum. Moreover, as the “broken window theory” in Gladwell’s The Tipping Point posits, the mere presence of litter exacerbates the problem of litter by encouraging others to litter.
• The gum safely contained in the paper wrapper, the gum-chewer can throw the gum away whenever his ambulation happens to take him near a trash can. If the gum-chewer had no piece of paper to spit the gum into, he would have to go to a trash can so that he could transfer the gum as directly as possible from his mouth to the trash, since retaining the gum in his hands or pockets would lead to a sticky situation.
• The chewer does not jeopardize the expensive suits (gift of my parents) of people such as myself.

So, in short, there are three possibilities as to why this gum-chewer left his gum there:

• He was forced to do so under duress. In this case, I apply these possibilities to the coercer, including the possibility that the coercer was coerced into coercing the gum chewer by some superior coercer.
• He is mentally retarded. In this case I would reduce his culpability but question whether mentally retarded persons should be allowed to purchase gum, for the same reason that the criminally insane are not allowed to purchase handguns.
• He is a jackass. Anyone who chews gum ought to analyze his behavior and realize, if his mental faculties are adequate (see bulletpoint 2), that it is in his objectified subjective interest to do exactly as I suggest. A mentally competent person who wantonly disregards what is best for himself and society, and what is his moral obligation to God, deserves no relief from the worst punishments known to our criminal system.

So anyway, this is all just a really roundabout way of saying that I’m sitting here, my exams and final papers all taken and handed in respectively, not wearing any pants, waiting for some fool’s gum to freeze so I can scrape it off. I’m going to retain a little bit of that gum, then send it to a DNA analyst, have the analyst extract the genetic material, fertilize an ovum with it, find a surrogate mother, wait until she gives birth to the child, then wait for the child to mature into an adult, and then I’m going to take a good look at this monster I’ve created and beat it to death with a tire iron, since it’s unlikely that I’ll ever get the chance to do so to the actual gum-chewer responsible (unless the gum-chewer does something else meriting death by tire iron and I am able to execute my sentence upon him), so annihilating a clone of him would be just as good.

I suppose this is only tangentially related to my blog’s focus, but I really do hope that the gum comes off.

Hung from His Own Neck Tie

Much has been said about neckties over the years. Arguably bowties, ascots, and cravats would fall into this same category, but they’re all so damn special and I’m so scatter-brained that I’m going to stick to a pointed and narrow topic, because neck ties are pointed and narrow.

Before I begin, I concede that neck ties have no pragmatic purpose. They get in the way; they are vectors of disease transmission (neck ties are typically not washed unless stained); they are a real liability to police offers (who wear clip-on ties to make it harder for suspects to strangle them, the police officers, by pulling on the ties). Neck ties started to fall out of favor seemingly in the late 1960′s, at least among those who were rebellious and not constrained by some kind of system. Consider Paul McCartney, for example, who, in the films made of the Beatles’ January 1969 “Rooftop Concert,” wore a suit with a dress shirt and cufflinks but with no tie, even though it was frigid outside and they were performing atop one of the most fashionable streets in the world, Savile Row. I realize he’s just one example, but there were a great many people looking at him and thinking about how cool he looked.

The 70′s need no explanation. V-neck shirts with long, pointed collars that peeked out over the lapels of polyester leisure suits. Not everyone bought into that repugnant trend, but plenty bought into not wearing neckties. Now, 10 years into the 21st century, we’ve seen neckties dwindling in popularity.

Admittedly, for the girthy-necked, the neck tie and, almost more importantly, the buttoned shirt collar can impede circulation and respiration. Moreover, the almost airtight seal around the neck creates a virtual pressure cooker inside the shirt on a hot day.

Let’s consider why people wore neck ties to begin with. Oftentimes, academics will cite the origin of the necktie as having origins in scarves worn by Croatian soldiers. This is probably correct, because these academics probably did a lot of research and probably looked through a lot of old paintings and read the writings of tailors long gone. It seems to me, though, that this is a very specific analysis. That’s akin to proposing that bomber jackets are popular because military aviators in the World Wars wore them and everybody thought they looked cool. People wear bomber jackets because people have been making garments out of leather for thousands of years, and bomber jackets are just one permutation of this. The neck tie is just another variety of ornamental neckwear. People have been wearing ornamental neckwear for thousands of years. Whether it be a necktie, a scarf, one of those elongating neck rings worn by women in some tribe somewhere, the prayer shawl worn by Orthodox Jews, or whatever, people around the world have been wearing ornamental neckwear for years.

Why would people wear neckwear? Well, obviously scarves have some function in keeping the neck warm. But dog tags are just about the only functional form of neckwear, excluding perhaps some kind of novelty neck tie with a cup holder in it or something, and I wouldn’t consider binoculars hanging from the neck by a neck strap to be a form of neckwear.

Anyway, back to the topic of neck ties, I wear neck ties all the time, and I hear the question from time to time, why wear a neck tie? I’ll tell you why I wear a neck tie, actually. It’s because I don’t like having the top button unbuttoned on a dress shirt, but if I don’t wear a neck tie, people mistake me for a paedophile. And I consider the necktie to be an interesting opportunity to wear something with a particularly bold color scheme or pattern. I would never wear a purple shirt, purple suit, purple pants, or purple hat, but a neck tie that incorporates purple in its design I would consider.

Not to mention that wearing a necktie clearly sets the wearer apart from the non-wearers. When I wear a necktie, I find that people in the service industry, for example, are noticeably more courteous with me, perhaps because they expect a larger tip (an example of expectations affecting results?). Even though I am only 19, between my beard, necktie, tweed sport coat, and dress shoes, I have been mistaken for a professor. People have a higher opinion of necktie wearers. Of course, wearing a necktie also exposes one to the disdain of reverse snobs and others who see necktie wearers as oppressors.

Do I opine that all men should wear neck ties? No, because then the demand would go up and, hence, the price. No, but I do think that the necktie is an important form of neckwear that has its place in all levels of attire from casual to formal.

So that’s just my opinion on neck ties. Maybe some day I’ll talk about knots and tie clips. Or the other kinds of ties.