Fashion Show
I was thinking about clothes today and remembered the time I was in a fashion show.
One of the weirdest moments experienced during my first tenure at Express—back in 2007 after they closed down all the men’s stores and folded us into the existing women’s ones—came in the spring, when Eastland Mall decided to hold a food court fashion show on a Saturday afternoon.
I loved working for Express back then, back before I really came to appreciate just how little I was being paid. The discount was decent and the hours were good enough to buy new clothes and—on the weekends—a six pack of beer (when I could get someone to buy it for me, anyway). These days I’m a little bit more clued into the fucked up labor dynamics of a store that expects encyclopedic knowledge of products with limited other incentives to sell thousands of dollars of merchandise in a day. But at the time? That shit was fun.
Anyway.
“Hey,” one of my managers—I don’t remember which one—said, “Go ahead and jump off the register after this customer. We need you to change for the fashion show.”
“Fashion show? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“We’re in the fashion show and we need you to model a look.”
I did what they asked, switching registers with one of the girls, and went to the back to grab a garment bag. We were running late and needed to change fast, so I ran upstairs to one of the empty mall offices or conference rooms and ended up in a room with a couple of guys, all of us throwing our personal outfits on the floor and switch into outfits. I wasn’t a huge fan of what they’d picked for me—it wasn’t something I’d normally wear—but I threw it on and went out to stand in line.
The thing about the fashion show is that there weren’t a lot of other guys involved. In fact, I don’t even remember most of the other stores, except for Cache, a mall brand that sold expensive formal dresses in bright colors. I’m 85% sure that Cache did hire models because they were all preternaturally thin and tan, and all of them knew how to work a runway.
Fun fact! I, a 34-year-old man, do not know how to do my little turn on the catwalk. A whole decade of being self-conscious and insular and a homebody has just sucked what little joie de vivre I got out of dancing (or trying to dance). 14 years ago? I was probably even worse at the concept.
See, here’s the thing about me at 20: I had just gone through an acrimonious breakup, after which my ex-girlfriend decided to start dating my next door neighbor, also one of my best friends since junior high. My grades were slipping pretty hard for the second time in a year, and I was desperately trying to figure out how to navigate the period in between spring and fall semesters. I wasn’t just completely unequipped to walk a fucking catwalk as a model; I was barely functioning.
My confidence was totally shot, and yet I went up there and plodded my way to the end of the catwalk, paused in pose, and then walked back down the stairs and disappeared again to change back into my clothes and go back to work shilling high-interest credit card debt in exchange for getting what amounted to your sales tax removed from your final total.
I bring this anecdotal story up not because it’s particularly interesting (it’s not), or because it’s particularly salient (again, no), but because I was doing some online shopping/browsing over lunch, and thanks to an absolute barrage of J. Crew ads, I have fallen head over heels in love with this sweater and want it in my closet immediately.
This sweater is definitely something I would’ve worn fourteen years ago, but it’s also something I would wear today. And the big difference between those intervening years—which I have written about elsewhere—is the accumulation and subsequent loss of about 50 pounds and the acquisition of a whole lot of confidence in, if not my skills on the dance floor, but my ability to absolutely rock the shit out of certain types of clothes.
I’ve always loved fashion and shopping. There’s a reason why I pursued a management career in the industry, after all, and why I still shop all the time, even in the midst of a pandemic where my most adventurous sartorial choice has been to wear garment dyed chinos on a random Tuesday in January.
But since I left Express in 2012 and J. Crew in 2017, I’ve been more than a little peeved at how difficult it is to find clothes that I’m in love with. And that hasn’t become any easier as I’ve gotten older. The discount definitely helps when it comes to filling out your closet (and makes you a little more willing to compromise), but when you’re not tied down to one brand because you no longer have to sell that sort of aSpIrAtIoNaL LiFeStYlE, the concept of being able to shop wherever you fucking want to is damn near overwhelming.
There are like…a handful of stores in which I like to shop these days. I don’t like to settle. Which makes it hard when you’re a parent whose kid has to go to daycare and eat and needs shoes every two months because their feet grow at random intervals (and because he beats the shit out of them).
So I’ve been trying to think a little bit more about what and where I buy, and it’s just so difficult because quite frankly I am turning into an old fucking man who still wears skinny jeans from Abercrombie & Fitch and sweaters from J. Crew. I don’t want to settle into being okay with ill-fitting sweaters from Old Navy, but I don’t want to be someone aging into their forties or fifties still trying desperately to cling to that last gasp of “hot dad energy” or sartorial relevance. Thank God I never bought into the tacky-ass Buckle Dad aesthetic (even in college), but at least those guys are outwardly confident on an almost aggressive level. I second guess myself all the time! And my only public appearances these late are in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, the curbside pickup at Target, and the handful of Zoom conference calls I attend each week.
When this whole thing is over (or as close to over as it will ever get), I will be so ready to dress to the nines every goddamn day. I just need to figure out what that means for me as someone in their mid-30’s. If that means shopping at one store that makes me feel fully confident, well, I guess it’s time to go back to the days of having an entire closet full of one brand.
Recommended Reading
I am currently working my way through Lily King’s Euphoria, and by that I mean I borrowed it from the library last week and have maybe read a handful of pages. I’ve been distracted by work and parenting and whatever, to be sure, but also my attention span for books is flagging at the moment. One of the real struggles is that I can’t really read a paperback book with Benji in the room because he always wants to grab it, and the alternative is reading on my phone which basically makes it seem like I’m ignoring him*.
*I’m not. We just watch cartoons on Saturday mornings and while he’s distracted, I read. It works for us, and will continue to work for us until he’s old enough to enjoy listening to music and/or entertaining himself enough that I’m able to sit down in my office and write in the mornings, which is when I tend to get most of my work done.
Musical Interlude
Hey, have you listened to Beck’s 1999 masterpiece Midnite Vultures lately? Because I listened to it this afternoon and it still holds up (duh). It’s damn near perfect and one of those holy grails of vinyl collection. Maybe someday I’ll own a copy.
Anyway, if you haven’t given it a spin you can do that with your streaming platform of choice. Here’s the Spotify link just in case.
Final Thoughts
Where do you shop? This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot today, and something I’m curious about—especially if, like me, you’re a married guy in your mid-30’s whose primary goals are feeling confident and impressing your coworkers and friends. Leave a comment or send me a message on Instagram or Twitter. And don’t forget if you want to help me buy more expensive clothes (like that cashmere sweater I’m coveting), you can always subscribe to this newsletter for $5 a month.
That’s like…1/25 of the price of the sweater.