pic of properly worn waistcoats nicked from here

Last night I attended a TIFF party at the Pantages Martini Bar.  This sort of thing is mandatory.  I must, occasionally, get away from the paint fumes and wander into the outside world.  If only to refill my hate hump. It occasionally gets empty.

But I also like it.

I enjoy a schmooze fest where I have nothing to schmooze about.  I’m relaxed by the hungry looks of the starving actors and horny glares of the assorted douchebags.  I breathe deep of that desperation –to have fun, to be fucked, be noticed, be someone and to make that one killer contact.  It puts my mind at ease.

Some people meditate: I inhale the sordid ambitions of other people.

I have to do this in person.  My television doesn’t work.

So I sit in bespoke and watch the fancy folks meet each other.  Some keep making eye contact with me.  These have yet another sip of whatever passes for a martini these days.   They’re drinking carefully since they don’t want to act the fool.  And they’re drinking until they’re brave enough to introduce themselves.

Typically, they say something stupid; something like:

“You look good.” Obviously.  I’m customized. “What do you do?” What don’t I do?  You bourgeois pig.

I ignore them all.

What do I care for the condo salesman, cynical as cocaine, with his bullshit-lacquered angles on everything?  Or the young woman in the cowboy hat?  Her parents thought she was creative, her art teachers loved and encouraged her and she was queen of some suburban drama class.  Now she wears a cowboy hat.

She’s going to make it.  The hat is guarantee of her creativity.

And the older people.  Botoxed, botched, tucked, nipped, dipped and dried out.  Meat machines who ran out of fuel five years ago and now go through the motions because they don’t know what else to do.  Showroom dummies bleached by the sun cast through the window display.  Mannequin vampires sucking up the dreams of young people in cowboy hats until they become them: Haggard, hungry and revolting.

I employ snubs and snobbery while I watch these lemmings like an owl.  I can’t do a thing for them.  And they can do nothing for me.  Not even amuse me.  I ignore them all.

Yet there was something that I could not ignore.

pic nicked from here

This season the waistcoat (vest) is in fashion for men. This should be a good development but, sadly, it has been tainted with the utter cowardice and shoddy logic that I expect from fashion.  Men have decided to wear it with dress shirt and tie — which is good– but then they slap on a pair of jeans and sneakers.

Or worse.

pic nicked from here

This looks hip.  I suppose.

But to I, who has had all thoughts of “hip” surgically removed from my aesthetic programs, it looks utterly insane.  The bottom-half does not match the top-half and the head rarely matches either.  It is like someone has cut these men into pieces, mixed them up with a bunch of other men, and then, haphazardly, reassembled them in the dark.  While drunk and stupid to begin with.

It makes as much sense as a chimp fucking a toad.

I can’t say that I have any problem with sneakers, jeans and a t-shirt.  It’s not the sort of thing I would wear (it makes me look like a cop at a bar-be-que) but I can understand its practicality and ease.  It has a logic.

But, if you’re going to wear a waistcoat, you should just follow the fuck through.  Wear a suit around the thing.  You’ve taken a step, you might as well take the walk.

I am not even so much of a traditionalist that I demand a jacket over the thing.  (An excellent case for not doing so has been made over at Permanent Style.)  Nor do I demand that people wear suits.  I don’t actually demand anything about other people’s clothes.  But I do judge other people based on them.

Not on the cost, the fit, the fabric or even the style.  But on the logic.

How a person presents themselves is a window into their mind.  Unlike the other surface considerations — race, beauty, age– clothing is an area where a person exercises judgment, choice and control.   It is not shallow to judge a person based upon this.  I know many people who dress practically and they are practical people.  I know others who dress for comfort and they are comfortable.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that.  All of these people are as unconcerned with fashion and concerned with style as I.  In their own way.  And their way is the best way for them just as mine is for me.

But, when a person dresses completely illogically –by standards of practicality, comfort or aesthetics– simply because fashion has decreed it, this speaks badly to the quality of their mind, the integrity of their character and the weakness of their personality.  These people will dress and act like fools, not because they want to, but because they are told to.  They’re an especially ugly breed of stormtrooper.

I ignore them  It’s the only thing to do.