Continue reading »]]>

Beam me up, Jesus!

It’s almost The Rapture. You’ve formed a plan for your atheist pets, deleted your porn stash and got right with Jesus.Either that or you’re shooting heroin with a prostitute while being double penetrated by a goat and Anton LeVey. But whatever you’re doing, there’s only one thing left to figure out.

Just what do you wear to The Rapture?

For those of you being saved, you’ve probably heard an unpleasant rumor that God will beam you up naked, leaving your clothes in a heap on the street. This is certainly false. God does not like our naughty bits and only put them there to test us. He certainly won’t be bringing you into heaven without your pants.

Heaven is a come as you are affair, not a dress like you don’t care affair.

But don’t overdo it!

Avoid formal as most people won’t be wearing it. And, besides, it would be very rude to be better dressed than God. Let’s not forget that Lucifer was kicked out of Heaven for less than that. Since you’ve gone without oh so very much to get into Heaven, you don’t want to get kicked out now.

Don’t think of Heaven as being anything like going to Church. Church is like a job interview with Jesus but The Rapture is a yacht party with our Lord. As such, its dress code is much less stuffy. Don’t be afraid to wear an ascot.

Keep it light and fun.

Be cautious about the color white. It’s for virgins and, whatever you might tell your friends, God knows exactly what you’ve been up to, who you were up to it with and what you shouted while you were up to it. Don’t insult His nosey intelligence.  Maybe try a beige or, in certain cases, gray. If you require red, I can only assume you’re still on earth.

As Heaven is made out of clouds and clouds are made out of water, wear a bathing suit instead of underpants. While God would frown on such perversions during the normal course of events, you do not want to be standing by the pool in your suit when Jesus asks you to join him at the swim-up bar.

Will you be ready when Jesus calls you to the pool?

Other than the clothing, you might want to bring a few other items.

Some good foreign language dictionaries will come in handy.  As 144,000 people are being raptured, it’s safe to assume that some of them won’t speak English. These people will likely be servants and you want to make sure they make your martini correctly. It just wouldn’t be Heaven if it was done wrong.

Heavenly voices are quite loud.

Earplugs are a must. Many drawings have indicated that harps are given out in Heaven. But who knows how to play the harp? Expect an awful racket while people strum at these. It will probably subside when people give up but you’ll still have to deal with bugles and heavenly voices, which must be quite loud.

And bring cash. There will be a lineup outside The Pearly Gates. Passing Saint Peter a twenty dollar bill should get you past that and, maybe, into one of the better parts of Heaven. Somewhere closer to God but not too close. Too close is reserved for VIPs like the president ( don’t worry, not Obama) and Mrs. Ben Zobrist.

But however you dress and whatever you bring, remember, The Rapture is supposed to be fun. You spent a long time resisting all those homosexual impulses and you deserve this.

See you up there!

Continue reading »]]>

Squint for nipples.

It feels like I’ve been attending and complaining about FAT (Toronto’s Alternative Fashion Week) for years.

Double checking that feeling against my blog archives, I’m surprised to learn that my memory is correct. My first mention of it is back in 2006 and now it’s, um, a different year.

Also: Holy shit, I’ve kept this blog for a long time. Wonder how long it’s been since The Grumpy Owl jumped the shark. Must be years. The shark is probably long dead.

Taken at some other, earlier FAT.

Anyway, you would think that I would finally learn something and stop going to FAT. But I haven’t. And I have. And I will.

The reason I first attended FAT was because my roommate and best friend, Amie Scott, had a runway show there. A mutual friend, Chris Cunningham, then known as Christabel, was also doing something there though I’ve never quite been able to figure out what. But he was doing it in drag so it was fun.

I kept returning to FAT for the same friendship reasons.

I’ve never had any interest in fashion. But the three people closest to me did. Amie Scott, who I knew from teenage Shwa punk and mutual street kid friends in Toronto, made clothes. Daryl Banks, who was a line cook in the same place as me, took photographs. Anita Clarke, who I’d met in Rancho Relaxo when she was still in school and I was still drunk, has gone on to be a significant fashion blogger. But me? Can’t say I ever really gave a shit.

The relevant thing to me in this picture is the EXIT sign.

Much of my social life was basically absorbed by the interests of my friends. I believe this to be natural but I wonder if it’s the same for everyone. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I have little self-direction in social matters. Maybe other people choose their society. I never have.

I just eat what’s on my plate. Just like Nan taught me. At gunpoint.

The gun is under the table.

Because my friends were all interested in the same sort of thing, pretty soon my acquaintances were too. Because I tend to write about what’s in front of me, I occasionally blogged about fashion. This drew in more fashion. I even learned some stuff about it but I can’t say much of what I learned interests me. I now know who Karl Lagerfeld is.

He was fat and he worked hard.

Still can’t say I care.

All of this has led to some comic and disconcerting incidents where I’ve been completely misunderstood as being some sort of fashion insider. Doubtless, many of my friends and acquaintances have some sort of clout in this town. And doubtless, my appearance certainly gives the impression that I care about fashion. But what can I tell you? I just really like suits.

A new suit. There'll be more on that later when I get some over my contempt of cameras long enough to get some better pictures of the thing.

Rather unsurprisingly, many of the people within fashion who I’ve got along best with, also have a conflicted relationship with the whole hot mess.

It took this last trip to FAT to clarify all this for me.

It was the first time I’ve ever attended the thing for my own reasons. Well, almost my own. My publicist wants me out of the house, doing things, being seen, talking to people and all that jazz. Because of all the factors discussed above, I know of about the same amount of fashion parties as book parties.

But, aside from and more important than that, I must have had some sort of false memory implanted. Some notion that this thing was a good time. That I enjoyed FAT. Apparently, the year or two since I last attended was more than enough time to create a fairly believable lie about my past.

So, at any rate, I went to FAT and watched the show.

Yawn. Snore. ZZZZZZZZZZ

Standing around, playing the wall, watching everyone dressed in their funeral clothes, having cameras aimed at me by people too afraid to say hello to me, people unable to engage in an actual human interaction but capable of creating more fucking spectacle, I could only think of something Mike Tyson recently said on the twitter:

He would know.

True words.

I can, as Nan taught, eat whatever is on my plate. But I don’t need to put shit I don’t like on my own plate and that is, I’m afraid, what I did here.

At the risk of sounding like a parody singles ad, I like quiet conversations, small parties and strolls and have never cared much for podiums, runways or stages. Anything I can’t interact with, alienates me. I see little point in sitting around with a bunch of people all facing away from each other to look at the evening’s entertainment. Music so loud you can’t even speak to each other. That sort of thing is fucked up and it is the problem. It is the lie.

It turns our lives into movies we watch and our minds into copyright issues.

I have no idea how I’m going to reconcile this long held opinion when the podium is put in front of me and I have to do readings and the like –I actually suspect I won’t– but it is my gut feeling. Maybe the podium is easier to undermine from the other side. Suppose, I’ll find out.

But before I ride off into the sunset, away from these sorts of events, I should probably share something practical that I’ve figured out about FAT.

If you’re showing wearable clothes, you’re doing it wrong.

Doing it right, a paper dress by Breeyn McCarney.

There’s very little, if anything, to be made in sales from the event. Rather, you’re trying to get some media and establish a brand identity. The best way to do this is to make sure your show is impractical. Just show off and leave the wearable stuff for the guys in the Reitman’s commercials. Also don’t depend on something like FAT alone.

It provides a captive audience but captives are worthless. You’re always better off actually meeting and speaking to people than taking a bow on a stage. Not just because of the commercial or networking concerns (a friend is always better than a ‘contact’) but because, when the stage no longer interests you, it’ll probably be the human element you remember with fondness. The flowers they throw at you rot. The memories do not. If anything, they get better.

More paper dresses and the most paper that anyone other than the organizers will see.

As for me, whether you’re doing it right or doing it wrong, I’m totally fucking done with this sort of show.

I just turned 33. Looking around at all those pretty little moths, at the next generation of fashion bloggers with media passes, people who’ve had (thankfully) the bar set lower for them than it ever was for us (you’re welcome) I had the same feeling I used to get at clubs:

I’m too old for this shit.

Runway youth in bloom.

I’m too old to stand around looking at people walk down the runway. Too old to have my nostrils vibrated by music. Too old to schmooze with a bunch of fucking kids.

Things do have an expiry date and, by trying to revisit my past, I found mine. I’m not the sort of person who tries to make much last forever. (Even my marriage is a ten year contract.) I like arriving early and leaving before the end. There might be a slight element of you can’t fire me, I quit, to that but it serves me well.

Everyone has returned to some childhood place and found it quite different than their memory of it. As I child, I saw, through a grimey window, R2 D2 sitting in a church basement. I got older and returned. Nothing there but a bunch of junk. R2 D2 was just a garbage can.

I don’t even want to investigate the magic tree that looked like a rainbow and was a gate into another world. It’s probably a piece of garden hose.

Revisiting FAT was like returning to a childhood memory.

Glitters. Gold. Writes itself.

Every year, FAT gets fat as Lagerfeld eating the dreams other people put on its plate. Every year, another few pounds. There’s no need for it to gorge on my memories as well.

So I’m done with it. Doubt it’ll miss me anymore than I’ll miss it.

Continue reading »]]>

When doing too much make sure that it’s enough.

I don’t usually care for this sort of thing but this shirt and collar is great. None of it would work without that peculiar head popping out the top of it.

As Ms. Zoetica Ebb said earlier on the Twitter: “Don’t ever look like your clothes are wearing you.”

Continue reading »]]>
I thought about blogging about the Buy Design campaign and the photoshoot but I can’t remember much about the shoot and I don’t really understand the charity. It supplies poor people with new clothes? Some sort of sweaters for hobos initiative?

Frankly, I’m not sure I approve of that.

If paupers have new clothes, how am I supposed to tell who’s poorer than me? If they start giving Johnny Foodstamp nice new shoes, then everyone is just going to quit their jobs, run off and become poor.

Charity is an incentive for failure.

Anyway, this is a picture heavy post (all pictures are by Anna Lisa Sang) so I’m going to put it behind the jump.

For starters, I have no idea who most of these people are.  The girl to my left is Anita Clarke from I Want I Got, the guy with the seersucker suit, bowtie and boater hat is Philip Sparks and the girl to my right, in the second row, with the red stockings and scarf is Danielle Meder from Final Fashion.

The rest of these people? Never seen them before or since.

Here’s a close up of my shirt and tie.

The only pics I like of me are the ones that keep my face out of the whole thing.  Said it before and I’ll say it again:  When I learned that one can either have a good personality or good looks, I bought a good suit.

If you look at the button hole, you’ll notice that my tailor added a nice little blue stitch.  It’s one of those details that my camera can never pick up.

It’s hard to find shoes that go with a pink suit.  These are what I wore because the leather has a nice sort of redness and I don’t care what anyone says: Pink and red look great together.  These days, I wear silver shoes with this suit.  Aside from liking the colour combination, there just ain’t no half steppin’.

Not when it comes to pink suits.

I had to remove my eyeglasses because I cheaped out of the anti-reflection stuff and they had a nasty glare.   The photographer asked me if it was okay to take them off:  “Are they part of your look?”

“They’re part of my eyesight.”

The damnedest thing is, in that world, something being your look is more important than it being your eyesight.  I don’t endorse that.  If you can’t see, how are you going to see me?  It’s just cruel.

You might notice that I have a close button hole on my lapel.  That’s just in case I decide to change the jacket into a three button.

But I look strange to myself without my glasses.  It’s funny how the things become part of your face.  I remember when I got them.  I looked a more like a reader and a lot less like someone who was going to kick you in the teeth.

I’ve got to be about the most useless model on the planet.  The so-called profession is retarded and I hate doing it.  Some people come to life in front of the camera.  I feel like a frog on the dissection table.  I hate paying attention to things and having attention paid to me.   People should politely ignore each other.

That’s probably an odd thing for a man in a pink suit to say.  But our desires only rarely align with our inclinations.  I’m sure you want things that your personality makes impossible.  Why should it be any different with me?

We all get exactly what we want whether we want it or not.

Decent photographers usually find a way to either work around my stiff misery in front of a camera or to use it to their advantage.

Here is an American gothic thing.

And a picture that is unposed.  Which explains why I’m smiling.  That and I’m probably watching a dog.  Animals are great.

Continue reading »]]> pic nicked from here

When a ship is at sea for a long time, a bizarre species of crustacean, known as barnacles, affix themselves to the hull.  Although one barnacle does no damage, too many impair the ship’s speed and manoeuvrability.  When that happens, the ship must return to port to be cleaned, stripped and fixed.

As creatures set afloat in a sea of commerce, we too gather many little barnacles.  Passively acquired, protected by a rock hard shell of psychological attachment and glued to our lives by a mixture of laziness, passivity and fear, these creatures slow us down, stop us from moving and must be removed.

At times, we humans too must return to port.

pic nicked from here

Because of my mode of dress, my closet is perhaps more susceptible to barnacles than most.  Each suit, after all, requires a certain amount of supporting clothing.  Shirts, ties, various accessories and accoutrements.  When purchasing these, it’s quite common to find something else to buy.   And most of that is never actually used though it remains because one day, maybe, I’ll need it.

One day, maybe.

Well, one day maybe never comes.

I have tried, every spring, to strip off the barnacles but to leave the hull intact. And this has met with varying degrees of success.  Yet, not matter how through I am, every winter I find myself overwhelmed by clothes I never wear.  They clog up my closet, lay strewn over my floor, impair my speed and manoeuvrability while causing needless complication when getting dressed.  It’s a minor but constant psychic strain.

An utterly unnecessary one.

Other than my bespoke suits, I always wear the same few suits to work.  To introduce variance to these work clothes, I have tried adding.  More shirts, a variety of sweaters, different ties, even more shirts.  It has not worked.  The drag on my life is increased.  I cannot acquire my way out of this mess.  After all, I acquired my way into it.

Drastic measures are called for.

And drastic measures have been taken.

Today and yesterday I gathered every single item of clothing I own, other than underwear, socks, ties and bespoke, and bagged it.  It’s all in the garbage.

I have replaced all of that with three pairs of navy blue work pants and three pairs of navy blue work shirts from BIG B WORKWEAR.  I work three shifts a week.

These are now my work clothes.

When I’m not working, I own enough bespoke to be exclusively clad in that.

The entire middle of my closet has been removed.  No matter my sentimental attachment to any item, it has gone.  No matter how much money I once spent on it, it is now garbage.  No matter how much I once liked it, I murdered the fucker.

Purges are a ruthless business.

Sentimentality is deadly.

And I have been here before.  Every so often I find my progress impeded by old ideas, old items and old things.  I return to port and tear the ship up.  Rebuild it and start again.  There has been many Ryans over the years.  Punk, drunk and the one that you have gotten to know here.  The fellow who exclusively wears suits.

But that was never meant as the complete final version.

If you thought that, you haven’t really been listening to a word.

I’ve always been a quality over quantity sort of person.  But constricted as I am by limited finances and desirous of fine suits, I have had to acquire a great deal of not so fine suits.  Over time, as planned, my one-time front line of suits has become my bottom end work clothes.  I simply did not have the money to have both suits and work clothes.   I needed to do a sort of double duty.  Buy a suit, replace it with a better one and turn that old one over to the job.    Any money spent exclusively on work attire took away from this replacing of the top end.  It slowed me.

pic nicked from here

Over time, that bottom end decayed through wear and tear.  As they say in the maritime business, it became biofouled.  Quite literally, in some cases, frayed around the collar.  They needed to be replaced; not as suits but as work clothes.

I could have bought other suits but that would have required a great deal of effort and money spent in an impractical pursuit.  A lot of time searching through second-hand shops. And just to have work clothes.  It is much better to simply buy work clothes that match my aesthetic of efficiency tempered with biology.

Once upon a time, when interviewed about my sense of style I said: “Function is beautiful and beauty is functional.” These are words I stand by.

I never wanted to be that fellow who wears suits.  Never wanted to be your dandy or your fop.  What I wanted was some beautiful suits and to find a sort of timelessness within them. That I had to constantly wear suits, was not a matter of taste but one of finances.  It was a part of a progress to a life more beholden to quality than to quantity.  Having a lot of suits is no article of pride.

I bought bespoke suits because they would lead to a greater efficiency in my closet.  This was my ten year plan and they have served this purpose admirably.  I can now honestly say that my collection of suits are about the best that my money can buy.  My wardrobe can still be increased [it will be: much more slowly] but it can only be improved on with a series of details invisible to even to myself.

To do that, I would have to be a millionaire.  I’m not a millionaire.  I’m not any sort of aire.

Lacking the money for a direct approach to the problem of making my bespoke suits better, I have used a trick that I learned in writing.

It sometimes appears that there’s a problem with a chapter when there is no problem with that chapter.  The problem is in a different place.  In another chapter.  And that’s what needs to be changed.

I can make my bespoke look better by not constantly wearing suits.  Rather than being an improvement on something that, to the uneducated eye, probably all looks the same anyway, it will be a stark contrast with BIG B WORKWEAR.

But not too stark of a contrast.  At opposite ends of the spectrum, we often find more similarities than differences.  To me, this workwear is simply another example of a suit.  Though lacking the bio-sartorial functions of a suit and tie, it is recommended by being stripped down to even greater simplicity.

To make a very old and oft wrong prediction, jumpsuits are the way of the future.

The whole history of menswear teaches that today’s ultra-simple work or sports wear is tomorrow’s formal clothing.  This was the insight of the lionized though misunderstood Beau Brummel.  Though extravagant by today’s standards, his clothing was, by the standards of the Regency, shockingly simple.  He understood better than most that the past is little more than a collection of barnacles.

So perhaps the B in BIG B WORKWEAR stands for BEAU.  Perhaps it stands for BROTHER.  But one thing it does not stand for is BARNACLE.  It’s the future.

Get used to it.

Continue reading »]]> While sneakers have been naming their shoes after celebrities for quite some time, it now seems that dress shoes have caught onto this branding trick.  But, instead of being endorsed by a living athlete, their shoes are often named after some corpse who probably wouldn’t have been caught dead in them.  Driven by my typical mixture of curiosity and malice, I’ve decided to compare and contrast a couple of the shoes with the person they’re named after.  The Orwell and the Capone, two men who have as much in common with each other as these shoes do with them.

The Orwell

Made by Mr. Hare, this is quite a nice shoe.  But I have a hard time reconciling its sleek stingray design with the often frumpy and professorial appearance of George Orwell.  For all his virtues, Orwell was an unfortunately practical and careless dresser. His own shoes were boots and they were much too large for him.

Not to say that he completely  ignored footwear.  His most famous quote (“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”) is all about boots.   He also said:  “And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots . . .“   So while he did discuss footwear, it was always boots and usually associated with something like face-stamping or dying.

The Orwell doesn’t like a very good shoe for face stamping though it might be a decent shoe to die in.   The most important thing, however, is this:  The Orwell shoe is not a boot. It has nothing to do with Orwell.  And I doubt the man would want it named after him.

Executors / Capone

Unlike George Orwell,  Al Capone would have absolutely no problem with our era of branding nor would he mind having a pair of fancy shoes named after him.  But you’d have to ask him permission and you’d have to pay him.  A lot.  As it is, I doubt that any of these dead people are seeing a cent for the use of their name.  But I’m not sure.  After all, Fred Astaire’s estate got paid when he danced in a vacuum commercial.

Al Capone would have a problem with not getting paid.

Like George Orwell, the shoes that are named for Al Capone are nice but bear little resemblance to anything he would wear.  Al Capone was buried in a pair of black and white spats, which were popular with the gangsters of his day, and, should he have lived in this era, he probably would have favoured some sort of fancy, diamond studded sneaker.

These guys were more about bling than good taste.  They  just had the good fortune to be working at the height of American menswear.  Capone was known to be dressed in “a sumptuous blue suit, accented by a white silk hankie, pearl gray spats and diamond studded platinum watch chain.” I somehow think a pair of Fluevogs just wouldn’t cut it.

These days, neither would spats.

Continue reading »]]> YouTube – Winkers tm a 4.

Via

Winkers are pants that make your ass wink at people with the misfortune to walk behind you.  At 2:25 in the vid, there’s an owl pair of Winkers.  I like owls so much that I might even like that.  That is, if the forehead did not look like a giant shit stain.  Anyway, rush out to buy your Winkers or make your own at home.  Just try to avoid brown.

Continue reading »]]>

Having failed so abysmally at the car-making business,  General Motors is getting into the man-odour business.

They’re releasing a line of deodorants, body-washes and colognes to celebrate the anniversary of the Cadillac.  Called Cadillac, these will not smell  like anything one associates with cars.  (Gasoline, stinking children and burning flesh.)  Rather, the line will smell of grapefruit, chamomile, tarragon, cinnamon, geraniums, incense and sweet spice.

Many people have pointed to this scheme as an indication of how desperate and stupid General Motors has become.  I disagree with that opinion.  GM is not seriously getting into man-odour.  Rather, this is a simple commemorative product.  This sort of thing is done all the time. I remember when Porshe lent its name to a pipe.  It’s always been a bad idea.  For everyone.

But GM does have problems and this line of fragrances makes them abundantly clear.  There was a time when just the word Cadillac conjured up images of high quality and luxury.  If you called anything the Cadillac of something you were complimenting it.  Now that word only conjures failure, desperation and stupidity.  “Eau de Hobo” or “Weeping Welfare Mom” might have a better chance on the market.

On the bright side, soon to be jobless GM employees can always drink the colonge.  At $73 a bottle, it’s the Cadillac of rubby booze options.   Tastes like grapefruit.