Socks: know their power and use it wisely

I have a question about socks selection. I’ve heard several philosophies on this subject. Should socks match:
1) Shoe color
2) Pants color
3) Shirt color
4) None of the above

Note that the Bee Gees (pictured) would apparently choose option 1). Although, their thoughts on fashion would be somewhat suspect, given their taste in shoes. Your guidance is appreciated.

Dear Sock Curious,

Thank you for caring. Here are some basic guidelines:

If you are wearing black shoes, it is fairly safe to match your socks to your shoes. If you have good taste (according to anyone other than the person who taught you to dress yourself), you might venture into the territory of patterned socks. Large patterns on socks are riskier than small patterns.

If you are wearing brown shoes, it is a lot harder to find a matching brown sock, and you will rapidly descend into dorkland if you miss by a shade. With brown shoes, it is wiser to match your socks to your pants. However, it really depends on the shoes, the kind of leather, the style, and the details, as well as on the pants you are wearing.

Never, ever match your socks to your shirt. That is a sorry misconception generated by the fashion backward and greedy efforts of the Gap in the last twenty years. Remember that intrusive salesperson chirpily insisting through the dressing room door that you purchase socks to match that shirt? Well, that was intended to encourage you to spend more money, not to make you look good. And if you listened to that Gap monkey, you wound up looking like a squat little layer cake. Unless your legs are so tiresomely long you just wish you could make them look shorter by uniting your torso and your ankles, do NOT wear socks that match your shirt. One exception: if your shirt and your pants and your shoes match, you might as well match your socks to the whole shebang and audition for Lawrence Welk.

Finally, the Bee Gees: Forgive them, it was the 1970s and white jazz shoes were a sign of cool in that fleeting era of disco. Perhaps such zippity white shoes reminded people of that zippity white powder they had just vacuumed into their nasal passages. However, the Bee Gees' socks, which appear to be white athletic socks, really didn't do them any favors in the slick department. Fast forward to 1995 and the movie adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel Get Shorty in which Dennis Farina played the role of a sleezily stylish thug. There is a scene in which the camera pans to his ankles and reveals his socks, transparent trouser socks, to be precise. Trouser socks are the male answer to the knee high stocking - they are a thin dress sock that look ridiculous on most human beings unless they were raised in Miami by generations of confident pimps. Anyway, the Bee Gees would have done better to wear sheer white socks with their disco suits and white shoes. Here is a photo of the black version of what they should have considered:

I leave you with this vision. Enjoy your nightmares.

XO,

Ms.Chief

Animals ON Attire - what flies and what does not.

Q: We’ve heard you sound off on animals in attire, but what about animals on attire? I’m thinking specifically of a sweatshirt with a wolf on it, and behind him a silhouette of another wolf on a ridge howling at the moon. If only I could find 7 of them, I’d be happy every day of the week. Also, what about animals on a tire?

A: Your proposed sweatshirt is a teensy bit ridiculous and highly illogical in its storytelling. Why on earth would the one wolf be apart for the other wolf? Have they had a fight? Does one of the wolves think the moon is a cookie and wants to eat it while the other is ignoring his clearly delusional friend?

If you want a sweatshirt with wolves on them, I think you should go for something more friendly and logical, like two wolves riding a horse while eating sandwiches and listening to a radio.

Regarding animals on a tire (supposing you really want to know something about that and aren’t just making a shameful pun) the only animals I have ever seen standing on a tire are goats and birds. If you are referring to animals as decoration on mudflaps, yes, that’s okay as long as they aren’t striking a suggestive pose in chrome. That’s just plain old naughty.

XO,
Adj.

Seersucker Scenarios

Should I buy a seersucker suit? If yes, where can I find a great one? If no, where can I find a decent one? Oh, and what shoes should you wear with it?


Your battery of questions raise one (1) very crucial question:
Why do you think you might need a seersucker suit? Are you going to the Kentucky Derby? Are you attending an outdoor summer wedding in the Hamptons?

Assuming you really, truly need a seersucker suit, here are some answers:

1. Check vintage stores for a stylish, period seersucker suit. You might even be so lucky as to find a straw hat (always check for fleas if you buy a used hat).
2. Don’t buy a cheap suit or you will look like you are sporting a glorified paper towel.
3. Traditionally, you wear a light-colored, buckskin lace-up with red-rubber soles or a similar-colored saddle shoe with a seersucker suit. However, saddle shoes are seriously dorky, so I suggest you consider red tranny patent leather platforms just for fun. At worst, you’ll sprain an ankle. At best, you’ll be forced to stay home because you can’t walk.

XO,
Adj.

Collars of the Rainbow

What do you think of "popped" collars? Not to influence your opinion, but examples galore.

Dear Preppy Curious,

I’m going to tell you a history of the popped collar: Once upon a time in the late 1970s, there lived a young boy in a swanky Miami apartment, which was a pastel predictor of Tony Montana’s home in Scarface (1983). The walls were smothered in textured mauve wallpaper, the white pleather couches resembled Beluga whales and the glass and brass tables were graced with dusty arrangements of blue plastic roses. The boy’s mother and father were neglectful at best, frequently occupied with inhaling another kind of dust off the tables while the boy sat curled up in his Papasan Chair dreaming of parents without DUIs or STDs baking apple pie and chocolate chip cookies and teaching him how to bow hunt on the weekends. Every morning, the boy would shrug on his private school uniform and wander off to school after waving goodbye to his mother who was already sucking down Moscow Mules barely dressed in fur mules and a flammable polyester dressing gown that was a little too short for the apartment balcony. The parental neglect in the Getting Dressed Department also translated to the collar of the boy’s private school uniform remaining flipped up (popped) when he went to school. As the boy got older and his father’s septum disintegrated and his mother swam further into the bottom of a bottle, he found that the popped collar not only made him look a little like Count Dracula, which appealed to the girls (and boys), but was a fantastic hickey hider that had the bonus of gaining him the leering admiration of his schoolmates. With the help of a drab tutor (who wouldn’t have known a hickey if it leaped up and hit him on the head with a squeaky dog toy shaped like a bee), the boy somehow graduated from high school and a family friend who felt sorry for him got him a job on the set of Miami Vice as Junior Assistant to the Associate Costume Designer. The Senior Costume Designer saw the boy’s popped collar (didn’t make the connection with hickeys or Count Dracula), thought it looked swell, and behold, Don Johnson’s unstructured jacket with pushed up sleeves and wrinkled popped collar was born.

So what do I think of popped collars? They look great on Count von Count from Sesame Street.

XO,
Adj.

Attired Animals

Why do people put clothes on animals? I think it’s weird.

Dear Animal Naturalist,

Just the other day I saw a pug in a pink sleeveless hoodie. I didn’t know what to think. It was cute yet wrong, much like the pug itself. Did you know that pugs have their very own type of encephalitis which causes them to have seizures? That’s the result of too much inbreeding. Maybe those dogs should wear a hoodie for their own good. Anyway, I digress.

Kids put clothes on everything remotely alive. When I was a kid, I would dress up fruits and vegetables. Don’t ask me why - I have no idea. Grownups who dress up animals are a different matter. Perhaps they don’t have children and wish they did. Perhaps they do have children and wish the children were animals because animals don’t pick their own clothes and you can keep them on a leash throughout their lives. It is also possible that some of the grownups who do this are secretly wannabe cross dressers and they are taking it out on their pets.

I once knew a woman who had a pet goose as a child. They would put the goose in a diaper and it would sit on the couch and watch TV. I’m not kidding. It’s not a suburban myth. But at least the reason the goose was wearing a diaper was so it wouldn’t crap on the couch. I have no idea why the goose was in the house and why it watched TV.

So it is weird that people dress up animals, but they have all different reasons.

Now back to inbreeding: What I want to know is why people think inbreeding animals for the purity of the breed is acceptable, but you aren’t supposed to have children with your siblings? That seems like a double standard.

XO,
Adj.

Black… the new black.

Is wearing all black fashionable? Or just lazy?

Dear Monotone Curious,

There are many answers to your question.

1. If you are going to a costume party as Johnny Cash, a Goth or Robert Smith from the Cure, wearing black is not lazy, but I wouldn't say it is fashionable per se.
2. If you are wearing all black to set off your accessories, it can be very fashionable if your blacks match and your accessories are actually as fabulous as you think they are.
3. If you are wearing all black because your clothes are so dirty that they just look black, then you are personally quite disgusting.
4. If you wear all black out of laziness, then guess what? It means you are indeed lazy.

So in short, there is no real answer, but if your intentions are good and/or you look great (whether deliberately or by mistake), usually laziness is not a concern.

XO,
Adj.