Clothes maketh the man, allegedly...

Albert Einstein. Really important figure in the history of humanity, right? Came up with the theory of relativity, had a moustache, mum and dad were called Pauline and Hermann, all of that. So how come the only thing that really comes to mind when someone mentions his name is something I learnt from the pages of “The Incredible Hulk” when I was a wee kid? Albert, you see, apparently had an entire wardrobe full of identical suits so that every morning he wouldn’t have to waste any brainpower wondering what to wear; this was their way of explaining why clever atomic scientist Dr Bruce Banner always seemed to be wearing purple trousers when he Hulked out. And, even though I read this in a comic that starred a big green man in torn purple trousers (which, in my mind at least, doesn’t really say a lot about the truth of the story), it’s still been something that’s stuck in my brain ever since.

You see, I spend possibly the smallest amount of time deciding what to wear every day. I get up and grab the nearest clean clothes to put on, unless there’s some kind of special occasion that day (and THEN, it’s suit or kilt time, for the most part. Unless it’s some kind of costume party... where the kilt could possibly do just as well, now that I come to think about it), and launch myself into the big bad world. The same big bad world where people are judged on what they look like all the time.

It’s the smallest thing; this prejudice. It’s an unconscious thing, or a SUBconscious one; everyone does it all the time without realising it and doesn’t really think about it later, either. We see kids wearing Limp Bizkit t-shirts and crap goatees and chain keyrings and think, “Oh, I know what THEY’re like.” Or the gangs of goths, all wearing black and pale and uninteresting, the girls with lipstick their biggest colours, or hiphoppers or indie kids (with fringes and old charity shop clothes) or whatever, we see them and make presumptions: Everyone’s so into their tribes now, it seems. One look and you can tell where they belong.

...Except I DON’T know where I belong. I don’t think about what my style is, but the truth is, I don’t even know if I even HAVE a style. What does what I wear (right now: black jeans, black t-shirt with a navy sweatshirt over it. Plus the inevitable odd socks, and old boxers) SAY to people when they see me? Do they look at my sideburns and assume something about what music I listen to or the books I read? Does my hairstyle (or lack of, considering the current outgrown shaggy look I appear to be sporting) have any meaning that I’m not aware of?

(Years ago, I helped a student I was teaching with her dissertation, which was all about the uniforms we always find ourselves in; in this country at least, school generally always means strict uniform codes that we pretend that we’re sick of and want to break free of... but as soon as we leave school, we instinctively seek out new gangs and structures to live in, and these come with their own uniforms, even if they’re not named as such. Which isn’t to say anything of the careers we go into, where we have ANOTHER type of uniform to wear, generally - and depending on the job. The student was asking if the fact that we, as adults, wear at least two uniforms in our lives - work and play clothes, essentially - represents a schizophrenic trend in everyone. I pointed out that I more or less wore the same clothes at work as at rest, and was told that my latent schizophrenia probably came out in different ways. Which has troubled me ever since, really).

I’ve always missed out on this tribe thing; the closest I ever came was the Britpop craze years ago, when the country went mad for Blur and Oasis and cute boys in secondhand tops playing Beatles ripoffs. I dug the music and I wanted the lifestyle; every weekend I’d want to be one of the singers onstage smiling and making all the girls scream. But the most I did was to buy the records; I never had the clothes and I was always too unsure about whether the haircuts would make me look silly to ever get one (ironically, considering I finally got one when the craze was over). But still, that was the closest I’ve ever really come to being in step with any fashion.

I guess if I have any tribal allegiances, it’s to the one where people don’t quite fit in with a prescribed “norm”; the one where your CD collection has Wagon Christ AND Mahalia Jackson singing gospel, or you dig “Buffy” as much as you do Krzystof Kieslowski films and who you ARE is more important than what you wear. But still; part of me finds it funny that so many years after leaving school, I’m still running with the kids who’ll never be part of the In Crowd.

[ previous - next ]

Copyright © Grim, 2002