Be Original....

The other day I was sitting on campus, casually staring at people and making spontaneous assessments of them. That's a pastime I unabashedly enjoy. Anyway, I noticed a guy sitting two seats away from me who, upon first glance, I liked the look of. But upon closer scrutiny, I realised something horrific. Gut-wrenchingly awful. Every single item that he was wearing, I had seen that very day on 5 different guys.

Now, no one likes to feel unoriginal. I almost mentioned it to the look-thief, but thought better of it. "Those are mannequin clothes!" is not a good conversation opener. It did get me to thinking about originality though. There's an inherent problem. It's actually quite easy to wear clothes that nobody else is wearing, but often there is a very good reason that nobody else is wearing them. They're bloody horrible.

So to my mind there are three distinct approaches. The first is simple: spend a small fortune on high-fashion garments. The reasons that you shouldn't do this are two-fold. Spending a small fortune on clothes is unreasonable and, honestly, offensive.

 In fact I'm increasingly trying to avoid "trends". If I think my 40-year-old self would be embarrassed to be seen walking with a man wearing it, I don't think it should be bought buy. By the way this also applies to most of the stuff in the window of Markham.

The second approach is one that I can perhaps help with. Simply identify smaller labels and buy from them. Then when a friend asks where you got your new shirt from, you can just smile enigmatically and say something irritating like: "Wouldn't you like to know?"

The third approach is trawling around second-hand and charity shops. But the feeling of finding a gem hidden on the racks is hard to beat. Warning: when you see something advertised as a "vintage 1990s jumper", you will feel very old indeed.

Sooo... genleman do us all a favour a try create your own dresscode, because NO ONE wants to be unoriginal