I don’t always fly, but when I do, it’s always First Class!
And I always wear a suit and tie, and more often than not my seat is next to young man likely worth a hundred times my wealth, wearing basketball shoes and some sort of open neck, collarless T-shirt printed with an advertising logo or meaningless or rude pithy saying and always, Help me Lord, always smelling like a metro-sexual male who lunched at a fragrance counter at Macy’s.
And I am certain he’s thinking, Oh “Shxx!” Some old dude, dressed for his own funeral. How “fuxxing” long is this flight!
As I settled into my reclining leather upholstered First Class seat, on my last flight from Sea-Tac Seattle to Reagan Washington, (I always called the trip “Washington Squared,” as in “Book me tomorrow Washington Squared,) there he was in the seat next to mine, Grunge Boy! He may have been thirty, even older, but he was dressed like a teenager from the foundling home, do they still have those? Why me on a five hour flight?
I dress for dinner, and for Church, and when ever I leave the house because I love the knotted feel of a Harris Tweed, and silky smooth Sharkskin, and the lay, the weave, of fine wool fabrics, the crispness of a starched white button down. Even causally, what can compare to the coolness of combed cotton kakki, and the bright yet faded patterns of madras cloth.
It’s not a class thing, or a cultural thing, I want to look like my father; I want to dress like a “grown up,” I want to be comfortable, assured and competent, and I want to pay homage to the tailors and haberdashers and seamstresses and to the cobblers who made my Churchill’s on their lasts, because any of them, any of those who have served me are worth more than I, and far more than the pencil necked prick sitting next to me, whose lack of taste and decorum assures the extinction of what I value most, a culture built on interdependency, mutual respect, and a society that has a place for all, from gentle soul to acerbic genius.
Do you notice that in the imagined future, of film and fiction and video clips, aside from conversations almost exclusively expletive driven, everybody dresses the same? Everyone wears a a zippered version of a 1970’s leisure suit? Androgyny is the style, personality is communal? Even worse, everyone is young?
I blame it all on the pencil necked pricks like the kid in the seat next to mine, ear buds crammed in his auricles, dressed like a male skank, no doubt hating every minute seated next to me, Why, I think, I could snap that little pencil neck… and then he speaks…
Hi, I’m Mark, my Dad used to dress up to fly, you remind me of him. He passed away last year. He always said that a well dressed man could always be…
I don’t hear the rest, my thoughts are suddenly yanked back to my father’s advice, “Never judge a book by its cover, or a man by his color… and always wait until words are spoken to begin to form an opinion”
I heard the young man speak earnestly of his work, of the need for a corporate social conscience, of the value of stewardship of resources and the need of leaving a legacy for future generations, and at the flight’s end, friends, we exchanged business cards, but on the back of mine, I wrote my tailor’s name and number…