Personal Style

This article is a response to Angel Butler’s piece published in the February 18th, 2010 issue of the Purple and White.

Typically, I take my shirts from Goodwill, pants from the clearance rack and my bourbon with water. While my bourbon typically comes out of a plastic bottle, I know I want it with water because of its simplicity. Mixing with Coke or some other overly sugared carbonated beverage only disguises the thing you most want to taste or feel the affects of.

Like Paul Newman, or Cary Grant before him, he took his highballs in a glass with ice. His gin with tonic and scotch with water tossed back with a carefree toast to his life and health.
Do you think Andre 3000 or Jay-Z cares whether their suit has cuff-links with their monograms? I think A-3000 would be difficult to engrave. No, they wear what makes them feel like them. Each of these men, from Newman to Jay-Z, has become an icon of men’s fashion. Each one has a distinctly unique style, not comforting to typical rules of fashion.

Clothing like most of your outward appearance relies most on what is beneath it all. While you could follow every fashion tip given (and it would take an Excel spreadsheet to organize this) you should be most true to yourself.

Now, I do not attempt to be the uber composed Cree Cantrell or have the almost lazy calmness of another guy on the baseball team in the signature sweats, I can only be myself. I respect each of these examples for separate reasons and I respect the guy down the caf’ table from me, who squeezed himself into skinny jeans that morning. Each represents himself in a different way for a different reason. From the guy buttoned up in Vineyard Vines to the guy strutting his stuff in a Coogi suit, our clothes speak about ourselves. While not everyone dresses themselves to walk at Fashion Week, everyone does exude something about themselves from what they are wearing.
The clothes I decide to adorn my spindly frame are apart of that as well.

Above all, like a great book I read for my Environment, History and Power class, “there was no thing as the Industrial Revolution and this is a book about it”. Fashion is a terrible word and this was a post about it. Your outward appearance should truly be about yourself.

note, I do not wish to be rude to Ms. Butler, I just disagreed with her article and previous articles.