Mid-Life Fashion Crisis

It's September in NYC which means two things:

1) The drunktards who watch their football games will be out on the weekends howling in the night as their team wins.  OR: Will start fights in the streets when their teams lose. and..

2) Its Fashion Week.

Fashion Week happens a couple of times a year here in NYC.  It is a big deal for anyone who enjoys fashion and/or celebrity.  They main tent is built in Bryant Park (across the street from my work) and is then injected with teenage girls who look like Mary-Kate Olsen's little pet project, a group of people with 18 neck badges that read "FULL ACCESS" on them, and a handful of gay personal assistants.  All walking around in front of Bryant Park.  

I personally don't mind it.  It is fun to watch people and even more so when you get to watch people who dress up at 9:00 a.m.

My wife loves fashion week because she IS a fashion student.  To her, Marc Jacobs is what Slash from Guns and Roses is to me.  So I can understand her excitement.

When Fashion Week rolls around, it always makes me look at how I dress.  My "style" or better yet, "fashion sense" has evolved since I was in high school.

I went first through the Hip-Hop stage, where I wore my dads pants because they were as big as a bedsheet on me.  I wore Cross Colors shirts and Fresh Jive.  I wore the overalls with the grafitti on the pant leg and had one overall buckle open.  I wore the baseball cap with the price tag still attached.  I was trying to be like Marky Mark, but ended up looking more like a white Boys II Men, who if you look back now, looked dorky as hell back in the 90's.

Shortly after high school, I got into the whole "Life is a beach" thing.  Listened to a lot of Sublime and wore flip flops and hawaiian shirts (yes I know, my wife would have never looked at me if she met me then).   I bleached my hair and wore orange sun glasses.  I would kick my own ass if I saw myself now.

Then I went on to the whole "I am too cool to look like anyone so I go to the thrift shop and wear cool shit nobody else wants to wear" phase.  This was in my early 20's.  I would wear things like bubble vests with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle thrift shirts (before they became cool and started selling at Urban Outfitters).  I wore plaid pants and hush puppies.  I wore knit skull caps with patterns on them.  I even put leopard print on my hair for about 6 months.  Why? cause nobody else thought of doing it, so I tried it.  It was a terrible idea.  I basically looked like the 70's threw up on me.  And I thought I was cool as hell.  I was so different, but it wasn't cool.  It was creepy.  

Later I got into the skating phase.  While I was into skating for a while, I didn't dress the part.  So, I finally tried it out.  It lasted about 3 weeks when I realized I looked like a 16 year old boy.  Most of my skater buddies pulled off outfits.  Me on the other hand, I looked like I shopped at Wal-Mart for my "I SK8, there for I H8" shirt.  So I stopped.

Then I just went into the whole "Luke Perry- 90210" look around 2002 where I just wore white t-shirts and jeans....ALL THE TIME!  I had like 30 white shirts and that is all I wore.  Why?  Because you can't go out un-matching that way.  

When I met my wife my fashion style kind of gave up.  From 2003 to about when I met her, I kind of gave up and put on whatever was clean in my closet.  Didn't care if it matched, if it looked funny, or if it made sense.  If it was clean, it was going on.  My jeans were still on the baggy side.   My shirts had holes in them and said things like "Ninja' Please".   I wore army hats and bracellets and didn't really give a shit anymore.  I wasn't looking to get laid.  I wasn't looking to impress girls with the way I dress.  I just wanted to skate, surf, and watch Tarintino movies all day long.  

When my wife met me she threw me into her "Transformer" machine and now I dress pretty nicely.  She made me get rid of the baggy jeans and replace them with fitting jeans.  She made me get rid of my "Idaho, no! You-da-ho!" shirts and replaced them with clothes from H&M and Zara.  My ghetto sneakers were replaced by nice, solid black shoes.  My hat collection shrunk dramatically.  I started wearing suit vests over t-shirts.  Started wearing beige slacks when I went out with friends.  Started wearing button ups to dinners.  I became a normal, good looking guy (according to her, not myself).  

I dig it.  I like the way she helped me pick clothes that do make me look my age.  I used to dress like I was still 19, but now, I have embraced the "I will soon have white hairs so I must wear clothes that are not from the mall" anymore.

My most recent purchase is a bit scarry.  When Sexy Swedish Wife and I were shopping in Paris, she went ahead and made a bold move and bought me a leather jacket.  Until that moment, I always thought that the people who pull off leather jackets are people like Brad Pitt when he sits on a motorcycle, or the guy who plays the man-whore on Grey's Anatomy.  I, did not think that I can pull it off.  Leather jackets are either really dorky on someone, or really cool.  Cool guys pull it off and nobody questions them.  The dorks, well, they look like iditos.  You know the ones.  The guy who sits at the dive bar who has a beer belly and is 37 with no hair and talks about this "broad I nailed lastnight back in the alley of the 99 cent store".  

But my wife had confidence that I would pull it off.  The first few days I had it, we were still in Paris, so I wore it and felt ok because 1) every European man wears a leather jacket and 2) I was not nervous because I didn't know anyone.   But since landing in NYC a few weeks ago, it has been too hot to try it out and with the temperature slowly dropping, I know the day will soon come where I will have to try my new leather jacket on outside in New York City.

My wife defends her decision and says I look very handsome.  Which is sweet.  I do trust her because she is a fashion student and well, she worked so hard for 3 years to get rid of all that made me look dorky, that I don't think she would throw it all away by buying me a jacket that takes me 20 steps back.  But, I am nervous.  

I am almost 30, and this is the closest I am to having a mid-life crisis purchase.  Most, go out and buy a motorcycle.  Sure,  I was not the one who bought the jacket, but I am nervous that if I put it on, I will like it and therefor, use it to fill in my mid-life crisis void.  The jacket is the new "white shirt and jeans".  I don't want to over do it and be the guy who ALWAYS wears the jacket.   

So, I will swim lightly.  I will take baby steps into the world of "guys who can pull of leather jackets" and hope I don't fall into the "nope, not cool enough to pull it off" hole. 

Let's hope my wife knows what she is doing.  ;)

P.S.  What did ever happen to Andrew Dice Clay? (pictured above).