Monday, August 22, 2011

"Gear" vs. "Clothes"

Today, I looked down the street and was reminded of a pet-peeve of mine.

There is an old gentleman who lives a few houses down from ours. He happens to be Scottish, if I catch his accent and his last name's implications right. He's a nice fellow. Sort of austere. He moves slowly but surely, sometimes with a cane and sometimes without.

It was about ninety degrees Fahrenheit, today. What struck me was what he was wearing: a white, button shirt with suspenders, a classic flat cap and black socks with black, leather dress shoes. His shorts looked like they had once been dress pants, but cut-off and hemmed.

I like that.

To me there is something annoying about the fact that we have special clothes for everything today: bike-riding clothes; yoga clothes; gardening clothes; dancing clothes, etc. I know they have practical benefits, but I can't help feeling that this painstaking specialization means that we are so far from the basics of daily survival that it puts us into a bit of an existential limbo.

Indiana Jones, for instance. Why did he wear a fedora and a leather jacket in the jungle? Because he needed to protect his body in the jungle and there were no jungle explorer stores or websites. He needed a sturdy jacket and a hat that would keep the sun and rain off of his head. He used ingenuity.

The availability and use of specialty clothes just seems sort of extravagant to me. (Curmudgeon alert!) As a kid, I had a pair of sneakers. I wore them to school and I wore them to basketball practice. I wore them to play ball with my friends on the weekends and to climb trees after school. The kids in the school where I teach have sneakers just for the court -- they are never to be dirtied or scuffed by the outside asphalt. They cost well over a hundred dollars per pair (sometimes, two hundred). Chances are, the kids have a closet full of shoes -- sneakers to match particular outfits; sneakers for the outside court; sneakers for gym class; sneakers for . . . sneaking -- who knows what else?

By the way, to this day I generally still have one pair of sneakers, one pair of brown shoes and one pair of black shoes. Anything else seems nearly flamboyant to me.

But the old fellow down the street, he makes-do with what he has. His cap keeps the sun off of his head. (It probably even blocks out harmful UV light with its cutting-edge wool technology.) His pants are short because his wife made them that way with her skilled hands. And a nice, white button shirt with short sleeves keeps him as cool as any Nike T-shirt would.

I don't know. Maybe I just want to see just one dude in my state ride a bike like I do: in whatever he was wearing that day, instead of in skin-tight, micro-fiber, tech-woven riding "gear."

Come to think of it, if your clothes are called "gear," maybe they are just plain superfluous. (Not that I am suggesting you just take them off. That would be rather cheeky of me.)


  1. I can safely say that I've never been in the jungle without a fedora and a leather jacket.

    I do have running shoes, and I do have running clothes--shirts, shorts, and jacket. In the heat of a Potomac summer, cotton tee shirts get soaked, and chafe. The cloth sneakers of my childhood would not serve for the distances I want to run, and the surfaces along the way, not even if I were at my high school weight.

  2. Hi Georg-- thanks for th comment. It is true-- what exactly were those old sneakers good for, anyway? And I share your lamentation over the old high school weight. Maybe I should stop blogging, buy some appropriate clothes and go for a run myself!

  3. I see both points here, from George and from you Chris. I don't see the problem with having specific gear for a certain activity, like running, or soccer. I love my pair of cleats that my parents bought for me my senior year of high school. They're comfortable and wonderful and make putting curve on the ball, as well as not fall on a muddy field much easier. But when you have an outfit for each hour of each day of the week, theres an issue. I have workout clothes, they're called sweaty beat up tshirts and a random collection of shorts. I have clothes to look decent in, clothes to look nice in (so not fun), and clothes to be a bum in, (my favorite). It always seems to come down to balance for me. Sure a sweat stained t shirt won't be accepted at a wedding, but I dont need a wedding suit, a funeral suit, a baptism suit, a bar mitzvah suit, a date night suit, and a pajama suit. There's a limit.


  4. Chris, I should say that I take your point. The dealership where we now and then take a car for service is right next to "the Georgetown Spur", an old railroad right of way converted to a recreational path. Now and then, while waiting for my car, I stand and watch walkers go past with poles like a skier's, and often enough bottles of water strapped to a belt.

    As for the old cloth sneakers, I fell out of love with them one summer when I was working long hours on a hard floor; after some days of aching legs I switched to something with more support and was fine. Now when I see them on bohemian youth, I think think them an affectation. But heaven knows I played a lot of driveway basketball games in them.

  5. Chris, I do take your point (like George, I have seen the walkers with the ski poles and the water belts) but I also see clearly (again, after our conversation on Jeff's blog) that you aren't a gardener.

    Not that I drop big money on the garments (usually overpriced) that are marketed to gardeners, but gardening is hot, hard, dirty work that does need some specialised clothing. I have a wardrobe of denim work shirts, comfortable trousers that fit and do not bind, boots and clogs, and yes, several pairs of specialist gardening gloves (including leather gauntlets for handling roses) because wearing my everyday casual clothes to do heavy gardening would destroy them. My shoes would be filled with mud or mulch all the time. Other garments would be irredeemably soiled or torn.

    If you're trying to make the case that many people are just buying stuff they don't need because it's been aggressively marketed to them, I agree. But there's a big difference between that and my rose gauntlets -- and go prune out a raspberry thicket if you don't believe me.

  6. Well said, 'nora. There's no question specialty clothes (for for protection, especially) have real use. With this, it was more about an impractical nostalgia and, yes--a statement about marketing. It's a silly little post in the end...

  7. I recalled this post today when I was working in the garden and a couple in their late 20s or early 30s popped out of a car. They were both wearing matching outfits, all white--she a fetching little dress, he a blue-edged shirt, shorts, and slipper-like shoes. Since I don't (to my knowledge) live in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, I assumed they were heading to the nearby tennis court; their rackets confirmed that.

    I mention all this because I laughed at the first words the man said to his significant other: "You know, I feel really stupid when I dress like this."

  8. Jeff--That is fantastic. I'm in stitches over here.