People and Clothes

Some people’s clothes have a way of riding up in unfortunate places, in a way that seems almost willful. It’s as if the clothes are sentient, and cloth and wearer are locked in a lifelong battle for supremacy. I know people who can look out-of-place in a tailored jacket. In fact, I am one of them. I know other people who are the opposite: they can get away with anything. Cloth, no matter how cheap or poorly cut, drapes over their muscles. If I am exhibit A, Immanuel is exhibit B. He can look stylish wearing things that I’d be ashamed to even be seen in public wearing. He had a pair of boots that he’d repaired with bicycle inner tubes and brass rivets. The repaired section immediately blew out, but he wore them all over town, to special events, as if they were the latest hip thing, and because he pretended, and maybe even believed, that they were the latest hip thing, they were, and everybody commented approvingly. This is, of course, totally unfair. And, since, in this case, I am on…