Red Daddy chinos land yours truly in hot water with fashion police
ALL too recently I was the victim of clothes shaming. The offending clothing being a pair of red chinos which I wore with a eye-popping white shirt, gleefully festooned with what looked like daubs of fresh paint. Having uploaded the image to my Facebook page, along with several other holiday snaps from my trip to the States last month, I thought nothing more of it. I got a few likes and then Wham! Boof! Splat!, three upper cuts to the ego in the form of comments posted under the red pants.
It wasn’t long before I was seeing red and a Facebook battle sparked to life with a councillor who I have had tame run-ins with over the years, but who really is a good guy.
You learn to grow a thick skin in this job fairly quickly so ultimately I viewed it as banter, but not before friends from across the world started lamenting, nay damning my choice of attire. ‘Dang!’ came one response, while another ‘friend’ whacked me with an accusation that I was after buying the colourful chinos before the Spanish students got to them. As someone who wouldn’t normally care less about what people think about me and my choice of clothes I still did a double take and found myself questioning myself, my choices and what I was thinking getting dressed that day. My sartorial ways have often landed me in trouble, like when, as a long haired grunger in the mid-Nineties, my hair, Converse All Stars, cords and check shirt got me into a scrape with a Neanderthal at the Atlantic nightclub in Ballybunnion in County Kerry, or when said cords and Converse canvas boots sparked the ire of my Geography teacher as our class negotiated a rain soaked mountain side on a glacier hunt in 6th Year.
I would describe my style as bi-polar, oscillating for no particular reason (but always depending on cleanliness) between dark smart casual, fun, colourful Dad and colour-coordinated modern man about town (without the deep brown leather satchel). My dress sense that day fell probably into the fun Dad category as in fun Dad at a children’s party, playing the clown!
I shop in secondhand clothes shops, but can also be found at classy mens shops. I have gone from two to seven pairs of pants in recent years and have somehow filled two drawers with shoes and boots of various colours. Taking the advice of Polonius in Hamlet who advised a young Laertes: ‘Spend all you can afford on clothes, but make sure they’re quality, not flashy, since clothes make the man,’ I’ve tried to be stylish, admittedly pushing the boat out too far at times with my choices, but then who am I not to bring a bit of colour to what can be a drab, sad world.
Last week Barron Trump also fell prey to an online bashing for being spotted wearing childrens’ clothes, shorts and a t-shirt, as he disembarked Air Force One. I’m not his father’s number one fan, but children are off bounds, aren’t they! Ford Springer, a writer for a conservative website, wrote under the headline ‘It’s High Time Barron Trump Starts Dressing Like He’s In the White House,’ adding that he has been on the ‘Barron Trump train from the start,’ but then started bashing the 11-year-old for not looking as sharp as his famous parents.
‘One thing that isn’t normal though is the way he dresses when he joins his parents for a public appearance,’ the article read. Chelsea Clinton soon jumped to young Barron’s defence, saying: ‘It’s high time the media & everyone leave Barron Trump alone & let him have the private childhood he deserves.’
Clinton for 2020?