I watch Project Runway. I don’t do it for any reason other than to enjoy the show. (Other reasons being that I am being forced to watch it by family members or significant others.) With the exception of the most obnoxious pretty lady in the world as host (Heidi Klum), it has provided me enjoyment over the course of its run. So it isn’t as if I am completely unaware of fashion, nor am I willingly looking away when fashion presents itself on the television screen.
But I am quite unfashionable. And truly it comes down to one thing. Comfort and laziness. For a number of years I’ve been sticking to a set of clothing that while “okay” to where to just about any occasion, the wardrobe does nothing to make statements about who I am. Rather it is making a statement, the wrong one. I’m not a lazy guy. I spend nearly all my waking hours working on “something” whether it be my paying job, for Citrix, or my passion project for www.classyhands.com, I’m always “doing.” However rolling out to places wearing my khaki shorts, torn up sandals and most often wrinkled shirt screams that what I am “doing” is laying on the couch eating cheetohs.
When April (the “April” in “aprilgolightly” as well as my girlfriend) started pushing me to update my sartorial selections I was naturally reticent. The “I am who I am” card was played as a defense over and over again until finally something happened. I can’t recall what it is necessarily that made me change. Perhaps it was finally looking in a mirror, perhaps it was her feminine wiles. Regardless, I decided on my own to accept more “fashionable” forms of the styles that I had been toting my entire life. After acquiring several shirts from Stafford and Van Heusen (inexpensive but well constructed button-downs), as well as a few pairs of Michael Kors jeans, I felt like a new man.
More specifically, the same man, but better dressed.
*Not a word, don’t use in Scrabble.