Umm…yeah, so that’s what it’s like to wear spandex in public.
Not bad at all.
Still, getting out there is the first step.
There really is no time to be self-conscious.
…
Hmm.
Tag Archive: clothing
Ubiquity in leather
Back in February I was happy to reward myself for hitting a certain milestone on my weight loss journey by purchasing a new leather jacket. Hey, I was happy with it. I mean, it was on sale and it looked good on me. No problem, right? The jacket has particular details and a certain styling to it that I can pick out. Well, slowly over the next few months I was slowly starting to get annoyed. I was seeing my jacket style on a handful of other people. First there was this guy at work. He had the same jacket. No problem because we were on different floors and hardly ran into each other. Still, the fact was that we’d come in some days looking like we coordinated somehow. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened in my workplace. I think week later I saw a dog trainer with his own TV show on television wearing the jacket style two sizes two big for him. Weeks later I saw a weather newscaster on the 24 hour news channel wearing the same jacket. Seriously.
So, thankfully summer rolled around and I could give the jacket a rest. No problem. I could reassess by the time cooler weather rolled around. I was able to avoid wearing the jacket though when I bought a thin fall jacket from Rudsak. I really love this store’s urban style, and how they don’t mass-produce. If you get a piece from there, you know it won’t be everywhere. Anyway, when the leather jacket finally made it back into my daily rotation, I started seeing it even more frequently. One guy on the streetcar had it. I saw one on the subway. I saw it on an older guy in church. I’ve seen it in the grocery store. All of that made me nuts! Just the other day I decided to throw in the towel and seek out a new jacket to swap in as my main leather go to. I ended up going back to Rudsak and ended up getting a new leather jacket. I swear, I love how this jacket looks!
Sorry, it’s hard to take self-photos. The photo doesn’t really do the jacket justice, but yeah, I can rest easy again, yes? I can consider this as a late birthday gift. If I feel good wearing it, then it shows that I made a good choice, right? And I doubt I’ll end up seeing a glut of this jacket out on the street. Right on.
About the shirts
Earlier today at work I was wearing a white oxford with contrasting vertical stripes. Underneath I had a black t-shirt on just for layering and moisture control. Prior to heading out the door I wasn’t too sold on the how I looked, but I was running out of time, so I just went with it. At work, when I dropped by the washroom I took a good look in the mirror. My shirt was slightly untucked and looking pretty wonky. Overall, I decided that I didn’t like my shirt at all. Too much contrast was going on with the stripes and the shirt. And on top of the black tee it all just looked odd. I tried adjusting the shirt a bit, like unbuttoning the top button. Overall, it just wasn’t doing anything for me, but I figured I could make it through the day. Five minutes after I sat down again at my desk, I just felt entirely annoyed. I used the reasoning that the office was becoming too warm and took the shirt off leaving me with my black tee. I guess I didn’t look bad or anything, but I just felt odd. It’s not the same type of oddness that I experienced with the striped shirt. Rather, I’m not usually the type of person that goes to work or meets with people in just a t-shirt.
No, when I interact with people, I’d rather be wearing a shirt that has a proper collar on it. I don’t think I can pinpoint when this became a thing for me. Through high school, having gone to a Catholic high school I had to wear a uniform. I’m sure that probably helped get me comfortable with the idea of collared shirts. At some point after that, I think I developed an attitude that I could not look respectable without a collared shirt. It didn’t matter if it was kind of dressy or not; polos and golf shirts were just fine with me. Through university, short-sleeved collared shirts became a mainstay of my wardrobe. If I had to wear a long-sleeve shirt, I always ended up rolling the sleeves up to reveal my forearms. See, again, the look wasn’t about being formal.
Flash forward to today, and I cannot feel comfortable just wearing a tee. At work, after removing the collared shirt, it took me a few minutes of self-perceived awkwardness before I put my jacket on to regain some level of comfort. Pfft. I wasn’t going to put the collared shirt back on; putting on the jacket was a good option. This was despite saying just earlier that it was getting warm in the office.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like my cotton t-shirts. Usually I use them for layering purposes, or for stuff to wear around the house. I don’t really care if anyone else wears just t-shirts to work. Just, for me personally, I can’t take myself seriously without a collar. Necessary! Just like everybody else, I like presenting a good image to the world, and if I can’t take myself seriously, who else will?
A wrinkly shirt and a bit of gravy
When I was picking what I wanted to wear this morning, I was wearing my black jeans, so I knew that I wanted to pick something that would contrast against it, which mean that my dark shirts weren’t right for the moment. I ended up picking out this beige linen shirt that I’ve had for a long while. Yeah, since it’s old it’s a size or two larger. I was running late, so I made the decision to not iron it. To my eyes it didn’t look that horrible. I figured that if I tucked the shirt in properly it wouldn’t look that bad. Really, it didn’t at the time.
About midday, I stopped by the bathroom before heading out to pick up lunch. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and was kind of shocked at how sloppy I looked. The wrinkly nature of the linen shirt was more evident. The tucked-ness of the shirt was variable, which I should have expected. After all, it’s not like I was standing still. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel comfortable at all. After picking up lunch, I actually accidentally splattered a bit of gravy on the shirt. That was my cue. I actually went out to Queen St. W and went shopping for a few shirts. Time to replace a few things in my closet, right? Mexx had their whole stock on sale for half-price so I ended up getting a couple of shirts from there. As soon as I got back to office, I changed shirts and immediately I started feeling better about myself.
I’m only telling this story now because this seems to have become a common pattern for me. It’s not like I didn’t care about how I looked before, but it’s been ramped up over the past few months. There really is a lot of truth about looking good being correlated to feeling good. I’m doing so much to transform myself physically, that I might as well care about what I’m wearing too, right? It’s not like I’m becoming snobbish or obsessive, though details and fit should matter, right? If I buy correctly, both shouldn’t be an issue I have to be actively conscious about.
See. All of this came about just because of a wrinkly shirt and a bit of gravy. Geez, man.
Favourite shirts
Yeah, I’ve written about how a lot of my clothes have become kind of tent-like due to my weight loss. Like I said before, I’m sort of in the process of replacing things but really a lot of my old stuff still remains in my daily rotation. I can’t just get rid of it all, eh? Anything that doesn’t look entirely ridiculous still gets some use. It’s kind of sad though when some of my well-worn shirts start getting borderline.
I have a dark blue button down shirt that should have been replaced a long while back due to age, but is still usable. This morning, due to have a lot of my clothing being in the hamper I decided to use this shirt. When I put it on, it didn’t look like I was swimming in it. When I tucked it in I noticed that it bunched up fairly easily due to all of the extra fabric. I figured that if I arranged it properly it wouldn’t look so bad. As I went about my day though, every time I passed by a reflective surface I kept noticing how it just looked off. This thing just looked one or two sizes too big and didn’t look all that flattering. Honestly, I felt pretty uncomfortable all day.
So yeah, I think it’s really time to stash these things away and actively find more things to add into the rotation. I can’t go around feeling self-conscious, like I feel like I look odd. People sniff that kind of thing out and treat you accordingly, eh?
Takes a real man to wear purple
How many times am I going to second guess wearing my purple shirt? Wear it with confidence or don’t wear it at all! Damn.
Broken button
About midday, I managed to rip the button fastening my pants. It’s not that my pants were too tight, it’s just that during the lunch hour, in a moment of bad judgment, I ended up moving in a way where the button just got caught in a bad position. Yes, I had a belt, and that likely would have been enough to keep my pants up and my fly from coming undone. The mere possibility of having it all come undone with one false move though was just something I didn’t want to deal with so I wandered over to the Winners down the street. I found a similar pair of pants, brought them back to work, and changed as soon as I could. You know, in all honesty I felt kind of odd at having to wear clothes that I wasn’t intending on wearing at the beginning of the day. It’s like, at the beginning of the day there’s this image that I was choosing to present in the workplace, and one shift kind of threw it all off. Sure, it’s not like the new pants were off in any way, but mentally I just felt like I wasn’t in control of the situation.
Yeah, this is just more evidence of my daily neuroses. Bah.
Metamorphosis
Damn it! I already knew that the suit that I bought at graduation no longer fits properly, but today I just realized that the blazer and sport jacket I bought in September are also a bit big. I suppose I can wear more layers to fill them out, but…maaaaaaan. There will come a time when I’ll need to go to an event and I’ll be scrambling to find something that fits well. This problem needs to be addressed. However, do I buy stuff now with the possibility that thing won’t fit again in a few months, or do I wait things out? Aaaaargh!
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