From Harry Truman to Stuart Scott: Sins and menswear

This disregard is also a liability. The same uninterested attitude that can be charming and unpretentious can also be slovenly, irritating and creepy.

There are everyday sins, the venial sins of fashion. You can see these in any of the larger buildings such as Angell Hall or the MLB, where there are lots of students from different social groups. The first of these guys is "too-casual guy."

"Too-casual guy" is not an athlete. Michigan athletes can afford to have a complete set of warmups and new shoes for every day of the week and two for Sunday. "Too-casual guy" wants to look like an athlete, but just misses a little bit. Real jocks aren't that concerned with dressing in the trappings of the tough guy. They are tough guys. They already look the part because they are the part. It's the five-foot-six guy in the "No Fear" T-shirt and six-year-old Air Jordans that make all of us men look like Bulls-worshipping armchair coaches.

I hesitate to mention the next guy, as I think I've traveled down this road before. I can't, however, in good conscience, talk about this topic without mentioning "Puffy, Jr." This guy is usually white, almost always upper-middle class. Whereas the "too-casual guy" latched onto athletics to steal some masculinity, "Puffy, Jr." uses computerized, sterile hip hop that started with Puffy himself and now hovers over Master "1.6 points a game" P.

"Puffy, Jr." likes to keep it real for his peeps in West Quad, and worse yet, doesn't see the comedy in it. He has friends all over the city and brags about how he "gots the mad hookup at Wendy's in the Union. Word." Pursuant to his status as a hardcore gangsta, he wears his black North Face bubble coat, Nautica headband and big Koss headphones just to show everyone how hard it is to represent and get on the waitlist for Anthro 101.

The mortal fashion sins are a bit more serious.

It's true that "Puffy, Jr." dresses like a rap video extra and looks foolish because he's essentially wearing a costume everyday. But this isn't the worst of the offenders, as far as pretending to be someone you're not. This honor would be reserved squarely for the "Gothic Master of Darkness and C++." This gentleman thinks people laugh at his cape and Morressy T-shirt because they don't understand his deep affinity for the dark side.

He has large black boots tied tightly to his skinny, chicken fat-colored legs. If he doesn't own a cape, he has a large trench coat. Further, just to let you know he's the spawn of Satan, he has three or four cheap, silver-plated rings with skulls and gargoyles on them, some of them won in a particularly heated game of "Vampire: The Masquerade." This is worse than "Puffy, Jr." because the Beastmaster in question not only dresses like Elvira's pool boy, but because at least the suburban 'G' is dressing like people who exist in real life. "Gothic Master" doesn't even have that. I myself was a fan of dressing like fantastical role playing characters and pretending to be them. Then I turned 12.

These sins all pale in comparison to the Sins of Formal Wear. Men of my age and station are notoriously bad at dressing for formal and semi-formal occasions. The worst of these crimes, which is thankfully becoming less common, is the wearing of your father's clothes. You see these guys. Their cuffs stop on their knuckles. They have coats and shirts about 10 or 12 years behind the culture curve. These are the guys who have to have their roommates tie their ties for them or tie their own with double Windsor knots the size of navel oranges.

The other mortal sin of this family is that of homogeneity. There really isn't a point to dressing up if you're going to do it like everyone else. It's not particularly special at that point, is it?

At any event that involves church clothes, Greek or non-Greek, they appear. The Abercrombie shirt too baggy for a tie, narrow collar and tucked in so badly that it billows out of their pants like beer foam. Add a pair of wide, brown, Eddie Bauer loafers, white socks and a really boring tie and you've got yourself a guy dressed to go to a pre-sex dinner date at the Gandy Dancer.

I know we can do better, lads. Repent. The end is near.

-James Miller can be reached over e-mail at jamespm@umich.edu

James Miller Miller On Tap

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01-13-99