Reading: A. Cicolini - The New English Dandy

Inspiration: it always strikes when one least expects it, and when one is least predisposed to exploit it. So I discovered, to my pleasant surprise, this 2005 gem of a coffee-table book right here at the university Main Stacks library over the weekend whilst searching for something else to do a history of business paper on besides 19th-century industrialists compared with Russia's oil/mining oligarchs.

It's got a lot of interesting things to say, as far as drawing a more accurate picture of dandyism in the modern age than what most could presuppose on their own. It articulates something I've been meaning to express: in an age where casual streetwear has become the de rigeur uniform of the young, it is those who are looking to classic staples of tailored jackets, shirts, and the like, who are interpreting them anew through unique combinations of colors and patterns, that are infusing creativity into daily aesthetics and rescuing us from monotony.

Here in California, where the cultural emphasis is on a careless, relaxed attitude, the propensity for hoodie-and-jeans banality is even more clearly visible. What most accept as "dressing up" here at university is usually a joyless effort, entailing a boxy, bland three-button jacket cut too high, paired with an unremarkable printed tie, thick-soled square shoes, with no more texture than a sheet of copy paper. Add a backpack, and you begin to get an idea of the campus' approach to suit-wearing.

[This is where I might articulate a grandiose bit of self-justification for "rebelling" through blackwatch plaid jackets and bow ties, but putting such sentiments into words, locking them in, would ruin the purpose of outfitting in the first place.]

I think I'd rather leave the capricious critiquing of "bad style" to the GQ and Details editors; as much as I love their work, their constant jonesing for a new phenomenon to define, elevate, and subsequently critique in three months' time does wear on my patience. There's nothing wrong about trying things you identify with or aspire to, so long as you know to move on when it begins to bore you or clash with how you see and feel about yourself.