Shorts
The dog days have rolled in, and the pantline of the professional American male has rolled up. In New York, they cavort in the streets with shorts that hit above the knee; skivvy outerwear is paired with sharp blazers and classic ties, and calf implants and hairy forelegs are ubiquitous. High rollers cross their legs at the knee in broad daylight, and the young and impressionable ponder a collision of the metro aesthetic and the Baden-Powell practicality doctrine.
But what flies in New York still just as often fails miserably in DC, where the fashion ethic is worlds apart and develops with the tempo of a mescal-drunk gila monster. Unable to regulate its own body temperature, men’s DC fashion slithers reliably backward, back into the shade of the Three Options: dark suit, khakis and blue blazer, seersucker. Yet I have acquired a fine three-piece seersucker suit with shorts, right here in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area, and if ever a city there were in America which begged like a dog for the cooling powers of cropped trousers, it’s this one. Behold! I feel a movement afoot toward a DC whereupon the following rules will not only be read and admired but flawlessly obeyed:
1. If your shorts are suit shorts, you must never crease them.
2. Shorts of any kind must not be pleated. God save you if your shorts are double- or triple-pleated.
3. If your shorts hit above the knee, you had better look sharp doing it.
4. Avoid the pleated leather belt if at all possible. If you cannot, the tail end of the belt must not hand more than three inches down, like the second penis it is so not.
5. Although above-the-knee shorts are not to be trifled with, below-the-knee shorts must never be mid-calf, and should not have cargo pockets unless there’s something in them; and even then…
6. And for heaven’s sake don’t wear taper-leg shorts! <Shudder>