If you tell my youngest son, the dress is ‘smart casual’, he takes it literally.
To him, that means either smart on the top and casual on the bottom or vice versa. It is nothing for him to combine the casual t-shirt with the smart pants or the beach shorts with the good shirt. And maybe when you are in your early thirties and buff with a bit of gym work, you can get away with it.
My husband has tried to sneak on the same band wagon. But his idea of smart, and for that matter casual, is something else entirely. In fact, he has started a bit of a new fashion trend and that is the “this will see me out look” of the very retired.
I remember his father finishing work and making those comments to us whenever he scored a new shirt (usually from my husband). Delightedly, he would squirrel it away with the rest of his garments purchased several decades earlier and various other hand-me-downs, smugly secure that he may never have to enter a men’s wear store ever again in his lifetime.
It seems the fashion apple hasn’t fallen far from the proverbial tree. How quickly has my husband adopted the same attitude. So quickly in fact that I have had to have a quiet word (not that it has made a lot of difference and not that my own fashion stakes are all that high).
Wearing slippers for example, even if you are only grocery shopping at Capalaba just isn’t a good look. And topping that comfortable footwear with billowing, unironed shorts with dubious shape and a faded navy t-shirt (all my husbands t-shirts are faded and navy), even if it does show off his favourite sporting team is more suited for mowing than shopping. Given the fact that mowing has never been a high priority activity, they may as well go straight to the wheelie bin.
At this point, I need to apologise to the well dressed Capalaba shopper, but my husband tells me he fits right in. And so I have taken to walking several steps behind the bagman, head down, hoping not to see anyone I know. The more you hope, the louder the radar sounds. Of course, I bumped into someone almost immediately. He was wearing crumpled shorts, thongs and a faded t-shirt. His wife apologised too.
- Linda Muller