Fashion 2018: Men In Skirts

I probably shouldn’t tell you this. It’s the sort of thing that could come back to bite me.

Shoot, who cares? My nickname - to my family, anyway - is rags.

Make that Rags. Capital R.

It has to do with the way I dress around the house. I call it being comfortable. My loved ones say I look like a hobo.

A clean hobo, but a bum nonetheless.

That’s what happens when you have very little fashion sense to begin with and spend more than 10 years working from home as a newspaper columnist. On days when I didn’t have interviews or meetings, I dressed in what I call “soft clothes”.

Now that I’m unemployed, every day is Soft Clothes Day. Another benefit of my current condition.

In fact, as I write this, I am wearing work-out pants and a 10-year-old OIe Miss hoodie. The sweatshirt cuffs are frayed - one is partially detached from the sleeve - and the bottom hem is pulling away from the sweatshirt body. I have two nicer Ole Miss hoodies - for when company’s coming - but this is my favorite. 

When I’m not wearing something from my spirit wear collection, I like to wear yoga pants and an oversized gray cotton sweater - it used to be black - with a cowl neck. There’s a picture of me wearing it on the beach on my daughter’s first birthday. 

She’s 29 now.

Hey, they don’t make clothes like they used to.

And I still miss a great pair of pale green shorts made of some kind of sweet parachute material that I finally ditched a few years ago.

They were lightweight, comfy, and hit in just the right place on my thigh.

Unfortunately, when the old Surf ‘N Sand movie theater had a leaky roof, I sat in a soggy seat and got rust stains on the derriere.

I wore them anyway. Around the house, that is. 

Then, one steaming summer day, in desperate need of a Diet Coke, I hopped on my bike and pedaled to the 7-Eleven for a soda. As I was digging around in the pockets of my rusty shorts for exact change, a homeless guy offered me a fistful of coins.

“I’m good,” I told him with a smile. “Thanks anyway.”

When I got home, I told my daughter about this nice man who’d wanted to buy my Coke.

“Mom, he thought you were homeless, too,” she said, giving my shorts a disapproving glance.

Oh.

That said, you wouldn’t expect someone called Rags to love fashion. But I do. 

For decades I subscribed to Vogue. Now I start my day with Tom & Lorenzo, a pair of smart and hilariously bitchy fashion bloggers. They’ve taught me that matchy accessories are dated, hi-lo hems are cheap looking and that most chunky shoes make your feet look like hooves.

As useful and fun as women’s fashion can be, men’s high fashion is just plain crazy.

Take this year’s hot item: Skirts.

The “trend” - if something almost exclusively seen only on runways and drag shows can be called that - is reportedly the product of “gender fluidity” and a solution to hot-weather dressing.

Hey, I get the high-temperature argument. I’ve never understood why men wear suits made of the oxymoronic “tropical wool” when the mercury is in the 90s. Why not Bermuda shorts? Paired with a crisp shirt and tie they look smart while keeping the man inside cool.

But skirts?

In a story that asked,  “Are skirts the next men’s fashion trend?” A New York Post writer noted that recent fashion shows featured “flirty full skirts” for well-dressed guys and a “parade of topless men in maxi skirts.”

Take it from Rags: Skirts could catch on for guys in big cities. But topless men in maxi skirts will not be a trend. Anywhere. No matter how bad global warming gets.

Fashion 2018: Men in skirts.