National Underwear Day

Yesterday was National Underwear Day. 

Its a made-up holiday created by Freshpair, a company that sells underwear.  No surprise there.

But the underwear industry has really grown in the last 40 years.  For men the choices used to be boxers or briefs.  Usually cotton.  Usually white for briefs, and solid or benign prints for boxers.

Nowadays there are literally hundreds of sellers of men's underwear, each with lots of varieties.  Boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs, bikinis, string bikinis, thongs, jocks.  In every color and color combination you could want.  Fashion underwear is a multi-billion dollar per year industry.

Then there's all the 'novelty' and fetish underwear.  Cotton, polyester, nylon, mesh, spandex, latex, lycra, and leather.

Things have certainly changed over the years, so maybe there's a real reason now to celebrate National Underwear Day.

How will YOU be celebrating?

Walk, walk, fashion baby

I saw a video on facebook entitled "100 years of men's fashion in 3 minutes" that I thought was quite interesting.  Unfortunately its not on YouTube so I couldn't embed the video here, so you'll just have to click on this link to watch it.  The guy has a really nice body, which is a bonus in between the decades of looks.

They also did "100 years of women's fashion in 3 minutes" which I found far less interesting, but you can also watch that here.

Walk, walk, fashion baby

The perfect accessory is one that will compliment the outfit, not distract from it.

Apparently a handbag designer at a Madrid fashion show didn't want to risk that their models' outfits might distract from their handbags, so they had the models wear nothing at all.

And the models carrying the handbags were male.

That's right... nude male models carrying handbags down the runway.  CLICK HERE for the NSFW video.

CLICK HERE to view the NSFW video

Don't you think Project Runway should have an accessory challenge where the designers' handbags, scarves, or jewelry is modeled with no distracting clothing??

A hot mesh

Over the weekend we stopped at the grocery store for a single item, so I dropped Spouse off at the front door and then turned around and waited for him to come back out.

While I waited, I happened to see this man coming toward the store entrance.  He looked to be in his 70s, had silver/white hair, glasses, and was wearing cut-off jeans shorts and a mesh t-shirt.

Yep, you read that right.  Mesh t-shirt.  I couldn't believe my eyes!

Now, if you're like 22 years old, work out like a fiend and have a rockin' body, then you are entitled to flaunt your fabulousness in a mesh t-shirt.

But if you're an old geezer wearing cut-offs and a mesh t-shirt, then you are simply a hot mesh!

Paris observations

Spouse & I enjoyed our trip to Paris very much.  In addition to seeing/visiting so many beautiful places, I also did quite a bit of people-watching.  Below are my observations about Parisians:

1. They all wear scarves.  Every single one of them.  We tried to find a Parisian NOT wearing a scarf but couldn't do it.  Parisians love scarves.  That is a fact.
2. They wear uber-fashionable coats.  While riding the subway and walking the streets I noticed that no one was wearing a 'basic' coat.  Everyone's coat was stylish, detailed, almost unique.  I didn't see a single person wearing a coat that looked like it came from a chain retail store.
3. They have embraced the skinny-leg pant.  Everyone under the age of 60 was wearing skinny-leg jeans or pants.  Straight and gay; man and woman.
4. Men shave once every 10-14 days.  While some men had full-on beards and a few were clean-shaven, the vast majority of Parisian men had scruffy facial hair that appeared to be several days' worth of growth. 
5. They like good leather shoes.  As much as Parisians walk, I was surprised at how few people I saw wearing sneakers/athletic shoes.  The majority of men and women were wearing nice-looking leather shoes, even with jeans.  Many of these had an exaggerated pointy toe which I liked.
6. They're not mean to Americans.  We were treated nicely by everyone we can into contact with in Paris.  At one point early in the trip I thought the waitress might not like us because she wouldn't bring us our check.  After finishing our meal we waited and waited for her to drop off our check.  But I later learned that was because we hadn't asked for the check.
7. Parisian men look like metrosexuals, at least to Americans.  Several times I saw good-looking, well-groomed, stylishly-dressed men and perceived them to be gay, only to then witness their girlfriend/wife sit on their lap, lean over and kiss them, or hold their hand.
8. They are weight/height appropriate.  We did not see many overweight people at all.  99% of the Parisians we saw appeared to be healthy, perhaps due to all the walking and/or the smaller size of the meals.

Disclaimer:  These are my observations and are not based on any scientific data or studies.

Easter shirt

It started with a typical browsing through the clearance rack.  That's when I saw this long sleeved white shirt with pin-stripes in pastel shades of mint green, yellow, lavendar, pink, blue and peach.  I don't know why, but I kind of fell in love with it!

Since the shirt was like $7.99 on clearance, I decided there really was no reason not to buy it.  Only when the cashier rung up the shirt, it was 60% off the clearance price, so it came out to be like $3.  Score!!!

But once I had it, I realized I really couldn't wear the shirt because it just looked too much like Easter.  I could picture myself showing up at work or someplace in the shirt, only to have people ask me "Oh, is it Easter again already?"

So, since the shirt looks so much like Easter I decided it would be my Easter shirt.  I have worn it to Easter dinner with the family every year for the last 7 years.

Shoe-tastic!

I grew up with 3 sisters and a mother, so 4 women in the house, and having been a young gay boy I have a pretty vivid memory of the styles and fashions of my youth.

I remember my sisters wearing huge platform shoes in the 70s...
and Candies in the 80s.But I don't think anything has had a greater effect on women's shoes than Sex and the City. I bet nobody outside of NYC had ever heard of Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Ch00 before Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha made them household names.

Designer shoes have become a huge industry necessitating custom closets with shoe shelves and in some cases, bedrooms converted into walk-in closets. Its no longer about having the perfect pair of black heels. Now its about having a pair of black heels for each outfit.

And who can forget the Alexander McQueen's armadillo shoes worn by Lady Gaga?
With all the creativity and technology out there, shoe-aholics will be practically orgasmic over these:

Wardrobe update

I'm the kind of person who hates to pay a lot for clothes because I know how quickly styles, colors, and my personal taste change. I'm not spending $50. or $75. on a shirt that's a trendy style or color when I know that in a year or two that style or color will be passe.

Let's face it: if you're still wearing teal you're out of style!One way to avoid this is to only buy classic styles and colors, but that can get a little boring. Plus, sometimes you don't want to look 'classic'. If you're going to a cocktail party or a Lady Gaga concert you don't want to be wearing a blue oxford cloth button down collar shirt; you want to look cool, hip, or funky.

So my strategy is to have a mix of classic styles and colors purchased from 'better' stores on sale or clearance, and buy my cool/hip/funky stuff at discount stores where the quality probably isn't as high, but doesn't need to be since the item will go out of fashion much sooner.

When we lived in the DC area I'd get my cool/hip/funky clothes at KG Menswear. I've lost count of how many compliments I've gotten from wearing my $20. trendy shirts purchased there. Spouse & I still duck in there to look for fun stuff from time to time when we're back in VA visiting our family and friends. I also like to check out the bargains at the Old Navy factory store and the Vanity Fair outlet store near our home for non-classics.

Just recently I got a chance to update my wardrobe with high quality clothes at a great discount! My friend Rob is the manager of the Ralph Lauren Polo factory outlet store and he gave me a 'Friends & Family Sale' coupon. It provided at 30% discount off everything in the store, regardless of whether it was regular price, on sale, or clearance. (Coupons are often only good on regular priced merchandise.)

To maximize the value of the coupon, Spouse & I started with the clearance rack and then moved to the sale items. We looked for shirts we could pair with khakis or dress pants for work as well as wear with jeans for a casual look. We wound up with 6 Ralph Lauren Polo button up shirts in classic and fun colors for $118. Many of the shirts were originally $59. each, but using the coupon on top of the sale and clearance reductions helped us save even more.

This wardrobe update was long overdue for me. Remember the last 4 years I'd been working from home, wearing t-shirts and jeans all the time. The 4 years before that I'd worked in an extremely casual office, wearing the pull-overs and jeans. I hadn't bothered to update my business-casual wardrobe because I rarely wore that type of clothes.

Now my work clothes are up-to-date and I didn't have to go broke to get there.

Fashion hurts

The weekend before last I played several games of beach volleyball and had a great time. The next day I began experiencing pain in my legs. It felt like sore muscles so I immediately chalked it up to running around in the sand playing volleyball and popped a few ibuprofen.

The following day I had pain again so I mentioned it to my trainer when I was at my personal trainer appointment. He had me do some intense stretching exercises that seemed to help, temporarily. I took ibuprofen again the next day and everything seemed to be alright.

This past weekend I didn't play volleyball but I started feeling pain in my legs again. This led me to change my conclusion about the source of the pain. Now I think its from wearing flip flops so much.

See, when I was 14 I had to go to a podiatrist because of chronic foot/leg pain. It was determined that my having very little arch in my feet caused the bones to grow out of alignment. I was given custom-fitted orthotics to wear in my shoes which provided arch support and inner heal elevation and I never had the foot or leg pain again.

However, this spring I taught myself how to wear flip flops because I wanted to be fashionable. This probably wouldn't have been a big deal for most people with sufficient arches, or people who wear closed shoes everyday to work. But I've been wearing flip flops everyday, all day long, since the spring and I think my legs are finally telling me that fashion hurts.

After returning from the beach last Sat I began wearing closed, lace-up shoes with my orthotics inside. I immediately found some relief from the leg pain, bolstering my belief that the flip flops were the culprit. Sun, Mon, and Tues I again wore shoes with orthotics and didn't need to take the ibuprofen. But today, my 4th day of wearing shoes and orthotics, my legs are hurting again enough that I had to take ibuprofen.

I'm at a loss. I really thought the shoes and orthotics were the answer until today. Now I'm not sure WHAT is causing the leg pain. I'm going to avoid flip flops through the rest of this week and see how I feel. If I'm still having pain next week I'm making a doctor's appointment.

Crush du Jour: Brett Favre