First They Came for the Baggy Pants

…and the WASPs said nothing. Then, they came for the seersucker:

The main purpose of Senate Bill 437 may be to provide structure to “the way the state funds public institutions of higher education,” but McKenna saw it as an opportunity to make his personal sartorial predilections known. “Any person living in this state aged eight and under may wear seersucker suits at their leisure. Any person over the age of eight living in this state may not wear seersucker suits because adults look ridiculous in seersucker suits,” the politician expounded in his handwritten proposal to alter the bill.

I knew a young man in college who was the editor-in-chief of the campus’s conservative magazine, and he went to the Andover Shop one day, to be waited upon by the illustrious and impeccably dressed Charlie Davidson. He told Charlie he wanted to look at bow ties.

Charlie: “I will not sell you a bow tie.”

Young Man: “Do you not have bow ties?”

Charlie: “I do, but you are too young and would look like an idiot, and then someone would ask you where you got the bow tie, and then they would think I let you walk out of my store looking like an idiot.”

Young Man: “When will I not look like an idiot?”

Charlie: “It depends on your bone structure, but probably forty.”

Which is to say, for everything sartorial there is a season, and there will always be another clothier who does not care if you look like an idiot in a bow tie.