fashion adjacent
by Fred Aiken
If I were to be forced to wear a particular outfit every day, it would probably be a t-shirt and gym shorts. That’s what I normally wear all the time anyway. I’m not a big fashion person. I don’t buy name brands, and my fashion choices revolve around what I find most comfortable. Because I wear a t-shirt and gym shorts to work and on weekends, I would hope that if I had to wear a specific ensemble, it would be that one.
But then again, if I were forced to wear something, it might imply that it wouldn’t be by choice, which suggests it might be an outfit I wouldn’t normally wear. Being forced suggests a lack of choice, so if I had to wear an ensemble, it might be the polar opposite of a t-shirt and gym shorts. So…a suit? Probably a suit.
There was a time in my life when I worked in retail management, and I wore a suit day in and day out. It was one of the most miserable periods of my life. Not entirely because of the suits I wore, but they certainly didn’t help. I don’t have a personality suited for management and dealing with people in general, but retail was the only industry hiring at the time, so somehow, an antisocial twentysomething ended up with a retail management job.
That job felt like being forced into everything, including what I wore. I would occasionally switch it up by wearing colorful bow ties as a way to express myself, but it was still a suit, and a suit is a suit.
I’m incredibly hot-natured, which is why I wear shorts and a t-shirt nowadays. Also, living in the deep south, where the humidity is unbearable, made suits incredibly uncomfortable for me. Although, I doubt changing the weather would have made much difference. I’m sure if you put me in Seattle and told me to wear a suit, I’d still complain about it.
I tend to also really dislike the price of most clothing. I don’t like spending more than $5 on a shirt and around $3 for shorts. And as you can imagine, most suits do not fit that budget. I don’t want to think about how many hundreds of dollars I spent on suits while I was a manager. And while I wasn’t spending thousands like some people in business and business adjacent fields (aka Wall Streeties), it was definitely more than I wanted to spend.
I feel vastly more comfortable at a thrift store, getting my entire ensemble for less than a movie ticket nowadays. This is primarily because I’m incredibly hard on my clothes. No matter what brand I buy, I will always get a hole or wear it down quite a bit. So I figure, why would I spend top dollar if the clothes are going to end up in the same condition within a couple of weeks?
In the end, fashion is about comfort for me. T-shirts and gym shorts are my go-to because they allow me to be myself, free from the constraints of stiff, formal clothing. Maybe it’s an act of rebellion against those days in retail, or maybe it’s just about finding peace in simplicity. Either way, given the choice—or even without it—I’d stick with my usual attire.
Fred Aiken Writing 