With my third year of living abroad halfway complete, I’ve learned how to adapt to and appreciate the particularities of a certain culture. Of course, I stumble often, but there’s always moments when you’re running away with the environment.
On our first full day in Japan, Laura’s extended family treated us to a day of immersive local experiences. A surprise among them was the chance to spend the night in a small, private onsen hot spring inn. The onsen we expected, but the accommodations . . .
I’m a suit guy, one hundred percent. I feel most comfortable, most daring, and most myself in a spread collar Y-back braces, and notch lapels. Me in a suit is me in my skin.
Among other sartorial applications, I am a habitual follower of flying in a suit. But in my few years’ experience of the three-piece lifestyle, there’s always a time and place in which it belongs. Definitely not in a time of nineteen hours and a place of two planes, three airports, and one makeshift fort at a food court.
Like I’ve said before, since I’m new to the study of men’s clothing, it’s worth learning the classics, first and foremost. Literature has the Greeks, Karate has paint the fence, and men’s dress has Alan Flusser.
Of Mr. Flusser’s work, nothing seems more essential than Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion.
“Permanent fashion?” Like many, I thought perhaps his definition of both terms differed from mine, because a man who penned a definitive guide to clothing wouldn’t make such a mistake as calling fashion permanent. But don’t worry, he dives into this curious subtitle 14 pages in.
What’s something you use that is so well-disguised in it’s indispensability that the second you perceive it, becomes impossible to ignore?
Something like, say, breathing.
Pumping columns of air into diaphragm and out through nostrils in tiny flares.
into, out though . . . into, out though . . . into, out though.
If I’ve made you aware of your own breathing, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. But since you’re attention is already on it, go ahead and just take a deep breath. Pull a mighty draft in. Let your chest bellow with volume. Make it audible. Make it count. To five.
In. Out.
It’s rich, isn’t it? We cycle a whole day in reflexive, measured respiration. But oh, what a feeling to take a deep breath. It’s different. It’s more. It makes you notice how valuable this habit really is.
Everyone’s wheelhouse of routine contains something akin to a deep breath. The hefty sheet of parchment for the rare handwritten letter. The good china for your parents’ dinner visit. The Swingline from your paralegal days whenever the office stapler is being extra useless.
In my case, a fine necktie.
The world of doing something completely new and is a scary one, isn’t it? Doubt creeping over your shoulder. Insecurity tightening around your neck. Failure gnawing at your heel. So leave it to the King of horror to comfort.
At nineteen they can card you in the bars and and tell you to get the fuck out, put your sorry act (and sorrier ass) back on the street, but they can’t card you when you sit down and paint a picture, write a poem, tell a story, by God, and if you reading this happen to be very young, don’t let your elders and supposed leaders tel you any different. Sure, you’ve never been to Paris. No, you never ran with the bulls at Pamplona. Yes, you’re a pissant who had no hair in your armpits until three years ago–but so what? If you don’t start out to big for your britches, how are you gonna fill ’em when you grow up? Let it rip regardless of what anybody tells you, that’s my idea; sit down and smoke that baby.
To those — nineteen or not — who are smoking.
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write. Simple as that.” – Stephen King
I’m a terrible reader. With a current average of 1.5 novels per year, I am certain I qualify in the bottom 5% worst-read individuals with a B.A. in Literature.
The above quotation by Mr. King really stuck in my side when I came across it last summer, and since the new year turned up, my side’s been aching a bit more than usual. In this quest to write something worth my time and your visits, it’s time I became a better reader.
Always a bit on the eager side of adventuring, I’ve began my new year of better reading with two books to fill separate inspirations:
Middle school was a bad time to prove one’s cool. Drawers of Top Dawg T-shirts. Depp No. 5 to replicate Vegeta’s ‘do. And bikes. The most devil-may-care rolled into the parking lot, coveted logos flashing in chrome frame: GT, Diamondback, Haro. I wanted that flash.
My dad — a man who values bargains so much that he tried convincing a merchant that he, too, was Korean — pleaded with me that my five-year old Huffy was just as good if we painted it navy and slap some stickers on it. Turns out, the paint couldn’t unwear the rust from years of learning, and I had outgrown the bike anyway. The bike we painted and polished never saw a foot of that parking lot. I remained uncool through eighth grade.
Value has been one of the challenging skills in establishing a permanent style. Whether it’s a wristwatch or trousers, I want something I’ll want to wear now through old age. I want to care for it, let it share its age gracefully, and carry on a story, of which my wear added a chapter. But I’ve found it’s such a minefield out there. Can I really justify dropping five thousand dollars on a handmade Neapolitan suit? I can make a case to my wife, but unless my teaching salary tripled, I’d have a better shot re-piercing my lip.
Sometimes I regret that I’ve fallen for the world of suits. I can’t un-see the cheap sheen of synthetic cloth in department stores. I seek the priceless imperfections of hand-sewn details here and there. Well, realistically, there’s always a price, for the beautiful land of menswear is unfortunately a land of luxury. The best I can do is use practicality as a compass. Save up for a $1400 off-the-rack three-piece once a year, perhaps. Then there’s always another trick: suck it up and go for “good enough.”
If you’re ever doing something you’ve never done before, or no one has done before, and you are hesitating in fear and self-doubt, try this: in a simple Google search, type “Eugene Tssui.” There you will find all the encouragement you need.
My first trip to China in 2009 was for a children’s summer English program, created by Dr. Tssui’s wife, Elisabeth Montgomery. I arrived at the Hong Kong Airport, Elisabeth greeting me with a smile that felt like home. Since her husband was to arrive as well, we figured to have a meal and trade stories while we waited.
Over coffee, Beth shared how a boy in Minnesota would circle in and out of her life from middle school to a chance encounter that began their marriage. Oh yeah, and about how Dr. Tssui, an architect by trade, found it worthwhile to design his own unique clothes. Well before my own interest in men’s clothing began, I thought nothing of this particular aspect of his life. Neat, I guess.
An hour later, Eugene made his way through Exit B of Hong Kong International in a pair of white pleated trousers with red piping running down the legs, a light off-white cotton shirt that gently billowed through the row of “gills” cut across the chest, and a thirty-year-old pair of Crayola multi-colored Reebok sneakers in need of retirement.
What. The. Hell?
Over the years that I‘ve known Eugene, variations of this question have followed his every outfit and building proposal. I suppose it will continue to follow him through his 150th birthday, which he is determined to see. From a skeptic’s guffaw or cynic’s retort, Eugene welcomes it as fuel to stoke the fire of his unwavering conviction.
“I take it as being the example of a guy who has the guts enough to try something new. And I like being that person. People have come up to me and said, ‘I really like your gutsiness, and I really like the fact that you’re doing this.’ That support is really nice, even though they themselves won’t quite do it.”
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,– “Fern Hill,” Dylan Thomas
Clockenflap flew in and out of Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District for a seventh time last week. And for another late November weekend, Clockenflap proved what an arts & music festival can be.
My friends and I purchased early bird tickets to Sunday for the lineup alone. When you see names like DJ Jazzy Jeff and Tenacious D on the schedule, it’s hard to justify not going. Monday’s 7:40 punch-in at work be damned. Ultimately, the music is nice and all, but Clockenflap is something more than music.
Clockenflap is community at its most youthful.
I’ve written before about my appreciation for community in its power to inspire and share the experience of wonder and creativity. At its core, this is what Clockenflap does for Hong Kong; it turns a piece of open industrial land into shades of expression and appreciation for the moment. And nobody does this better than the kids.
What turned into a quick post about my new workhorse trousers turned into a reflection about how seventeen-year old me would shake his head at such a purchase. Upon further review, I’ve decided to put together a multi-part story on why it took me so long to finally get a nicely fitting pair of pants on my legs. I’m hoping you’ve been through the same, dear reader.
The Evolution of My Pants, Part II: The Suit that Squeezed Me
Whenever you dig through stacks of photo albums and find yourself five, ten years ago, the first mental task seems to be determining how much you have changed. Terrible bowl haircuts. Anti-establishment piercings. I’ve learned to grimace less at these pictures, commemorating a time when I was growing from boy to man. It’s a worthwhile experience I eagerly await for my children. At the same time, I still can’t help but take note of my stylistic follies, even now.
Mens’ fashion moves relatively slowly, but when it does, it arrives in sudden jolts. As mentioned in Part I, part of my decision to wear girl jeans was simply because a complete lack of slim-fitting options for men. Of course, skinny jeans are the default choice for most young men; Levi’s 514’s tapered into 511’s, which funneled into 510’s. Thin was in.
From this sea change of taste came a consequence: slim and tight as the standard of fashion with all garments, not just denim. Tighter shirts, tighter jackets, tighter everything. What many men – myself included – did not recognize is that standards in clothing are not universal. Sometimes we fail to account for good taste. Even the most flawless style icons can befall this trap.
