The Fedora Chronicles Dress Code

Eric Renderking Fisk | August 12th, 2015

About a week or so ago Elisabeth Vincentelli wrote an editorial for the New York Post titled “For the love of God, stop dressing like crap, (people are dressing like slobs so its time to bring back dress codes”) which has created a firestorm in the comments section below the article and elsewhere on the internet. Sheesh, even ‘The Fedora Chronicles’ is talking about it!

The article opens with the paragraphs;

“Kylie Jenner may have been wearing a classy “Eat Me Out” T-shirt, but at least she wasn’t at the theater. Small blessings, right?

Tell that to the slobs who turn up at Broadway shows dressed as though they’d just walked in from a tailgating party — one with a three-figure admission price, mind you. When people were invited onstage at a recent performance of “Penn & Teller on Broadway,” many women looked as if they had stepped out of a jazzercise class, while men ambled around in hideous cargo shorts.

And it’s not just at the theater where folks have simply stopped trying: Offenders turn up at the Metropolitan Opera in Crocs. A colleague who used to work at the Neue Galerie — a museum housed in a former Vanderbilt mansion — would see visitors in cutoffs.”

The horror… the horror…

Don’t be shy, Liz… tell the readers what you really think!

Now, I just did a quick Google for pictures of Liz and I can tell you there are no pictures of her dressing up. I’m not exactly sure the woman on the deck of her glass house should be throwing stones.

There was a time in the not too distant past when I would say that this woman is exactly right; people have become more casual with their wear. More and more people are dressing like they just left the gym or the beach or wearing things that I just shouldn’t see in public.

Like your open-toe sandals and your football shirt that’s so threadbare, I can count your ribs…

Then I remembered all the times people’s comments made me feel horrible when I was the worst dressed kid in the class or couldn’t get the suitable outfit for a specific occasion. I also thought back to my adolescence when I rebelled against the norm.

For the love of Dieselpunk

NOBODY loved the 1930’s/1940’s Vintage Safari look as much as I do as much as I did back when I was younger. In the 1980’s I raided the local Army/Navy stores for surplus clothes for men’s dress uniform shirts and pants and would pay to have them altered to fit my size… all on the budget of a teen who was making minimum wage working 30 hours a week.

There was a point when a switch was flipped when wearing the safari shirt, leather jacket, and the rest of the “IndyGear” wasn’t enough. I wanted to go full retro – I wanted my bedroom to look like where an adventurer like Jones would sleep and come home to, I wanted my furniture to be authentic to the period, I wanted to get a car or truck from that period and rebuild it, I wanted to listen to Big Band and Swing from that era… and on and on and on…

That was the point where I stopped “dressing like Indiana Jones” and people stopped telling me to grow up and understood that I wasn’t just playing “dress up” but I was just really into that period. It seemed to be the cure for all criticism; rather than just dress like Jones, go all-in and go full retro. In retrospect, it wasn’t just because I wanted to wear clothes that went with a brown fedora, it was something more.

I had no idea there was a name for it. I didn’t know that what I was or what I was into was even called “dieselpunk” until a few years ago.

For me, the word “punk” suits me very well because of what I was going through at the time. I was a teen during the 1980’s and had a lot of anger towards my parent’s era. As a “Child Of The Age Of Aquarius” it was pretty clear I was pretty low on the totem pole and a mere by-product of the mantra; “If it feels good, do it.” Being a punk was in direct response to feelings of abandonment from a father, indifference from my mother, and cruel abuse from my pseudo-stepfather. I was a punk since I was the definition of defiance, rebellion, cynicism, and anti-conformity.

Dieselpunk in the 1980’s was an absolute repudiation against all the trends and fashions that were being feed to us via the blunt glass needle of the picture tube. It was against the preppy trend or the Miami Vice aesthetic that was all the rage. We were “punk” because we’re against the establishment. For me it was a sense of “OK, you don’t like me – fine! I’m going to give you a good reason, though.” Retropunk was never about trying to get attention or trying to stand out, it was me rejecting the rest of them. I was out to look badass on my own terms while distancing myself from the MTV Generation establishment.

Sure we’ll take your popped polo shirt collars and your tropical weight fabric suits while we bastardize them with fedoras, leather gun belts, and holsters.

Oh, what’s that mom? Don't you like my gun belt over my cargo pants? Then how’s three belts?

Dieselpunk was a means of grappling onto the clarity of purpose from the World War 2 era, a place and time when there was a legitimate reason to be angry and something to fight against. In a way we wanted to revisit that “all together in the war against fascism” that was clearly missing from the “Greed Is Good” decades, we wanted to turn back the clock and go live in the idealized vision of that period. We missed that era when there was a clear purpose to the anger and a way to funnel it.

There’s a reason why some of us “Retro punks” pick specific eras to fixate upon, and some of don’t even know why. But the fact is that you can gender-bend and called courageous, show up to work Monday morning to work with all of you favorite team paraphernalia and that’s been normalized decades ago, I dress like it’s still 1936 and that’s a problem?

I’m almost sure that if Liz from the New York Post saw me and how I’m “Always overdressing for the wrong occasions,” she wouldn’t have a problem with me, too. Retropunk and its subsidiaries is a reaction to the very same trend she’s railing against. Many of us have gone so far as to try and bring back top hats and fedoras, frock coats, vest and tie sets, slacks and fancy boots. This is a response against the aforementioned “dressing like crap,” but I wonder if there are some people who loathe it because they think it’s going too far. How soon will Liz take issue with us?

Invitation to be superficial…

I’m loath to admit this, but some of the so-called slobs who responded to her editorial are correct in some of their statements. The summer is the worst time to be a tourist in New York city and dress yourself in multiple layers like a suit. Nobody actually cares what you look like going to a matinee to a Broadway show when it’s 90+ degrees out, so long as your tail is filling a seat in the theater. We’ve reached a point in our history when we’ve started to judge people on how they behave and what they say rather than what they look like, akin to judging others by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin and what they’re wearing.

The actual problem with Liz’s article isn’t the mere holier than thou attitude; it’s throwing the door wide open to criticizing how people dress in an age when we were past that. It’s a can of worms I don’t think is something she wants to open since she’s not setting the image search engines on fire with her style and fashion sense. She’s declared open season on herself and everyone else, reopening a dialog that the nation was having with itself for the past couple of decades that ended when casual Fridays became casual work attire all week long!

“Recently I had the opportunity to play at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens. A longtime user of the city’s public courts and their anything-goes dress code, I complained at West Side daring to demand all white from its patrons — but I eventually caved because I badly wanted to try out the club’s famed grass courts.

And then it happened: There I was in head-to-toe white — everything bought at deep discounts online — and suddenly I wasn’t just playing tennis anymore. I was feeling special.

So while you can hold on to your crop tops and ratty band tees, you may also think twice about where and when you wear them. After all, if you dress better, you’ll feel better.”

I’m sure that if people thought that dressing to the nines would fix their level ten depressions, they would have started doing it right now.

Do people treat me with more respect when I wear a suit and overcoat and they assume I’m something more than I am? Sure. And does it feel great? Of course it does! But it’s fake and almost fraudulent if people believe that I’m some kind of authority on what wine to buy for every occasion, fully literate on the latest documents on molten salt thorium reactors, or if Bufferin is actually safe enough to help with all of your aches and pains associated with the daily life of a swashbuckler.

I don’t want people to think I’m that smart because of the clothes I wear or because I’m a paid celebrity shill, but because I AM actually that smart.

As far as the actual “Fedora Chronicles Dress code” is concerned, I would love to be able to snap my fingers and mandate that everyone wear the clothes that make them feel better about themselves and cure them of the feelings of self-consciences that comes from stepping out of what the fashion fascists deem as socially acceptable this week. If you want to dress like Doctor Who, Doctor Jones, Doctor Strange, or Doctor Doom and that makes you feel whole then by all means, do so, here's your prescription.

If going retro or dieselpunk was mandatory it wouldn’t be fun or an act of rebellion and I don’t want to be the guy who dictates to others and become that thing punks are rebelling against.

Although, if you're looking for the courage and you’ve always wanted to wear a fedora but were always afraid of what people think, then I command you to ignore those people and wear your fedora! Just make sure it’s the best you can afford and something that actually suit your personality… and it’s something you actually like.