Fashion Parade

I am at a tradeshow for work at Houston, Texas. This entails sitting (and standing) in a 10 x 10 foot booth displaying the products that I sell. I am surrounded by booths of other companies doing the same thing. I patiently wait (and smile) for someone to mosey over to my booth and then I pounce – launching into my sales pitch - then I wait for the next person to show some interest and repeat

While I wait, I have been getting quite a fashion parade. The dress varies widely (and sometimes wildly). On one end there are those who are giving talks about their research, they are often in suits with ties. On the other end there are t-shirts, Levis, and the occasional wranglers tucked into cowboy boots. However, there is one reoccurring component of the fashion parade – the sports jacket.

I believe that the sports jacket has created a false sense of fashion for most of those wearing them. I can imagine them thinking, “Since this is a professional meeting, I should probably dress up, I know, I will just wear my sports jacket.”

I emphasize ‘my’ here because after five years of attending these tradeshows I am pretty sure that most of the men only have ‘a’ sports jacket and it has also been the only sports jacket they ever owned. It stays buried in the back of the closet and rarely sees the light of day.

The main problem with the sports jacket is that it does not include a dress-up of any other article of clothing. Their regular daily shirts (polo shirts, dress shirts, and t-shirts) and pants (dress slacks, khakis, and Levis) are worn but are mistakenly kicked-up a notch with the sports jacket addition.

There apparently is no concern whether the olive green button-up shirt, tan khaki pants, and Nike shoes go together with a gray corduroy sports jacket. There is also no concern whether the sports jacket their parents bought them for college graduation in 1968 is still in style today.

Luckily for me I outgrew (and out-gained) any chance of making a sports jacket fashion mistake. Now if I can just figure out the pesky rules of what not to wear after Labor Day I will be a fashion expert. I’d better go, there is a guy coming towards me whose herringbone pattern of his sports jacket is clashing with his Hawaiian shirt.