Armor and Demons

 This has been on my mind, particularly because I spent yesterday watching the January 6th Committee finally tell the American public the obvious fact that the 45th President is a criminal, a grifter, a fraud, and an insurrectionist with no regard for democracy or the rule of law.  I noticed the gravity of the matter and of course the style that politicians in America must assume: tailoring and a version of the Ivy Style that hasn't changed much since WWII.  I have a few thought about that style code but really something far more personal.  Ivy Style is part of my life and I don't have to dress like a politician or business person.


What I wear has everything to do with working out my demons and trying to tell myself a story that allows me to live with myself.  If this is overthinking the matter then I submit that folks are (as usual) not thinking enough about how what they put on in the morning is armor that "protects" us from ourselves and the world.  "Protects" is a good thing because it means we carry on; it's a bad thing because we rarely stop to allow ourselves to consider that what we are protecting are our own demons and wounds.  Calling Dr. Jung!

Rant follows.


Prelude:  I am a casualty of Ivy, not just style but of the education.  I could not do what I do without the institution and the decade spent doing obscure work rarely taught elsewhere.  My father too was Ivy though for a more sensible career in architecture.   But I am also a fan of Miles and JFK, MLK and Ali, and Ivy Style is not just Ivy but one feature of the American uniform.  Update this to the 60s and the present and Japanese Ivy (who owns JPress?) is blithely immune to the complex issues of class and race that accompany those worlds: clothing and class go hand in glove as cultural matters.


Fugue: Still, I persist with a air dose of Ivy flex because I like it and clearly because I'm working out my past, my father, and the things I love and hate simultaneously.  What really galls me is how Ivy style is the default style of American politicians and particular segments of business that I despise to my marrow.  "Business casual", which many here apply as their own norm (I am again privileged to have no work dress code, none...I could go in my pajamas like many students to if I wanted...) has zero appeal to me.  I wear a tie to work because one should be reminded if you've chosen to put the noose about your own neck.

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