Before the Flex: Denim, Boots, Leather Styles in the Great Society
This subject is going to take more than one take. But let's set the stage here. It’s all such a different scene now. I mean, there actually is a scene. Lots of fellas are interested in boots, denim, leather, vintage militaria, and sometimes Ivy. Social media has accelerated curiosity and helped set the tone, which slides effortlessly between deeply opinionated orthodoxies and a carte blanche of just do you. If it's not always welcoming it does have the advantage of coming through so many cultural lenses that it defies focus, and I say that in a good way. That sense of latitude and extent is different than it was when I got my first Wranglers, stole my first Schott Perfecto, and wore my brother's Beatle boots. My own relationship to these styles can’t be separated from growing up with them, and how the age was informed by the social realities of post-WWII, and more especially by Vietnam, politics, free speech and social justice movements. No less impo