Thursday, March 10, 2011

A year ago, almost to the day, I held forth on clothing, specifically the selection, acquisition, and maintenance thereof. Here we are again tonight, by what surely must be the design of fate, with the very same topic at hand. The difference is maintenance takes a back seat because I can deftly wield an iron now, and what once confounded me, indeed demanded far more patience than I cared to invest, has become palatable and often necessary.

I’ve been on the hunt for more business attire recently, particularly in the shape of sports jackets. There’s something timeless about them, and a good, reliable jacket can accompany you in a variety of situations, ably pulling double duty in both casual and semi-casual settings. Put some mileage into one, and the coat shoulders its own set of memories. The goal for this weekend is to locate another blazer, possibly two.

Normally I dislike junk mail and actively seek to remove my information from various marketing lists, but a catalog from Filson was just too compelling. I don’t think it was any one thing, and honestly I’ve minimal use for outdoors clothes. The prices were well out of my range. But between the photographs of prospectors and hunters from the early 1900s, the fact that so many items were made in the U.S., and the testimonials about the durability of such and such items, I was hooked. There were textiles mentioned that sounded alien, yet earthy: tin cloth, vegetable-tanned leather, shelter cloth, Mackinaw wool. I felt a kinship, strangely enough, ties to a bygone era when catalogs by mail were themselves small luxuries.