Grow Old. Dress Funny. OMG!

I was recently sitting in my dentist’s office (which I affectionately call The House of Pain) when his assistant, who looks to be perhaps 15 years old, looked at me and said, “I love that hoodie you’re wearing!”

Initially I was pleased. “Thanks!” I said. “I got it at Lucky Brand Jeans.” She made one more complimentary remark then flounced off to find my dentist. He was running late, which gave me, as I stretched out in the reclining dental chair, the solitude and visual perspective to ponder what I was wearing that day: said hoodie, which had vaguely Japanese-style graphics and lettering on the back, a pair of slightly flared low-rise jeans and laceless Chuck Taylor sneakers by John Varvatos. Under the hot, harsh glare of the dentist’s lamp, I saw with frightening clarity that I, who am 43, dress like a 15-year-old.  “OMG!!!” I thought

OMG indeed. I did a quick mental inventory of the unwitting damage I had been doing to my dignity for who knows how long. Number of Lucky Brand hoodies? Four. Maybe five. Pairs of laceless Chuck Taylors? Two. Ugg boots? Check. (Though I don’t wear them outside the house.) Been to H&M recently? Yup. Attire by Juicy Couture? No, thank heavens.

The humiliation was made worse by the fact that I don’t even really know any teenagers and have no idea what they really consider fashionable. So I’m not really dressing like a 15-year-old as much as sporting some vaguely freakish and inappropriate post-baby boom interpretation of youth. Ick.

Just then my dentist came into the room. He has been presiding over my dental woes since I was an awkward eighth grader and he was a handsome young man not long out of dental school with a beautiful wife and two young girls. Once upon a time he would ask me how my music lessons were going and I would blush and try to disguise my crush on him. Now he is pushing 60 and divorced, the daughters are married and he cheerfully says things like, “It sucks to get old, doesn’t it, Chris?” as he stuffs my mouth with cotton and prepares the Novocain.

“Errefengrrubah” I respond in agreement. Then my eyes widen as I focus not on the syringe in his hand but what appears to be an Abercrombie & Fitch shirt beneath his white smock.

OMG! Him too! I spend the next several days surreptitiously studying both friends and strangers over the age of 40 to see if they too have succumbed to the same unconscious tendency to dress as if we were all still driving with a learner’s permit. What I uncovered was an epidemic of Outfits Gone Bad: leggings, sparkly flip-flops, baggy jeans, iPods, you name it. “Did you know that the Olsen twins dress just like that?” I ask a friend. “Who?” she responds distractedly, hoisting her giant handbag over one shoulder while adjusting her equally huge Chanel sunglasses.

And just how does this happen? Why do otherwise normal, respectable adults start getting old and dressing funny?  I recall a meeting I had a few years ago with a really smart brand consultant, who basically called those of us in the room (all of whom were under the age of 45) a bunch of Bruce Springsteen-Bob Dylan-loving-totally-out-of-it-dinosaurs. Perplexed by the Paris Hilton phenomenon, he asked? Teenagers aren’t. But we were sitting there scratching our heads and trying to differentiate between Paris, Lindsay, Nicole and Britney because we had jumped the shark long ago without ever realizing it.  But, he added, we shouldn’t feel too bad because it happens to every generation. “The old at some level always want to imitate the young, but young never, ever, ever want to imitate the old,” he said. That’s why I visit the Adidas store on Melrose every so often, blithely unaware that upon seeing me, six college students probably run screaming out the front door.

My assessment is that we will all dress in increasingly ridiculous attire as we get older because, like everyone in the generation before us whose ill-fitting jeans we laughed at when we were in college, it is our sartorial destiny. The only exception is my stepfather, who just turned 70 and has always been effortlessly and unwittingly hip when it comes to clothes. When he and my mother stayed at my house a few months ago, he came down the stairs for breakfast looking insanely cool in an understated yet totally glam sweat suit he had just picked up on sale. “You like it?” he asked, spreading his arms out and modeling it for us. “It’s made by some guy named Sean John.” 

Comments

[Harry Bronson]

Well, it's amusing when 'matured' dentists wear spunky clothes under their white robes. Some dentists do that to connect with their younger patients. But I think these also make them more comfortable as they work in their clinic.

[red bottom]

I like you on facebook and follow through google reader!

[manolo blahnik shoes]

Very, very nicely done!

[Baggy Jeans]

lol true the more we get old and more we try to keep our self young and because of that some times we really sound funny =)