Dedicated follower of fashion

I have to admit I'm not much of a fashionista. My fashion sense has barely moved a twitch since the seventh grade. Although the Clark's have given way to New Balance sneakers.

I came of age listening to blue jean music, Dead, Band, Allman Brothers, and the look was decidedly more pirate than glam. My wife always wants me to buy goofy looking hip shoes but I admit I am pretty much a dork.

We went to the Nordstrom's Rack last month and I was looking with bewilderment at the plaid bermuda shorts, as in who would wear these unless they were gay and bingo, this gay guy walks up and buys a pair. There is definitely a sexual preference split when it comes to clothes.

Now it appears that there is a political and social chasm as well. Daniel Akst writes in this week's Wall Street Journal, "If there is a silver lining to a financial crisis that threatens to leave the entire country dressed only in a barrel, it is this: At least we won't be wearing denim."

He goes on - Never has a single fabric done so little for so many. Denim is hot, uncomfortable and uniquely unsuited to people who spend most of their waking hours punching keys instead of cows. It looks bad on almost everyone who isn't thin, yet has somehow made itself the unofficial uniform of the fattest people in the world.

It's time denim was called on the carpet, for its crimes are legion. Denim, for instance, is an essential co-conspirator in the modern trend toward undifferentiated dressing, in which we all strive to look equally shabby no matter what the occasion. Despite its air of innocence, no fabric has ever been so insidiously effective at undermining national discipline.

Did Levi Strauss realize the havoc his creation would wreak on the modern world?
If hypocrisy had a flag, it would be cut from denim, for it is in denim that we invest our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings -- the ones that prompted all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure, dragging down the global financial system with them. Denim is the SUV of fabrics, the wardrobe equivalent of driving a hulking Land Rover to the Whole Foods Market. Our fussily tailored blue jeans, prewashed and acid-treated to look not just old but even dirty, are really a sad disguise. They're like Mao jackets, an unusually dreary form of sartorial conformity by means of which we reassure one another of our purity and good intentions.

There was a time, of course, when not everyone wore denim. In the 1950s, Bing Crosby was even refused entry to a Los Angeles hotel because he was wearing the stuff. (Levi Strauss obligingly ran him up a custom denim tuxedo so he wouldn't have that problem again.) By then denim was a symbol of youthful defiance, embraced by Marlon Brando, James Dean and -- well, just about every self-respecting rebel without a cause. Even Elvis, who didn't often wear denim in public during the early part of his career (like many Southerners, he associated it with rural poverty), eventually succumbed. Now we're all rebels, even a billionaire CEO like Steve Jobs, who wears blue jeans and a black turtleneck whenever unveiling new Apple Computer products.

Although a powerful force for evil, denim has achieved a status that will come as no surprise to fashion historians. Like camouflage fabric, aviator sunglasses and work boots, blue jeans were probably destined for ubiquity thanks to an iron-clad rule of attire adoption. "The sort of garments that become fashionable most rapidly and most completely," Alison Lurie reminds us in "The Language of Clothes," "are those which were originally designed for warfare, dangerous work or strenuous sports."

I can only hope the Obama administration sees denim for what it is: a ghastly but potentially lucrative source of much-needed revenue. Let's waste no time in imposing a hefty sumptuary tax on the stuff. It's a great example of "soft paternalism" (especially if the pants are pre-washed). We can close the budget deficit at the same time we eradicate the fashion deficit. All we've got to do is impose a federal levy on Levi's.

Now if this isn't an opening salvo in the culture war I don't know what is, Mr. Daniel Akst, but you'll get my levis with my cold dead fingers clutched around them and it will take a hell of a fight. If you want to set the two hundred dollar a pair sequined stone wash jeans with the holes in them in your sights, have at them. But hands off my 501's.

Apparently, Mr. Akst's column has struck a corduroy with some - here is a letter from yesterday's WSJ:

It was good to read an article exposing denim for what it is. I would like to add a few bits of information regarding the product. I grew up in the 1930s and we wore denim "overall pants" strictly for playtime. These pants were like bib overalls, with the bib cut off. At one time I remember a fad when pants were stitched with a colored triangular patch at the outside bottom of each leg. The colors were bright reds, yellows, etc., and the leg bottoms were flared. These were called "whoopee pants." In the Navy during World War II, I was issued a pair of denim pants. They were for work or recreation only.

What's more offensive than denim are the athletic shoes that are in fashion. People even wear this stuff to church. I wouldn't cut my grass in that trash apparel.

Walter Graham - Omaha

Now Mr. Graham won't even cut the grass in his jeans and sneakers! Probably wears his cravat in the shower. Just another sign of imminent end times and the fact that the earth is populated by two distinct species. A pox on all you fuddyduddies.