We should all wear jumpsuits.
I wore a dress shirt to school for picture day in seventh grade. At some point in the day, somebody said it looked nice. I figured I had a good thing going. I have worn a dress shirt every day since.
From that fateful picture day, my wardrobe began a years-long process of contraction. The t-shirts were relegated at once to pajama-only status and even the polo shirts were slowly phased out. By college, the exact type of shirt (medium to thick fabric, buttons on the collar, pointed — not rounded — seam at the bottom of the breast pocket) was established. Since 2018, all of my pants have been made of a waterproof Swiss technical fabric in dark tones (except for two pairs of shorts which are reserved for Saturdays and holidays between Memorial Day and Labor Day). Last year, the transformation was finished when I replaced the last pair of cotton socks with a wool sock from Vermont with a warranty promising that the heel will never wear out. This is living!
For years, various people in my life have offered their theories to explain this state of affairs: “He dresses for the job he wants” or, “He’s just a formal person.” The reality is even simpler.
It is the same reason I know that the number for my lunch selection at the Thai restaurant in Lansing is P27. It is the same reason I always sit on the left side of airplanes to Washington, DC, and the right side of trains to Chicago. It is the same reason I eat the same breakfast every morning and always get my oil changed at the same place and only get my dry cleaning done when I am at my parents’ house:
The world is full of chaos. I should not have to make any more changes or choices than are necessary.
Longtime readers will know that purchasing a single lamp was nearly enough to ruin me. Choosing from a wide variety of clothing each day would surely be my end.
The dress shirt is a decent answer to this. It is warm enough in the winter (with a sweater) and cool enough in the summer (perhaps not necessarily enough to be comfortable, but it has not killed me yet). It requires ironing and starching, which builds character and is a valuable excuse for guilt-free television watching. Varying shades and patterns of blue allow a venue for self-expression that is sufficient without being overwhelming.
The dress shirt can stay at home. It can travel. It can go to a bar or to church or to work and be perfectly fine. The dress shirt is unacceptable, I am told, in a gym setting, but this is of no consequence to me.
It sounds utopian, and yet we have a long way to go. Dress shirts still come in too many varieties. The same shirt cannot be purchased year over year because of “seasonal changes” dictated by people on coasts who wear blue jeans to work. This is the final challenge of clothing standardization.
In seeking a solution to the issue of total clothing standardization, let us look to a state of nature. When there are no norms and new world awaits, what clothing might be appropriate? When NASA began sending people into space, what did the astronauts wear? Suits and ties? Sweatpants? Certainly not! NASA trusted the jumpsuit and they still do. It provides a comfort and convenience that works just as well in space as it does on earth. Only one garment is fit for the final frontier — not even the mighty dress shirt can compete with that.
In a more terrestrial sense, what about in a situation in which one person has complete freedom to define fashion and total control over a supply chain? We can find our answer in Kim Jong Il, the Supreme Leader of North Korea from 1997 to 2011. Briefly setting aside his record as a repressive and totalitarian dictator, let us focus solely on his wardrobe.
In almost every available photograph, Kim (who could have chosen any garment in the world) wore a black or dull green jumpsuit and, in cold weather, a gray puffy coat.
But what about regular American life outside of the world of astronauts and dictators? The jumpsuit has already begun its encroachment and it will continue next week in the form of the matching family Christmas footie pajama. (I do not come from a matching family Christmas footie pajama family and have no photograph to include, but I know the tradition is widespread.)
Christmas is the time of year when we live out our dreams, and the matching family Christmas footie pajama betrays in the American psyche a latent yearning for jumpsuits that can be worn outside of the home rather than just inside on holidays.
A set of matching jumpsuits eliminates the need for sorting laundry and any possibility for the mismatching of outfits. They can be easily standardized and replaced. They save time in getting dressed. They can be comfortable in the summer and, with the addition of a gray puffy coat, warm enough in the winter. A selection of inoffensive colors allows a venue for self-expression that is, like my blue dress shirts, sufficient without being overwhelming.
The problem with the jumpsuit is that it is has not yet made sufficient inroads in mainstream fashion outside of formal womenswear. Again, this is dictated by people on coasts who wear blue jeans to work. They have an active interest in maintaining the status quo because they would be out of work in a world of universal jumpsuit adoption. Fashion is arbitrary. Masks were not fashionable at this time last year and look at us now! The jumpsuit can be fashionable for everybody if we decide to make it so.
The vaccine is out this week. In mere months, we could be back out in public places once again. We will breathe the same air indoors and eat restaurant food that is not damp from being in a takeout box. It will be the beginning of a new era, and I think we ought to bring fashion along with it.
For too long, “fashion” has been defined by too many fabrics and patterns and colors and special care instructions and dry clean only tags. This is a disastrous state of affairs. I wish it to end.
If this newsletter can in any way contribute to the rise of the jumpsuit, it will have been worth writing.
Distractions
Things I have been reading, watching, and listening to this week.
“The Antique Toaster That’s Better Than Yours” from Technology Connections on YouTube.
This video about one particular model of toaster from 1948 is eighteen minutes long. It is worth every second. It is a lesson that we should all expect more from small appliances and that, in terms of toasters, we have fallen as a society. Things can be wonderful and automatic without having a touch screen! The American toast consumer deserves better!
I watched the whole of HBO’s Chernobyl during a single long-haul flight last year. I refuse to pay money for another streaming service and Delta had the whole series available for free as in-flight entertainment. Would I recommend watching it in one sitting? Probably not. Was it worth it to arrive in Detroit a deeply broken man just to save the trouble of starting a free trial I would forget to cancel? Absolutely.
Around the time that the series was originally released, Peter Sagal (of Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! fame) released a podcast for each installment in which he speaks at length with Craig Mazin, the series’ creator and executive producer.
My podcast consumption has fallen off since I stopped commuting many hours each week, but The Chernobyl Podcast is enrapturing. I finished the whole thing — hours of it — in just a few days last week. It consumed me.
A deep dive into an already tremendous series, it is a story of historiography, humanity, creativity, and the challenges that come with writing for television. It reminds me of the days of DVDs when you could watch a movie with the director’s commentary dubbed over everything. It is smart and grim and, at times, brilliantly funny. (What’s as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a ton of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces? A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces!)