5 Warm-Weather Sartorial Mishaps

This Memorial Day I watched a dear friend place two bags of BBQ charcoal on his skateboard, sit  atop of them and let his Pit Bull pull him all the way home. It was awesome.

Right before that happened, I was in Prospect Park, riding around on one of those tiny bikes that street youths are always zipping around on and casting a withering eye upon various fashion transgressions. What follows is a list of sartorial offenses that I have observed rearing their ugly heads spring after spring all over New York, although I have no doubt that there are many Cali offenders pulling similar stunts.  And after the bullshit yesterday,you guys are on thin ice as it is.

1. Too Much, Too Fast
When temperatures rise, girls start showing more skin and in theory that’s cool. But start gradually. Lose the tights, for instance and just wear a dress with boots or sandals.   What’s not cool is wearing a tube top and a vagina-grazing miniskirt with heels on an AM rush hour train, the very first day of spring.
Everyone likes to be able to shed layers, but warm weather is no excuse for dressing  like you give hand jobs for money out of the back of a van behind Battery Park Cinemas.  Keep your birth organs to yourself, at least until we’ve been properly introduced.

2. Crazy Ass Sunburn on May 1

I always feel bad when I go out to dinner or to a bar on that first warm Saturday night and see the guy or girl who decided to lay out all day and just hit it too hard.  You’re getting ahead of the game, friend, and that lobsterlike skin is painful to look at.  It also serves as a reminder of the extreme and awful heat that we’ll be experiencing in a couple months when we all inevitably get mid-summer sunburn. Slap on a little SPF and  enjoy the mild whether while we still have it.

3. Wearing a Bathing Suit Miles from a Body of Water
I know I’m about to sound like an old crotchety senior citizen, mad about missing an episode of Matlock, but I’m sorry. I get that girls sometimes want to tan and that it sometimes requires the removal of a top-layer of clothing, but there’s something weird and incongruous and kind of gross about wearing a bikini in the middle of Central Park.  If you wanna tan your top half, just wear a full-coverage bra and take your shirt off. Otherwise stick to regular clothes.

4. Your Feet Ain’t Ready
Don’t even think about exposing your toes and heels to your fellow commuters/shoppers/diners until you get that first pedicure.  If you can’t roll with people touching your feet, try to get over it.  If you can’t get over it get some nail clippers, a pumice stone, a faucet and some moisturizer.  You might think passersby don’t notice your negligence.  We do and it’s gross. Shut it down.

WILD CARD; Harem Pants
I had been planning on writing about how absurd silk harem pants are as a trend and that they are up there with this in terms of viable wearability, but when I was looking up images to include on this post, I realized I’m kind of digging them.  There, I said it.  They’re ridiculous looking, practically unwearable unless you live in a lamp, and I can’t conceive of a body type on which they would be flattering. Even models, I think, look silly in them and for that reason alone, I say go for it.  Maybe I just like the idea of everyone wearing something that none of us look good in as some sort of grand, aesthetic equalizer. Wear those damn harem pants with an old t-shirt while you smoke weed in your apartment and suddenly feel like a sultan in his tent!  Pair them with heels and a tank top for a Eurotrashy look that, with the right amount of confidence could lead to free drinks from men with enough chest hair to hide a squirrel in.