Glamour Don't (Plus Infinity)

When I was a kid, my parents did not spend much money on my clothes. Granted, they did not have much money...but I'll gloss over that fact as it makes it harder to feel put-upon and somehow cheated.

On the rare occasions that I was allowed to buy clothes -- it  was always the cheaper, knockoff version of every popular style. (Go ahead and laugh...I bet you didn't go to school wearing "Ducksiders" at the height of the preppy era.)

For a couple of years, I owned only about five shirts and two pairs of "designer" jeans that I rotated through every week and then finished the outfit with my red, white and blue leather-like "Nykes." In Virginia Beach where I grew up, there was a store called Goofs that sold nothing but irregular Levi's, and that was the only place I was allowed to buy Levi's (the only acceptable pants at the time), as the price was right. Which is why all of my Levi's were rust-colored, lacked pocket stitching and were tremendous bell-bottoms in an era where straight-legged pants ruled. Also, when OP shorts became all the rage, I got two pair -- in the weird sale-rack colors of peach and mint green. And these were but a mere sampling of the fashion missteps I (involuntarily) made. Put another way: 

Young Brutalism :  fashion sense : :  Keith Richards : a glass of wine with dinner        

Because I had so few clothes, I can actually still picture key items from my wardrobe back in those days...items like a light blue Izod polo shirt and a light blue t-shirt with a glittery "Native New Yorker" iron-on decal on the front. I wore both of these until the armpits got discolored (adolescence was not good to me), and then continued to wear them, while making a mental note to keep my arms down at my sides all day long. (On the downside...this kept me from dating. On the upside...it also kept me out of the Hitler youth...)

As with anything I had to suffer through in my childhood, my mother insisted that it "built character."

A character in irregular pants,
Brutalism