GLORIOUS WRINKLES!

John K just put up a couple of great wrinkle posts and they inspired me to take a shot at it, in the belief that great and noble subjects like wrinkles can't be discussed too frequently. This is a post about wrinkles; beautiful, sumptuous winkles. Wrinkles, the cartoonist's friend.

Wrinkles look great on a suit, in fact a suit that doesn't have them (above) looks odd and characterless.

Of course you take a chance when you buy a wrinkle suit. The wrinkles won't always flatter you and indeed they shouldn't. You want a suit that has character, that is independent and has a life of its own.  The suit's idiosyncrasies are part of its charm.

The thing to understand about wrinkles is that the best ones are always a surprise. You expect a certain amount of wrinkles around a bent elbow, you don't expect really drastic wrinkles around the bottom of the rib cage as in the picture of President Kennedy above. The wrinkle connoisseur treasures surprises like this. 

Having lots of wrinkles serves to call attention to the areas that don't have them. Here (above) the wrinkled-up sleeve beautifully contrasts to the unwrinkled, clean sweep of the back.


The effort to vanquish wrinkles is doomed to defeat. You may as well grow to like them because there's not much you can do about them. President Nixon tried to banish them by wearing characterless felt (or felt-type) puppet jackets... a situation where the cure was worse than the disease.


I hate to admit it, but not all wrinkles are equal. Some are just plain boring. Here's (above) a velour jacket that's so thick and heavy that it looks like Ahab just stripped it off a whale. The heavy, lazy wrinkles have no character. They just can't take the trouble to assume interesting shapes.

Here's (above) another negative example: these (above) are the kind of despicable wrinkles you get straight out of the washing machine. The large wrinkles are too predictable, the small ones too random. 

Really interesting wrinkles occur when a well-groomed wearer tries to avoid them, but they occur anyway. That's an example of the suit asserting it's own personality, and not just being a toady to the wearer.


Some of the 30s and 40s suits were tailored with the deliberate intention of creating interesting wrinkles. These were fine in their own way, but the heavy fabric produced only predictable wrinkles. Not many surprises there. 

I prefer the baggy look of the early 50s. Slender suits were coming into fashion then but the older generation clung to the baggy look...only by then the fabric was less heavy. One day, when time machines have been perfected, wrinkle connoisseurs will take tours of this era and bring back lots of photos of the flamboyant oldsters.
 
It takes guts to be a wrinkle man. We relish what the rest of the world considers mistakes. Before I was enlightened I used to be appalled when I sat down and my puffy pants "tent-poled" up from the lap. Now I enjoy it, and do nothing to hide it. Er...well, actually I do try to hide it sometimes; I guess I still have to work on that one. I have a feeling it makes girls uneasy.


There's lots more to say about wrinkles, but I guess this is all I have time for now. One of these days I'll post about another interesting mens fashion: the slim, crimped waist look with the outrageously over-sized hats and spit-shined patent leather shoes.