April 04, 2002
clothes
"You wore what?"
"Okay, it wasn't all velvet. It was just a little velvet, the black part, and the rest of it was purple."
"Oh my God. Purple?"
I was trying to explain to my book club what I'd worn to my interview.
"It's just, I woke up in the morning and I thought, oh, I should ask Kristine what I should wear and then I heard you leave and thought, Shit, so I tore out my closet and found this old suit from high school that my sister gave me."
"Velvet."
"Purple and black velvet."
Is velvet not a good thing? The looks on the faces of the other women were starting to make me think that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't.
"The collar's top half was black, see," I said weakly, "and the buttons down the front were velvet, and--"
"Oh my God."
"Purple?" another woman asked incredulously.
"A deep, dark purple. Not ugly purple. Just purple."
"Why didn't you come to me for help on what to wear?" shrieked my roommate.
I started to sulk. "You left."
"I work! I have a job to go to!"
Fine. Just rub it in. And here I was all happy about having found a suit to wear at all. What, I should've shown up naked after all the talk about how important a suit is to wear to an interview?
She inspected it later, and professed herself relieved.
"Oh. It's not all velvet."
All Velvet is a bad thing?
"Just half the collar and the buttons ... I told you that."
"You did? I must've missed that. I was sitting there thinking, 'Oh my God, Yuhri went to her interview wearing a Prince outfit'."
Hah. As if. Er...What does Prince wear?
I was watching Iron Chef the other night with my roommate and her friend, when Chairman Kaga showed up on the screen. For those who don't know, Chairman Kaga is the mover and shaker for the Iron Chef series; according to the show, he's a billionaire that loved food so much that he gathered the top chefs to be his Iron Chefs and summoned challengers to "do battle in Kitchen Stadium." If you don't know Iron Chef, you're missing out. There's a link here for more info so follow it, you poor, ignorant platypus.
The thing about Chairman Kaga is those outfits that he wears, all of which left entire forests of sequin trees stripped bare.
He appeared on screen wearing some flashy black and rhinestone-y number.
"Holy shit," quoth I.
"This guy is some kind of freak," said my roommate.
Me, my next word was going to be "COOL." Sensing that that wouldn't have met with unqualified approval, I held my tongue.
Deep inside my Japanese genes -- and I'm going to blame the Japanese genes because dammit, surely no American cultural anomaly (with the exception of Elvis and Prince, and maybe Michael Jackson, and okay, Liberace, but nobody else) could be responsible -- there's a yearning towards the garish and visually unacceptable. I watch Chairman Kaga and his flamboyant clothing and wistfully imagine having those shirts in my wardrobe and the body (female!) to wear them with.
I've always lacked clothing sense, and being fully aware that I'd been cruelly shorted on the whole Instinct for Fashion, God was kind enough in a backhanded way to give me a body that manages to look awful in almost anything but simple, straightforward outfits. To God, this somehow balances out the equation.
To give God credit where credit is due, this was probably a wise idea. If I'd been given the physique of Cindy Crawford, for instance, I would have cheerfully adorned myself with rejects from Liberace's closet and become one of the sights of What's-In-Your-Closet San Francisco. As it is, I can't afford to go out dressed that way, and err on the side of conservative attire, to the chagrin of my diva DNA.
I might've told this story before -- who keeps track anymore -- but one day during summer vacation, Binky came to visit me in Seattle. My sister, Binky, and I went out to see the sights in the city; I was wearing an ultra-conservative grey blazer that I'd picked up in a thrift store somewhere, while my sister was stylish in the peak of Seattle Grunge-Kid fashion. We were standing on a street corner in the middle of Broadway, surrounded by people, when my sister suddenly announced in a loud voice:
"Yuhri, why are you wearing that jacket? You look like a dyke."
Is it wrong that I should lust after Kaga's tailor?