Policing Fashion

Ron Price, a member of the Dallas school board, who thinks that baggy pants worn low enough to show underwear are “disrespectful,” as well as “dishonorable,” and “disgusting,” has asked the Dallas City Council to look into issuing tickets to those who wear them in public.

Mr. Price says that he has no problem with underwear labels that stick out, but he does take exception “when grown men walk about the city with pants below their buttocks.”

City Attorney Tom Perkins is investigating the legalities, but experts say that such a law would be too vague.

Robert Jarvis, a constitutional law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida said that for a criminal law to be constitutional, a person of average intelligence must know what’s being prohibited. “Who’s to say how baggy pants can be before they’re ‘baggy pants,’” Mr. Jarvis said. “There’s just no way to regulate these things.”

Would it were that we could! Baggy pants and exposed boxer shorts are merely the tip of the fashion atrocities iceberg. There are myriad disrespectful, dishonorable, and disgusting styles being worn by people on the streets, in the malls, at the clubs, in the movies, and on the television.

(Now, I’m not getting into the whole “indecent exposure” controversy here as a lack of modesty is more often than not irrelevant to the vast majority of crimes of fashion.)

Baggy pants are on their way out, making way for potentially hideous new trends, which could include manifestations of that dreaded sartorial concept known as “retro,” frightening re-workings of past fashion abominations (think wide ties and “bell bottom” dress slacks).

According to Mary Ruppert, assistant professor of fashion at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, the current fashion pendulum is swinging heavily in another direction this fall: super skinny pants for both men and women. “It is a radical jump this season, very thin leggings,” Ms. Ruppert said.

In that case, new fashion ordinances may be needed because, when the winds of style blow toward leggings, those loathsome visible panty lines are the inevitable consequence.

Of course, fashion crimes are not limited to frightening mutations of trousers. No article of apparel is safe from the frippery of tacky trendsetters, or the frumpiness of couture barbarians who dress purely for their own comfort without consideration for the sartorial sensibilities of the people of whom they incessantly inquire, “Does this outfit make me look fat?” (Yes, everybody looks fat in a sweatsuit when it’s worn outside of the gym or away from the jogging path.)

Speaking of sweatsuits and gyms, let’s talk about those ever-popular, nylon athletic shoes — not to be confused with canvas sneakers — that should never, ever be worn with jeans (and neither should dress shoes, by the way). If citations were handed out for this transgression, the coffers of the issuing authority would overflow.

The potential for such revenue is practically endless with so many eschewing our cherished traditions by wearing white shoes after Labor Day, velvet between April and September, and shorts after 6pm.

And that’s just the beginning of the “war on tackiness,” for crimes of fashion could very well cause the eventual collapse of civilization itself.

• cotton worn with silk
• white socks worn with black dress shoes
• brown shoes worn with a blue suit
• tube tops
• platform shoes
• leisure suits

Think of the children!