About censorship and fashion

(and your right to wear what you want at work, if it’s appropiate).

Yesterday I decided to take Chuck bass with be to work… I decided to pair it up with a pair of grey tweed pants, dark tights and high boots, and a black blazer… looked perfectly dandy and cool to me. Especially since we get to work in business casual attire.


And to other colleagues too. Chuck’s T-shirt has that effect of people (from an enormous chat underneath the picture, to ohs! And ahs! And side glances on the street). Many said it was an awesome outfit, some said I looked very fashionable… all in all, everybody liked it.


Well, sorry. Not everybody… Some girl from work (in charge of internal stuff like the change of building, maintaining of the offices, calendar protocol and dress code, among other things), after spotting the message on the T (“He’s mine, bitch!”), asked me if I found it appropriate, or if my boss did, for instance. She didn’t say it harshly, but with that disapproving tone… I have to say, I hated it.


Let’s be honest here. WTF!?
First, you can’t even see the whole sentence, because it’s in the right corner of the bottom of the T.
Second, its business casual, and I looked perfectly put together on my whole outfit. I can name at least ten people every day that dress much worse and less classy than me.
Third… WHAT THE HELL?


I have to admit that it pissed me off. Way too much. Especially when I told a couple of colleagues about it and they told me they thought exactly the same. Which gets me thinking, that it’s more a problem of her attitude, and what SHE thinks its appropriate attire, than anything else. She’s kind of the classic type. The VERY classic, that is. It happens ALL the time… people have this very narrow vision about fashion, and mix up concepts, and always have this disdainful approach to this world. Anna Wintour got it perfectly right on “The September Issue”: some people make fun and criticize fashion simply because they don’t understand it, and feel like they’ve been push out of the Club. Do I have to pay for it?
I say NO.


I have to say, I kind of understand her point: Work, is work, and you just can’t throw anything on top of you and go to the office, just like that, because you think you’re fashionable. But COME ONNNNNN, there are some limits…


It totally reminds me to that PERFECT scene on Devil Wears Prada, when Meryl Streep explains Andy the importance of fashion in the world.


Miranda Priestly: [Miranda and some assistants are deciding between two similar belts for an outfit. Andy sniggers because she thinks they look exactly the same] something funny?
Andy Sachs: No, no, nothing. Y'know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y'know, I'm still learning about all this stuff.
Miranda Priestly: This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.


(My boss… my 2 bosses, thought the T was pretty cool, btw)