It sounds like a plea, but it’s kind of a favor. It is a warning, an admonishment and a firm but polite command to stop. It is calling shenanigans, bullshit, foul and any other expletive designed to halt a thing dead in its poorly-designed tracks. It is for your own good and everyone else’s, too. It is called Please Don’t. And believe me, I hope to remain uninspired to write another because I prefer to write about beautiful, well-made and wonderfully-designed items, not misbegotten, insane and ugly ones.
So enjoy some style controversy in the following fully-judgmental critique-rants designed to shine the bright, harsh spotlight of Nonsense! into the dark, dank corners of style.
To Sarah Jessica Parker, mostly-legitimate style icon, I ask: Please Don’t release your new, self-formulated unisex fragrance. You call it Stash and proudly described the scent to thecoveteur.com as “Can you smell like, all the smoke? All the dark wood and body odor. It’s old and sexy, like a sweater from a guy who was on the Eurorail too long or something … I knew that I wanted a teeny bit of cognac, a teeny bit of leather, a teeny bit of body odor.”
I barfed in my throat a little as I read this because I have sat next to that dude on the Eurorail, I have smelled Europe’s dirty sweaters – it was more than 30 years ago and still can.
The Please Don’t’s are plentiful, here, Sarah Jessica. Please don’t reinvent patchouli, Please Don’t try to describe it alluringly using the term “body odor” (twice!) and Please Don’t try to sell us 1.7 ounces of stank for $75. Particularly to us in Colorado, since we can easily manufacture this scent for free all by ourselves in a day or two using only our own bodies, so thanks anyway, you fabulous sociopath.
To the adult man still wearing Crocs: Please Don’t. These were awful on everyone except children when this footwear hit trendy in 2002, and even more so now 14 years later as the original Croc has acquired the sad, miasma of a Tired Trend. I am specifically concerned with the sensibility-offending, anti-style of the original Croc – the foam clown-clog with the holes and strap, available in far, far too many colors. They are the concept of the Banality of Evil in the form of footwear. I understand the concept of antimicrobality, and support it – our shoes shouldn’t smell like SJP’s foul perfume. But, still, I will respectfully ask of Niwot, Colorado-based Crocs: Please, Don’t make Crocs in men’s sizes anymore. Our modern men have enough tough decisions to make without having infantilizing, de-masculinizing, overly-colorful foam clown shoes be a option.
Please Don’t wear Five Toe Shoes.These shoes look awful and are profoundly unnatural. Garden gloves stolen from Aquaman and repurposed for the feet are not shoes. No existing garment looks good with them, and God please preserve my eyes from anything that would.
As an enemy of flip-flops, the idea of one thing between my toes creeps me out, having anything at all between all of my toes makes my gorge rise. An acupressure nightmare times 10.
Want to know the opposite of toe shoes? Crocs. And they, too, are hideous. Humanity has so much to learn, I find it surprising that we have not yet realized that in a garment, too extreme is stupid. Form follows function; form cannot attempt the hubris of surpassing function with any visual or stylistic success. Comfort, posture and toe-spreading can occur in other, less ridiculous ways. Also, you can run like you are barefooted, in your own bare feet. Entire continents’ worth of people are doing it! Style Fetish asks Please Don’t wear five toe shoes in public, or ever.
Heather Narwid owns and operates Sideshow Emporium, a vintage and modern clothing store for men and women where not a Croc or five toe shoe will ever be found.. Sideshow is located in Durango at 208 County Road 250 (West of Bread and North of Rocky Mountain Pawn at 32nd Street, in with the Vault and Core Value Fitness)and is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. till 6 p.m. Call her at 739-4646 and ask her anything at [email protected].
