Nicer weather is no excuse for jorts

348 and Maine street: Fashioning a NESCAC feud on the golf course: Mills vs. Klingenstein

Here’s something that never goes out of style: a good, old-fashioned celebrity feud.
Unfortunately, the tried and true competitors in the catfights of recent memory have devoted their attentions elsewhere. Lindsay Lohan is busy with her regimen of probation hearings and collagen injections. We can’t count on Kim Kardashian, what with her parasitic child—and the baby they’re having, too. Poor Amanda Bynes is lost in a world where cheek piercings are acceptable. They are all too busy to pay any attention to foul fracases and catty conflicts.
But fret not, feud fiends, we don’t need the snarky starlets or plucky personalities of the tabloids to give us our daily brawl; in this idyllic corner of Maine, we have our own acclaimed altercation! With all the flinging and flailing, it has the styling of the best (and by that I mean the worst) feuds of those paparazzi-chased and pampered partiers—only this pickle is more patrician (had enough alliteration yet?) and peppers the pages of Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal rather than TMZ and the National Enquirer.

348 and Maine street: Consider the onion: layers help students reinvent back-to-school styles

Believe it or not, it’s September again. Yes, the summer has flown by faster than Miley can twerk. While I must admit that I’m more than a little sad to see warm weather go, I take comfort in knowing it will soon be back again.
So don’t mourn the end of summer. In fact, let’s celebrate the pumpkin-drenched, cinnamon-spiced, oatmeal-munching feast for the senses that is fall. But this is a style column, not a cookbook, so why should you give a twerking ass about pumpkin and cinnamon and oatmeal? First, because those are the new colors featured in this season’s catalogue from the fine (and apparently hungry) people at J. Crew. Second, and more importantly, you should care because these months between sand and snow bring us style at its most delicious.
It’s called back-to-school for a reason: this is style at its cleverest, a time when even the most hopeless slackers put in a little effort. But the fact that we try harder is not the real reason fall is the only season when aesthetically minded people walk around without praying for blindness. No, the truth about autumn’s awesomeness lies in the layers. All the best things in life have layers (see: cake, stacks of money, ogres), and fall fashion is no exception. Wearing layers is so fabulous because it’s like being a real, live Russian nesting doll: you can have 27 looks with one outfit.

348 and Maine street

Nicer weather is no excuse for jorts

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Evan Horwitz

Columnist

April 25, 2013

First things first: Happy Ivies! If your eyes are able to focus enough to read this far, you deserve a medal. And if you make it to the end of the article, I’ll buy you a cookie.

I don’t mean to suggest you’re intoxicated in some way or another— and don’t endorse such behavior—but if you’re sober, then Amy Winehouse is alive and well (which is to say it’s not likely). If you are sober and plan on staying so this weekend, I suggest you flee as quickly as possible—or at least buy some earplugs and a blindfold. This is not going to be pretty.

I’m not just talking about the litter or the vomit or the post-nap flyaway hairs—I’m more concerned with the clothes. Ivies has a style problem. It seems that when Ivies rolls around, or rather stumbles around, the wardrobe of almost each and every student shrinks to two regrettable pieces: the tank top and jorts. If you are somehow unaware of the heinous spectacle that is jorts, then I envy you more than Tom Klingenstein wishes he was a Polar Bear and not a Eph.

They are, and it pains me to even put these words next to each other, jean shorts.

Whoever first decided that it was good idea to cut off a pair of jeans anywhere above the ankle—and believe me, I’ve seen jorts that fall mid-calf and jorts that cover less than half an ass-cheek—that person ranks in my book alongside Walmart and Stalin and the architect of Stowe Inn.
What book, you ask?

My book of people who should be charged with aesthetic crimes in some International Criminal Court of Fashion where Joan Rivers would be the presiding judge. Yes, jorts are perhaps the single ugliest piece of clothing in common usage.

There are, of course, different kinds of jorts. Bermuda jorts win for sheer effrontery against common decency and have, on more than one occasion, made my eyes bleed. If you find a pair of Bermuda jorts in a friend’s closet, quietly and quickly remove the offending item and incinerate it. If you find two pairs of Bermuda jorts in this friend’s closet, you may want to hold an intervention and consider calling Stacy and Clinton of What Not to Wear. If you discover more than two pairs of Bermuda jorts in your friend’s wardrobe, run. This person is not your friend and probably has been collecting toenails and/or graphic tees (obviously the latter is worse) since the late nineties.

At risk of sounding like Mayor Bloomberg, Bermuda jorts should be outlawed because they are the leading undiagnosed cause of ugliness, unhappiness and even unhealthiness across America and around the world.

Before you get your political pantaloons in a kerfluffle and call me an elitist liberal, just know that I also have a special hatred of mom jeans—which, for reasons that are beyond me, seem to have become the pant of choice of certain liberal men over forty. (See, for example, Barack Obama and John Kerry). But the jort, and especially the Bermuda jort, hurts my eyes and my heart in a way mom jeans cannot dream of doing. So, even if my politics were based only on the costumes of the candidates—and I’m not saying they’re not—I would vote against the jorts-wearers every time.

But of course Bermuda jorts aren’t the only jorts invading and infecting our public spaces. There are, of course, the unfortunately homemade or seemingly homemade jean cut-offs, with their strands of denim snaking down legs like unwanted hairs or blue caterpillars. Why anyone would spend money on such a thing is a mystery to me, but men and women seem to prefer these equally—perhaps because they can be cut to any length.

Convenient though this may be, it does not make for a pleasant scene. As a rule, be wary of any garment you can tailor without needle and thread. As another rule (if you haven’t gathered as much already): men should never, ever wear jorts. There is no activity that requires them—not camping, not hiking, not even pot smoking.

Women (even those who agree that man-jorts deserve a special death) seem to think that they can get away with jorts. Daisy dukes are alright I guess, if you want to look like a street walker strolling the Lincoln Tunnel or a destitute farmer who had to sell her pants to afford a spray tan.
In other words, you should probably change.

I’m under no illusions that my advice will fix the Ivies style problem. But at the very least, try—just try—to be a little unique in your dress this weekend. Put down the neon tank. Step away from the jorts. Put on some real clothes and have some fun.

That’s all! You made it. Come find me for that cookie.

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