Follower of Fashion

I have been wearing my brother in laws clothes for the past 10 years or perhaps a bit longer than that. He does know about it.

It is not the case that his sister, my wife, has been through his wardrobe on my behalf on a charitable pity mission nor his own wife has deemed his fashion sense drab and boring and secretly parcelled up and despatched the items to me.

It is because Carl has always been a discerning  follower of fashion. He has an excellent taste and sense of style, and this demands a regular review of the contents of his cupboards in order to filter out what is 'so yesterday' to make way for what is 'so now'. The items of clothing are much too good to go to the fund raising drives of the needy shop-front concerns, into the plastic collection bags for a friday morning drive-by pick up, a church bazaar table top sale, in a rummage bargain pile at a car-boot sale or bid for on the internet. The labels have too much street cred and kudos to be appreciated by just ordinary folk. The sort of names that if seen stencilled onto the display window of a better class of menswear shop have an immediate association with being bespoke and sought after even if the names and brands mean nothing and could not otherwise be differentiated  in the street from the output of C&A, British Home Stores, Greenwoods and George at Asda.

I on the other hand am a deserving case, a victim of a fashion black hole if ever there was one. My idea of ideal day-wear is my business suit which, as a consequence of exposure to heavy duty dirt, grime and over-friendly dogs ,soon looks well past its best. Many miles in the car causes a shiny abrasion on the lapel and shoulder from the seat belt. There are embarrasing residues just on the inner thigh of the trousers, being an exact imprint of the blob of chocolate on the driver's seat where the finer slivers of a Yorkie Bar fall unnoticed during a snack on the road. The left leg has a faint odour of coffee where the cup holder in front of the dashboard has relinquished its grip on the takeaway paper cup on a fourth gear negotiation of a second gear corner. Other spots, stains and secretions would require a full forensic investigation to determine their origins. I have often felt that CSI stands for Chartered Surveyor Ineptitude.

After work hours, I may just put on my pyjamas but this can be embarassing if there are callers to the house. There are interesting reactions from door to door salespersons and Jehovah's Witnesses on being met by a 48 year old looking ready for bed at 6.30pm. A mixture of abject pity and outright envy. They should consider themselves fortunate as some evenings I just like to sit around in my pants.

A significant problem is that I am a full time dirt magnet. One minute I can look quite presentable and even groomed but the next I look as though I have emptied a full hoover dust bag over my head. Most of my better clothes have oil marks, ingrained dirt, paint runs, animal hairs, abraded turn-ups, ballpoint pen ink scribbles , bleach spots and stubborn residues that would cause Unilever to crash overnight if it were widely known that their cleansing products are powerless to help me remain fresh and untarnished for more than a few minutes.

Carls' hand-me-downs are therefore perfect for me. Second hand but definitely first rate. I am assisting his policy of keeping up with the latest fashions and he ensures that I am not scooped up by the authorities during any initiative to clampdown on scruffy and offensively attired vagrants wandering the streets in the hours of daylight.