Short questions relatING to any aspect of clothING.

56 responses total.

It seems like anywhere I go in Ann Arbor, 90% of the people are wearing black.
Are any other colors in fashion now, and if so, when and where are people
wearing them?
Why do women wear high heels?  Does it make them feel more feminine?

Hmm, black is supposed to absorb heat and it's winter...besides, it goes with
everything.  I'll leave the high heel questions for someone who does where
them.

What heat?  The sun has hardly been out all winter.

<lee scrounges around for shades>

My theory is that people wear black to be invisible, in the sense that black
or very dark clothing does not show shadows, so you can't see what shape
somebody is when they wear it (except for the general outline, and that does
not even show up against a black background, where you just see hands and head
sort of floating in space.).
        I am wondering why pants are sold with elastic and belt loops - if you
wear a belt, what good does the elastic do.  Same with sweatpants and strings.

The elastic gathers the excess in a chosen location, rather than in a lump
where you might not want it.

To quote (from Land's End):  Guys, these Side-elastic Pants hide extra comfort
behind your belt.  Relax -- side elastic in the waistband allows extra give
for more comfort and flexibility.    How can you get extra give behind a belt?
Do you wear the belt loose?  If so, why wear a belt at all?
What is the difference between a sports coat and a blazer?  In the men's
models, the buttons look different, but the womens look the same for both.

I like a belt as it gives a more secure sense of retaining one's pants.
Men don't have broad hips to provide similar security. For equal security,
the elastic would have to be too tight. The elastic just keeps the pant
waste to fit: the belt provides a strong maximum on expansion of the
pant waste. 

Belts make it easier to carry things like pagers, which have belt clips.

So why drawstring and elastic on sweatpants, which don't have the option of
belts for pagers?  The drawstring would already draw the pants together in
such a way as not to bunch.  I had a drawstring once that was attached to the
elastic so you could tighten the elastic, that made sense.
re #8, I also find that elastic waist pants fall down, but shorts don't, as
there is less material and weight to pull on them.  And I still don't
understand how you can have 'extra give' with a belt over the elastic.  Maybe
this is just a way to keep the pants fitting as a person gains or loses
weight, without bothering to alter the waistband.  A lot of what the catalogs
claim is not the real reason for things.  

Why do men's clothes come in regular and often in tall, whereas women's
clothes come in regular and sometimes in short and rarely in tall.  What are
short men and tall women supposed to wear.  (I suppose tall women can wear
a men's regular, but short men?)  

Belts are handy when your jeans are too loose.
As for wearing black, hmm, I was dressed in black when we last played
Capture The Flag...

Have you tried Lee jeans?  They used to fit me best.
Why do tall men wear black, does it make them look shorter. (Senna....?). 
I am sorry to be so stupid, but how do you play Capture the Flag?

It's more that I wear my clothes into the ground; there are things more than
ten years old that I still wear, and I've lost weight since I bought most of
my jeans, and haven't had the time (or money) to get new ones yet.

Capture The Flag: Two teams, each with a flag (or any piece of cloth you can
find) Each team hides flag.  Object is to find other teams flag.  The tricky
parts: Game is played outside in pitch nighttime darkness.  You can be
captured by the other team and brought to jail.  There are guards at the jail
to prevent you from escaping.  I think that's all the main points.  Anybody
got anything to add?  Wearing black helps you hide in the night.

More fun in a forest, even better with ravines.

This is the basic game play used in paintball.

(what is paintball, asks keesan?  Paintball is a game like Capture the Flag,
only each player is equipped with safety goggles and a special gun that shoots
paint pellets.  You get shot, you are "dead" and have to wait for the next
game.)

I used to play a game called Fox and Hounds, in which we split into two teams,
and every time a fox caught a hound, the hound became a fox, and chased the
other hounds, until they were all caught.  I forget who won.  I learned it
in Brooklyn NY, where we played it in the warren of cellars under my
grandfather's apartment building.  Anyone else remember it?  Maybe children's
games are regional.  What else is played (or was played) around here?
        I actually heard of paintball, I knew someone who played.

I played a great game of capture the flag last year in a gravel pit, with
hills and ravines and the whole bit.  Great fun!

Is capture the flag not a children's game?

Depends on terrain and viciousness, of course.  It's a great teenager game.

I wouldn't mind playing some Capture the Flag now, although I think the last
time I played was at fourteen.

I haven't played Capture the Flag in years.

What other games do kids play around Ann Arbor?  I mean the outdoor type with
teams, other than organized sports.

<dan contemplates a grex capture-the-flad tournament, but decides against it>

Maybe kids don't play any outdoor games anymore?  We used to play hide and
seek, cat and mouse, dodge ball, rattlesnake, various things with jump-ropes
and balls and rhymes, versions of pattycake for older kids....

<lee wonders how you could play capture the flag on grex, unless orinoco means
a real live tournament, which excludes those who don't live in ann arbor>

I think kids these days spend too much time in front of the t.v. playing video
games and the like.  Or cmoputer games.  They need to get outside more.  I
need to get outside more <mutters about excessively difficult homework>

Those who don't live in Ann Arbor could come visit for the game...

Kids spend entirely too much time on Grex and M-net.   

How old are the youngest grexers?

Visit for a game of Capture the Flag?  That better be well planned out if it
happens.  <lee envisions planeful of grexers getting off to play a game of
Capture the Flag and then going home the next day>

Okay, who's the youngest one in this conference?  'fess up! ;-)

Do schools still have dress codes?  Most of what kids are wearing nowadays
would have been banned when I went to school.  Girls all had to wear skirts
or dresses (no culottes/split skirts), boys wore ties starting in first grade
(string ties were popular, also the clipon bow ties that always looked
crooked), no denim, no shorts, no long hair..... (Obviously I am not the
youngest grexer.)

I've seen (and been) grexers as young as 12 or so.  (Well, I've been _a_
grexer as young as 12 or so, anyway)
I think I'm probably the youngest here.

My junior high disallwed jeans with any type of holes (whether they
were actually worn or made on purpose didn't matter, which I thought
was always a pain because before that I wore my clothes into the
ground) and loud shoes (which was a completely double standard
because the teachers around had loud shoes but students weren't
allowed to wear them) There was probably more but I left that place
(thank goodness) long enough ago, I don't recall.

Hmmm...a kid got sent home from my junior high school because he wore
a "Bull Shirt" to school.  'Course that was quite a few years back :)

What is a Bull Shirt?   Jim has a tie that his brother made for him, bright
green, carefully painted in mirror image down the front 'Bullshit'.  He wore
it the time the church choir required ties for Christmas service.  It is done
in such lovely flowing script that nobody turned their head sideways to read
either the original or the mirror image.  WOuld this tie have been banned?
        Were patches (over the holes in your jeans) also banned?  My 15 year
old neighbor has some very artistically patched jeans she made herself.

A "Bull Shirt" is a shirt that says "Bull Shirt" on it.  Most everyone tends
to read it as (or think that it implies) "Bull Shit".  Of course, it doesn't
say that, but that didn't stop the dirty-minded administrators.  At the time
I was in grade school thru h.s., patched jeans weren't a big deal, assuming
they were well-patched and not provocative (in the administrator's mind).

Are shoes and shirt required in school?

Community in theory required shoes and shirts.  People whose jeans had holes
in them didn't get bothered about it.  I never liked jeans with holes, though,
since when I wear jeans it is to keep warm and the holes kind of defeated the
purpose.

Are there any unwritten, assumed, rules, such as not exposing certain body
parts, not wearing your shirt backwards, or one leg of your pants cut off?

Re: #36 I wore out my jeans pretty fast.  I didn't put holes in them on
purpose.  Some got so bad my mother made them into shorts.  It was frustrating
that for the two weeks between the time my jeans acquired a hole and we had
time to go shopping for new jeans that I couldn't wear them to school.
You  must have been one calm kid to not completely wear your clothess down.

I didn't say I didn't wear my jeans out.  I just found them annoying when they
had holes in them, since that made it rather cold.

Actually, I did far more biking than other physical activity.  The holes in
my jeans were often created by wear from the bike seat, rather than from
scraping the knees, so they tended to be in a kind of embarrassing place.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss