06-19-2018, 10:41 AM
(06-18-2018, 02:08 PM)willyto Wrote:(06-18-2018, 02:05 PM)Edward Wrote: Wouldn't be seen dead in short trousers myself, but I rather like the proper trouser version of these.
Why not? I keep reading that from several people as if it was a capital sin.
Purely a personal preference. I distinctly remember not even liking them much as a kid, around the time I first paid any attention at all to what I was wearing - I guess at about the age of twelve. I still wore them as something of a Summer 'norm', but by the time I was sixteen, when I think my last pair were bought, I really avoided them at all costs. I worked it out once that between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, I wore shorts on a total of six occasions, and I regretted every one of them. (At least half of those were round the house, so I'm not sure that they even count). Neither owned nor worn a pair since, and never felt the need of them.
Whether shorts are 'vintage correct' or no doesn't concern me. I try to be live and let live about these things; my own clothing choices aren't exactly "normal" these days. For one thing, I have plans to start wearing a kilt more often. I suspect a lot of my dislike of shorts goes back in part to my own father - who wore shorts as a norm as school in the fifties and is of a generation of Irish men for whom getting your first pair of long trousers was still a rite of passage into manhood. I've never in my entire life seen him wear a pair of shorts - I doubt he has ever owned any in the last fifty years. I'm sure that's some sort of subconcious influence. Shorts are also, for me, heavily associated with sport, which I openly hate, loathe and detest, so damned by association in that sense. In practical terms, I do not accept the claim that they are necessary in hot climates; I spend a fair amount of time in 30C plus weather every year and have no need to resort to shorts when I can instead wear linen or cotton. I do find it notable that in cultures which have arisen in some of the hottest climates even before the sort of modern awareness we have about the health damage done by excess sun exposure, they were much more covered up.
So yeah... can't speak or anyone else, but for me the bottom line is I intensely dislike the look of shorts (in much the same way as I have an instinctive dislike of flares), and I have no practical use for them. I don't doubt there are those who will have an equal dislike of my preferences!