Loving Overalls in Good Company With Cathy Horyn and Junya Watanabe

Confession: I don’t really get men’s fashion. I really want to, but then I read this review by Cathy Horyn in the New York times talking about how she “loved Rei Kawakubo’s subtle blend of masculine tailoring and clichéd feminine glamour for Comme des Garçons,” and how “Riccardo Tisci opened his Givenchy show with crisp boxy skirts and square-cut tops exploding with bird of paradise prints,” as if men everywhere were strolling down the boulevard in fowl-festooned minis. Power to the ones who are! In fact I would love to see more skirts on men. But I still don’t know how to intellectually discuss said sartorial phenomenons.

The first paragraph of Horyn’s article, however, TOTALLY resonated with me. She confessed that she’s a sucker for overalls: ME TOO! They figured prominently, paired with Wellies, in Junya Watanabe’s Spring 2010 menswear collection, which was presented in a garden. Said Horyn: “I don’t know if he was appealing to the music festival crowd or the farm-to-table movement or just some dudes in Brooklyn, but his timing couldn’t be better.”

This excites me, not in the least because I recently pulled from the depths of my closet a pair of overalls purchased in 1993 (vintage even then!) when I had recently moved to San Francisco. I wore them nearly every day to my job as a barrista at Spinelli’s (acquired by Tully’s). I wore cropped shirts underneath to allow some midriff exposure, which wasn’t entirely inappropriate at the time given I was 24 and had every right to show a little skin. Recently I started wearing them around the house (with normal-length shirts) as a comfy, not-sweatpants option for working from home. When our love seemed fully rekindled, I took them to the streets, even pairing them with heels. This particular look has beengetting around the fashion blogger circuit for a year or three, and Clara Bow was doing it WAY back in the day! Don’t ask me why now the time feels right for me to break out the overalls. Like many things in fashion, it’s a mystery! (Outfit post TK!)