Yesterday I wrote up a little piece for Styleforum’s blog about myself, my style, etc. for their recurring “member profile” feature. Since I only wrote this yesterday, Glenn O’Brien was on my mind. I only just followed him on Twitter and scoped his website. So to hear of his death today was that much more of a shock for me than if it had been a week ago.
Below is an excerpt from what I wrote; a piece of advice Glenn gave in GQ nearly ten years ago has been foundational in the development of my personal style. The full piece will be published April 17 over at journal.styleforum.net.
There are three main pillars that serve as the foundation for my style.
The first pillar is advice I read in 2007 or 8 in Glenn O’Brien’s Style Guy column in GQ. A reader had asked whether he should wear his trench coat in his car—will it cause undue wear and tear? What does Glenn O’Brien do? Glenn memorably replied that he generally let his car’s highly engineered climate control do its job, but as to whether the reader should be concerned about wear and tear, he replied, “Don’t worry about your coat, it was made for the trenches.”
Wear your clothes. This is foundational to me because I can’t afford to buy and own things I don’t actually wear. I recently posted a picture of myself holding a baby sea turtle on the beach in Mexico, about to release it into the bay, wearing a white Eidos polo. Someone told me, “that shirt is much too nice to be wearing on the beach!”
Forget that. Clothes are meant to be worn. Wear them.
