Fashion Monday with JJ Lee

I just bought a tailor's form. It's a padded male torso and neck that sits on a chrome stand. The jacket is now draped over it. The dummy will allow me to pin and baste stitch possible alterations. Think of it as sketch drawing on the suit with needle and thread. The rig is very light and I find I move it around from the centre of the living room to near the bookcase to a corner in the bedroom depending on my need for light or to be closer to the clock radio or to protect it from kitchen smells while I'm cooking. Sometimes in the middle of a chore or writing, I'll forget I have "him" or where I've put "him" and out of the corner of my eye I'll see my father for just a blink.

If you've always suspected that I'm too conservative when it comes to menswear, this may prove your point. Brooks Brothers is opening its first Canadian store in Vancouver and I'm absolutely stoked. As an alienated teen of the eighties, I was a pure, unadulterated nerd (not remotely in a cool way) or, on occasion, I aspired to appear as an art punk/new waver. Some of my peers would have had some elements of proto-Goth (I'm thinking of you, Ms. Watson) but I was too pop for that. Even when I went for half-shaved hair, torn shirts and black, army surplus high tops, or just plain ugly jeans with baggy t-shirts, I always looked with envy and lust at the preppies of Hudson High School and Chambly County High School. Somehow all of this manifested now as a passion for Trad or Prep clothes. I'm a HUGE fan of J. Press in New York. I do wear bowties and button downs but alas it doesn't change the past. I'll never have a tryst with M. Spriggs . She was simply beauti...