Yes you should dress your age
Stunting on Father Time, achieving advanced swag... the based, blessed, non-oppressive way
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There’s a few Spyplane tees and totes in the Spy Store.
— Jonah & Erin
What does it mean to “dress your age?” This question connects directly to one of the thorniest issues in modern self-presentation: What it means — and whether you should or shouldn’t want — to look your age.
It’s an issue shot through with so many cultural prejudices, canards, and pathologies, it’s hard to know where to start. And the pathologies are only accumulating by the day. Our society has long been image- and youth-obsessed, but when the front-facing camera BUSSED onto the scene? Those obsessions went into hyperdrive.
Clothes, of course, are one of the oldest, simplest & most prevalent forms of “body-modification technology” — around long before fillers, contouring tutorials, Facetuning apps and Looksmaxxing regimens — and they follow their own unique laws of physics and swag semiotics. So it’s no surprise that we recently got several Personal Spyplane questions on the topic of age as it relates to sauce, including:
“Dress your age? Or dress however you want?” — junkinthetrunkbrooklyn
“I’m trying to maintain a sense of whimsy in my closet, but also trying to mature into adulthood. What to do?” — gesamtkunstwerkinprogress
Today we’re going to explore the AGE ~ SAUCE continuum, Spyplane Style, and serve up powerful, definitive truths.
I. PERFORM PERIODIC STRESS-TESTS OF YOUR SWAG
One night when I (Jonah) was like 29 I went out rocking a button-down shirt overdyed a bright banana yellow. It was part of a Band of Outsiders x Opening Ceremony capsule where all the colors had a “Lego” theme. I’d worn it a bunch and felt fully at home in it. But this evening an acquaintance from college was in the mix and feeling a touch ~sPiCy~: He raised an eyebrow at the shirt and said, “Can you see what color that is??”