Skip to content


Prairie Chic

“Your shirt, it reminds me of something,” a work acquaintance said to me today.

I glanced at my shirt, which I had already studied for several minutes in the mirror this morning thinking “Hm, should I really leave the house wearing this?” It’s a button-down shirt of an unusual rusty pink color, with puffed and cuffed long-sleeves and a high neck with limp lapels that tie into a floppy bow beneath the neck. There is also a bizarre configuration of superfluous darning stitches just below the shoulders in the front. The light cotton material is perpetually creased, and its sack-like fit confers both old-fashioned modesty and present-day “Made in China” cheapness. It’s a ridiculous shirt, and not in a ridiculous fashion maven way.

“What do you mean?” I asked, as if it were the most normal shirt in the world.

He looks pensive, appearing as though he is conjuring the something that my shirt reminds him of, but I have known this person long enough that I can tell he is weighing the ramifications of what he wants to say.

“It reminds me of those polygamist women in Texas,” he says. “Very frontier styled, you know what I mean?”

I did, immediately and painfully. “It’s from H&M,” I said lamely. “I think the prairie look is in.”

Posted in The 9 to 5.

Tagged with .