My summer look this year. Shorts it is!
Every year there is a big discussion (I’m using the term “big” loosely here) in Stockholm about whether it’s OK to wear shorts in the city. I’m a bit confused about this since men’s fashion has shown men in suit jacket and shorts for many seasons now, which is therefore a perfectly acceptable look. I myself have three pairs of Jil Sander shorts, one of them (I’m not kidding) in mint green leather.
My colleague at Rodeo, Johan Wirfält, wrote about this last year as a response to the editor in chief of King Magazine, Per Nilsson, who emphatically concluded it wasn’t OK to wear shorts in Stockholm city.
This year the discussion was taken up by the hipster site throwmeaway.se and both of them see the shorts taboo as a sort of anti-gay sentiment. It is just “too gay” to wear shorts as a man (because as Kristofer Andersson at Throw Me Away observes, this is a ban only of male bare legs).
I really couldn’t care less whether it is seen as gay or not gay to be a shorts guy, but we must be more precise here – it is not seen as gay to wear cargo shorts in the city, just a bit too casual for inner city life perhaps. Rather we are talking about tailored shorts and we are talking about very short shorts, showing quite a bit of leg.
Personally I’m definitely going for the short tailored shorts look this summer. I’ve already road tested my mint green leather ones (although admittedly they are a bit tricky to pull off) and is trying to find the right moment to don my “faux” double breasted suit jacket with matching shorts.
This is the last post from me for a while, but I hope I will see you sometime after summer. All the best – and don’t be afraid of the shorts.
