Relifing

I can’t imagine ever wearing seersucker.

A boss walked into the office today in seersucker trousers with a seersucker coat over his shoulder. I imagine that he, like most men I see wearing seersucker at this time of year, must be kind of eager to get their seersucker suit out of the closet and don it.  The heat allows men in seersucker to pair this casual, almost little-boy-looking fabric pattern with some bright and colorful tie.  That little boy dimension of it must be an important element of why they love to wear it so much - see, for instance, this “vintage, seersucker diaper cover.”

This US Senate resource says seersucker goes back to a 1907 design in New Orleans. But I wonder if that diaper cover popped out first to keep babies from developing a heat rash in the southern summertime wilt.  And the designer must have thought, “Ah, it’s not just for a baby’s bottom any longer.”

Theoretically, it’s cooler than any other suit they might wear, but I feel like I see those jackets on the backs of chairs quickly.  You may as well wear no jacket at all (as I mostly do).  But I guess if you’re sweating through that shirt anyway, tossing that seersucker coat over your corpus can freshen you up a bit.

And if you need evidence that global warming is happening, maybe you can chart on a line graph the backward creep of Seersucker Thursday at the US Senate over the years.