BULLSHIRT

If you're anything like me, you're likely uninterested in someone's laundry skills. But stick with me, because there's a larger point I'm going to make.

When retrieving clothes from the dryer, I try to remember to bring hangers for the shirts -- the operative word being "try". When that fails, I drape the shirts on one arm while carrying the laundry bag in the opposing hand. 

Upon returning to the apartment, I gently lay the shirts on the bed. Sometimes, there might be a t-shirt underneath. Kind of like this:

If only I had taken a second look at my otherwise routine household chores, I could have created the latest fashion craze: T-Shirt Shirt:

Take a good look at the model's expression. He couldn't be more insulted than if he was the recipient of one of Roseanne Barr's "apologies". Pray for the gentleman that he got paid more than the price of the T-Shirt Shirt itself-- which is $1,290.

Let me spell that out. One thousand-two hundred-ninety dollars for two shirts sewn together. And not just any two shirts, but shirts that look like the Kirkland brand sold at Costco. Which together would blow the bank at roughly 50 bucks.

There are some clothes that can't be fully appreciated unless seen from all sides. Maybe -- just maybe -- the T-Shirt Shirt is one of them. You tell me:

Welp -- from the rear, it looks like a guy in a t-shirt. From the side, it could pass for a bib worn by an extraordinarily sloppy eater. And since he appears to be wearing the same designer's $850 boot-cut jeans, said eater should wear another pair of pants over them.

A year ago, I wrote a piece about similar stupid "fashions" including a pair of $425 jeans that look like they were smeared with elephant dung, and clear plastic pants going for a crisp C-note. But while those sartorial absurdities were from the decidedly second-tier Nordstrom's and Topshop respectively, the T-Shirt Shirt is manufactured (with a straight face) by Balenciaga, described by Wikipedia as "a luxury fashion house founded in Spain by Cristobal Balenciaga," who had a "reputation as a couturier of uncompromising standards and was referred to as 'the master of us all' by Christian Dior".  

Y'know, when I see "master" in a sentence, it's usually followed by "slave". And you can bet that there will be plenty of people with money to burn --  or destroy, blow up, castrate, you name it -- in order to slavishly wear items like the T-Shirt Shirt in order to be the hautest in haute couture. 

If only he was the
designer.

But to be fair, Cristobal Balenciaga himself isn't to be blamed for this tripe. He closed the original company 50 years ago; it was revived by Jacques Bogart (no relation to Humphrey) in 1986. Perhaps Cristobal knew what was coming, and wanted to be out of the picture for a few decades.

When I saw the miniseries The Assassination of Gianni Versace earlier this year, I could recognize he was responsible for genuine fashion, even if it wasn't up my alley. He thought about what he was designing. But what Balenciaga and others are doing seem to be the result of a game of darts run amok. 

The first dartboard features images of various clothing items. The second features words like "mud" and "plastic", with the occasional "surprise" you read only when opening an envelope (that's where the "second shirt" comes in). The third has a dozen or so outrageous prices, none lower than $750.

Have designers, then, simply run out of ideas -- or are they laughing their haute couture heads off as they decide how stupid the public can get? All I'm asking is that one of them wears the T-Shirt Shirt in public. Hey, they can even get the employee discount for the pleasure.

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