what to wear to work « ann rosenquist fee

The Uniforms of September players delivered, everyone!

The month wore on. The team persevered.

With transgressions here and there.

Turns out the only one who really loved the daily uniform situation was me.

So you’d think I’d be the winner but I am not! The winner is Gregory Todd Wilkins.

It wasn’t a contest until Greg’s descriptions became the reason for the season.

Like, the reason to hunt for your reading glasses, the first thing to check in the morning.

Here’s what Greg wore on the next-to-last day. He wore this to work. I don’t know Greg’s work agenda that day but I would guess it didn’t call for this. And yet, look. Look what he curated for his publics to see.

“Today, I am wearing a black velvet sport coat…a large Asian inspired necklace from Cambodia in turquoise, coral, and amber…

…lion head cufflinks that look like miniature door knockers with a metal ring through their mouth…

…charcoal grey vintage trousers with cuff, two-tone wingtips in black and maroon by Joseph Abboud…

…a Calvin Klein white pleated tuxedo shirt with silver French knot buttons…

…I am wearing my hair down.”

God, man. Well played. Just really lyrically hand-stitchedly well played.

Thank you for the daily goods, Greg, and thanks to the team for going along with the game. The game of getting dressed in a way that may not have saved any time (I might have been wrong about that prediction) (personally I may not have made any progress on the book I said I was going to read with my newfound nine seconds per day), but hopefully brought on some weeding-out of crap that never made you feel good in the first place, or appreciation for what you’ve got that’s working. Which is not a bad way to wrap up one season and head into the next.

Mr. Wilkins is pictured with “Waves” (1974) by the late great Arnoldus J. Grüter.

Amy Kortuem slings hot copy.

Right, she’s also a concert harpist and she’s a rising literary starlet and blahblahblaaah. Everybody knows all that. It’s what she does in her day job writing catalog copy that’s the real juice, the real thing to envy. The thing you can’t do. For a whole lot of hours a week, Amy starts with nothing and turns it into this:

And this:

Amy Kortuem, I got your destiny right here.

Let’s start with some lucky color. I get what you’ve been going for, wearing tasteful black to work, because how else do you class up a cubicle? That’s what you think, yet the actual effect is just that you coordinate with that paper sorter. You can do better than that. If you dress right, you can turn the cubicle itself into a hot leather patio couch. I think that’s the big bold something fortune wants to hand you, and it’s going to require primary colors and a bare midriff and a cigarette.

I know you’re asthmatic. I know they probably don’t allow halfshirts in your workplace, whateverwhatever. Not your problems; your problem is figuring out how formidable champion greatness can overcome you and those plastic gray partition panels.

Get to work, Amy. I’m only coming to your March 16 pub concert at the Emy Frentz Arts Guild if you’re wearing primary colors, smoking a cigarette and dazzling with the unmatched fleeting greatness of hot scripty strength from deep within. Beret would be good too.

Next makeover: Libertarian gun-toting fire-brimstoney writer/editor Chris Fisher. This is Ann’s Office Outfit Makeovers and we are not messing around.