Chat show interviewer: so what do you sleep in?

Zach Pinsent: a bed.

As an old person (nearly the age of a Golden Girl, for reference) I often miss out on what young people are doing.  Sometimes that’s ok (Tide pods) but sometimes the next generation are doing really interesting things.  Sometimes, I want in.

I stumbled across Zach Pinsent a few years ago after watching a funny video by his friend Karolina.  I watched a few more historical costume videos, mostly slating films and tv for doing a really bad job.  A few weeks later, I wanted to learn about tying a cravat. 

There he was: so spry, so gleeful about the once very ordinary and now vanishingly rare act of starching his collar.   In a matter of seconds he explained a knot that I’d been unable to tie, and completely won my heart.

My aesthetic heart, I mean.  Thirst traps aside (and he shares those with the world so nbd) he just seems like a person that would be delightful to know.  If he came to the party, it would be an endorsement.  I went to England on his advice and was thoroughly delighted with his every recommendation.

Including the unintended endorsement of historical dressing.

Which has ruined me (the clue is in the title) for ordinary clothes. I’ve struggled with modern fashion for years.  Most of it makes very little sense to me, the women’s clothes in particular.  Pants don’t fit, nothing lasts, pockets are fake, and half of it is made by de facto slave labour in Chinese sweatshops one foreman’s cigarette butt away from a Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster (if you have safety standards at your job, that’s why.)  And the fucking polyester gauuuuggghhh.  I’m generally compassionate, but whoever said “let’s make 100% polyester bedsheets” a.k.a. microfiber, needs to be taken out behind the woodshed and dealt with.

All of that goes away if you dress differently.  I am a dedicated thrift-shopper and have made some miraculous finds  (from cashmere coats to Gaultier, you name it, my fingers will pluck it from the rack.) Add in my background in sewing and I can safely say I may never need to buy new clothes again (we’re making an exception for underwear, at least for now.)

And I look amazing.  I’ve always been an eccentric dresser, at least compared to my friends, but this has taken it to a whole new level.  My dopamine-starved brain loves the attention.  The better I dress, the more compliments I get, from friends, family, complete strangers.  I like standing out, and the idea that I might be the most interesting thing someone sees that day. I’m not however throwing as hard as Pinsent, who dresses exclusively in historical fashion, mainly from the early 19^th century (see above) 

My fits are not nearly so historically accurate, as I approach the game of historybounding with the attitude of a time traveler from the past who finds themselves in our world, granted all our opportunities but still retaining their taste for the aesthetic of earlier times.  This means a lot of waistcoats but no sock suspenders (because socks now stay up on their own.)  Neckties, silk scarves, cravats, yes, but no detachable collars or cuffs (because I’m too lazy to make any and washing machines exist.)

Curiously (or not if you study the pendulum of fashion history) classic style is starting to creep back into the public aesthetic.  Casualness reached a peak in the pandemic, and some people are looking for more than hoodie-sweatpants-crocs.  I mean, you do you, wear what makes you feel most like yourself.  As for me, I would wither and die if that was my only choice of apparel. 

I mean, I call it apparel, for fuck’s sake.