Friday, December 4, 2009

Lifelong Love Affair



All it takes is one look and hook, line, and sinker, I'm gone.

It is a marvelous transformation for me. I go from rational to ridiculous in 5 seconds flat. I sputter. I stammer. I giggle and knock things over. My cheeks blush to an alarming degree of lobster red, and I eyeball him with my patented "come hither-Heather" glance.

All he has to do to win me over instantly is wear a crisp, white, dress shirt.



When I was little, I grew up surrounded in an environment filled with men's dress shirts. My Dad worked at Dillards, the department store, that was very much my version of Eloise at the Plaza. I spent the majority of my evenings, not doing homework, but hanging out over by the shoes, the hats, and yes, the men's dress shirts all neatly arranged by color on big wooden tables.

All of the male employees wore dress shirts, pressed and tucked in, with ties and the occasional dinner jacket. I used to iron my Dad's shirts, so I got a feel for the shirt itself. The placement of the buttons, the stiff collars, and the hemline are all forever engraved in my memory.

I'm not sure of the exact moment I fell for the dress shirt, but I think it was in kindergarten when I wore an old shirt of my Dad's for art class. The fit in the wrist was big, but the button adjustment helped it from sliding off of my arms. I remember loving that feeling intensely.

And then I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's.



Audrey Hepburn made it beyond sexy for a woman to wear a men's dress shirt (backwards, at that) to bed.

My love affair with the shirt deepened. Over the years, I've said some pretty damn stupid things to guys who donned the shirt simply due to the fact that they were wearing it. For this shirt, I take all of my expectations and throw them out of the door. You don't have to be particularly witty or charming. The shirt just kind of takes care of that on its own.

One of my roommates remarked recently when I was raptly describing a dress shirt on a guy that I seemed to be more in love with the shirt than the guy himself. Though it sounds horribly shallow, it was the truth. There is a fine line to tread there and usually, I step all over that line.

Every now and then I get really into a certain guy who pulls off the shirt with perfection. For a long while, that was Jude Law as Alfie in the pink dress shirt (only a truly confident man will don that one). Brief moments with Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man, Cary Grant in North by Northwest, any James Bond movie ever, Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises, that one insanely hot Russian guy I met at Bogie's, and Jon Hamm's Don Draper. All very good, but a little tired in my mind.

Then, I watched the Nine trailer.



Why hello Daniel Day-Lewis! I remember my junior year in high school English class and how we watched The Last of the Mohicans with you in it. Because I grew up watching that movie, your appeal didn't latch on to me like it did with the other girls in my class.

And then you had that God-awful mustache in There Will Be Blood.

You've since cleaned it up. It's, uh, looking pretty, uh, sharp.

See? I'm stammering on my own damn sentence!



Kate Hudson, you're one lucky lady to be so up close to the shirt. "He is the essence of Italian style." as the song Cinema Italiano from the film states.



And a full-length view. Sans the shoes, it's just damn good.

PS: I remodeled the blog again. I'm having a purple moment.

Love to you all,
Heather

4 comments:

Sadako said...

I agree. They're SEXY!

C A said...

Hi darling, thanks for the comment, have a nice weekend!

The Bible of fashion,
MAISON CHAPLIN.blogspot.com

English Rose ♥ said...

crisp white shirts and boyfriend boxers are the sexiest thing a girl can ever wear

thanks for your lovely comment darling =]

English Rose x
http://iamanenglishrose.blogspot.com

Viva La Fashion said...

it does take skill to make a backwards men's shirt look good. :)