Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCCXIV

At the time that I'm actually writing this article, I'm sitting at a trade show in Jackson, MS. I'm not new to this scene. As a matter of fact, I've now been doing this Jackson show for twenty-six years. It's just natural for me to think back over the last two and a half decades and marvel at how much things have remained the same and yet they are so vastly different now. Some of my clients from those first days are still around, and in some cases their kids who were only eight to ten years old back then have now taken over the business and are ones I'm dealing with. One of the most striking differences, however, is the way the people are dressed.

As I sit here today, I'm wearing a light-weight denim sports shirt with khaki slacks, and I'm one of the most "dressed-up" guys in the building. My how things have changed in just a few short years! In the "old days" I would have been the talk of the building if I had come in here dressed like I am today. Back then every man in the building would've had on a tie with a suit or a sport coat. I've seen only one man dressed like that today, and he's an old man. At least eighty per cent of the people I can see from my vantage point are wearing jeans, and among the females, about half of them are jeans with holes in them. In an effort to at least half-way keep with the trends of the day, I came to work this morning with my shirt untucked, but when I went to the restroom a few minutes ago, I tucked it back in without realizing what I was doing. Old habits are hard to break.

I've been around long enough to know that fashions are cyclical and will eventually come full circle back to the trends of yesterday, but I have to wonder if the dressed up look will make it back in my lifetime. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. Whatever happens, look for me to be tagging along somewhere about a year or so behind the original trendsetters. I don't know how long it will take, but the fashions that were in style a few years ago will reappear. Maybe I shouldn't have thrown away all my old leisure suits.

Preston