I am wearing them now. And what’s wrong with that?
I am in my 50s and occasionally I wear red trousers
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
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I am wearing them now. And what’s wrong with that?
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everything apparently:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/12181163/Red-trousers-are-being-killed-off-by-hipsters-and-hooray-Henrys-Country-Life-laments.html
But where do you stand on (or in) mustard trousers, BJB? In my mind the two shades are linked…you used to see them in the window of gents’ outfitters of the more traditional sort, anyway. Perhaps they’ve been killed off by hipsters too.
My goodness, no. Mustard (and Jade green) are a step too far…
You leave my sister Jade out of this….
I might not you know? Is she a looker? Does she like raffish gents who wear dashingly edgy red Boden trousers?
For a moment there I thought you said “Bolan trousers”
Now we’re talking…
I used to wear a loverley pair of red and white stripy trews that were pretty MB. But that was quite a few years ago. I would look like a plump cough sweet now.
If you’re feeling brave, have a look on Test Match Special’s Flickr photostream at some of the things Henry Blofeld wears. Red, yellow, green; Ooh, a trouser, sir.
Given your age I think it’s allowed, but if you were under 40 could only wear them ironically. I’ll have to check the rule book and get back to you.
Google “red trousers” and look under images and you will find yourself down the Oxfam shop sharpish.
Also try a search for the ‘Lookatmyf*ckingredtrousers’ blog.
Yeah, that site is one of the reason I still wear them.
The great Sufi sage and poet Rumi said “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” When the clever Fashion Police of Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest tell me red trousers are naff, my inner bewilderment guru tells me I must wear them.
Buying bewilderment? I’m selling.
is it Afghan or Moroccan bewilderment?
Which do you prefer, and how much are you prepared to spend?
Also available: London Bridge.
Is that the one with towers and a draw bridge? Cos if it is, I am interested. Throw in a £10 deal your finest Red Leb bewilderment and Robert’s your mother’s brother.
The very one.
Simply PM me your account details (inc. the all-important 3-digit security code on the back of your card) and goods will be despatched immediately.
Anyone who follows Alexander McCall Smith’s Scotland Street series will now be thinking of the terrible Irene bullying her reluctant son into a pair of dungarees with the words, ‘They’re not red, Bertie. They’re ‘crushed strawberry.”
Good for you. Keep on chogglin’ man.
http://i1302.photobucket.com/albums/ag126/astralcat379/AL_zpss8ro1fgg.jpg
I am in my 60s and I occasionally wear orange trousers. Never red. Far too garish.
Orange? I bet they’re more burnt sienna.
No, definitely orange. They have the word “Tango” tastefully embroidered up each leg.
Yet again I must remind you Ernie that it’s called sartorial elegance and you simply do not understand.
This is true. We are still waiting for dedicated left and right shoes in this neck of the woods.
More sorta raw.
There’s so much wrong here it’s hard to know where to begin. But let’s start with your age; to be in your fifties at your time of life is wrong in itself. You are in a no-man’s age, stuck between the petulant adolescence of a DisappointmentBob or a Bingo Little on the one hand, and the mature expereience of a man in his prime (sixties), like, ooh, well, myself.
So there’s that.
Then there’s the matter of your posting about yourself wearing red trousers. Asking “what’s wrong” with it in an unpleasantly beligerent tone. We don’t want your trousers, of whatever colour, pushed into our faces, thank you. You should have had the good grace and sense to keep this unpleasantness to yourself, and not to crow about it on a public forum.
Two strikes against, then. This isn’t looking good.
Now we come to the trousers themselves. Firstly, they are trousers, which are like slacks, and land you firmly in the sad middle-aged twat department, stylistically speaking. Jeans are the only fit apparel for the legs of a gentleman. If you don’t have the shape for a pair of well-cut jeans any more you should just stay indoors and run a phone sex service or something. Stuff envelopes, anything, but do not stride out in public with that shapeless cloth hanging from your lardy backside like a couple of limp windsocks on a Baltic coastline.
Three strikes, I’m afraid, but I have to kick a man while he’s down: red. Red trousers. Trouser of a carmine hue. The very idea would be preposterous if it were not so desperately sad. The man (I call him that out of politeness) who sports a red trouser is signalling to the world that he considers himself a bit of a cockerel, a bit of a dandy, a lady’s man. A latter-day Beau Brummel. But it does not take an indentured Freudian psychoanalysist to read the real message behind the warning flag of the red trouser. Simply and delicately put, it reveals to the world that you are no stranger to erectile disfunction.
You did ask.
Hey! Who are you calling pestilent?
Anyway, everyone knows the best age is 71.
David Sedaris once wrote that a bow-tie is a signal to the world that the wearer can no longer achieve an erection.
That made me laugh.
Have an up ( or maybe not, if you’re wearing one )
{Thousand Yard Stare} I am in my 50’s and I wear red trousers. And what’s wrong with that?{/Thousand Yard Stare}
okay I have a prescription, nay subscription, for a little blue pill, but that is irrelevant.
Have a big tough love hug, Iron Man!
(I can supply quantities of generic medication at reasonable prices)
Only this morning, and this is properly true, Mrs Moose said I had “Beau Brummel hair” today. She said she meant it looked “Georgian”, which doesn’t sound as good, but is better some of the things she’s said about my hair in the past. When we were first together she said my hair was like Titch, as in Titch and Quackers.
Mrs Moose has hair like Morticia Addams.
Erratum: she denies that she said I had hair like Titch. She said I had hair like Quackers.
Which is obviously a bloody vast improvement.
Chinos are Evil.
Rhinos are primeval.
Rhinos In Chinos = Safari Narcs
Pacino in merino: Al takes the Benetton dollar.
Wino in Chinos – Dino in Dockers
Rhinos, winos and lunatics.
Do you like it here now, are you settling in?
Apparently Johnny Cash once shot a man in Chinos, just to watch him die.
No, it was ‘just to watch them dye‘.
He didn’t approve of the chinos’ beige colour and wanted them to be red instead. Blood is an unconventional choice of dyestuff, but Johnny held firm opinions on smart-casual leg-wear.
Dai, any thoughts?
This is why I come here
Kevin Rowland and Dexys Midnight Runners sung a tribute to them.
I own and wear raspberry red trousers, lime green trousers, and mustard – both chino and cord.
Both the red and green I wear only in the summer, the mustard mainly in the colder months.
It’s not so much the colour that counts but what you wear with them that really matters.
Not a golfer, by any chance, are we, nisc?
The Nisc, yesterday:
http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t642/burtkocain/zdvjlTWJFSazkYTRCgD-c3t1w5NsIIQIDWZT8E-V457sWwpPTXZgtYx7_6s7rISj_Z05CrwXObAztfyObFsbFsjo_I_68uQGMRSfbBeG_l84ufRuStA_zpsinenmf3h.jpg
Rupert Bear hasn’t aged well, has he.
re photo – like I say, it’s all about what you wear with em that counts …
fuck no.
reply to Archie
That’s boilerplate text when it comes to replying to Archie.
Team Archie: Fuck No!
It’s my go-to get-out whenever I find myself being implored to act.
Make America great again!
Fuck no.
Clean for the Queen!
Fuck no.
ectect
may I just point out a mistake I made above.
My winter months trousers (both chino and cord) are in fact tobacco and not mustard.
Do you think I’d willingly make myself look like some kind of cunt?
(Archie can feel free to reply to this one)
You are the Mayor of Bristol, and I claim my ten shillings.
I fell into conversation with George Ferguson on a train once, after we’d listened in to each other’s phone conversations and realised we had something in common.
Interesting man, despite wearing irredeemably red trousers.
Who’s he ?
Mayor of Bristol.
Do keep up.
Ah !
*ruffles hair*
Woa ! Not the hair dude ! Wochit, sonny….
*wordlessly hefts blackboard rubber*
I was jolly good at archery you know.
Failing that the old compass point biro blow pipe. Dangerous to the inexperienced user.
*rummages in Rob’s quiver, finds nothing*
For us, it was a sewing needle, glued and bound with cotton between three headless matchsticks, with a tissue paper flight, dart-stylee, at the other end, blown through a sawn-off Biro tube. I vividly remember Rishworth (3G) with one firmly lodged in his scalp.
Before you lose it completely BJB, don’t even think of wearing salmon pink nor those ridiculous baggy things which show off your pants (or lack of them) and have zippers somewhere around your knee. I have no idea how the yoof can walk comfortably or how they wee at a urinal. Do they hoick it out over their waistband or do they spend longer than normal fishing around in there by which time they will probably have forgotten what they went in for ?
Can’t go wrong with a sensible and hard wearing brown cord.
“Hard wearing”?
What are you doing with your trousers?
DL I leave that kind of stuff to DisappointmentBob or Bingo Little. Who, as HPS point out up there ↑- , are still petulant adolescents.
oh lordie no. Nothing screams ‘minor public school’ like a brightly-coloured trouser. Do you all wear blazers and panamas as well?
An ex public school boy comments…after years wearing grey and wearing bloody blazers in the summer, we tend to go a little bonkers, but thankfully I’ve held it together.
We wore grey trousers and blazers in Secondary Modern as well, but we don’t dress up like failed clowns on our holidays…
Secondary Modern. Ugh.
Ah! I see. Things become clearer. Prep school me, then a spell at Public. Well, a year. Engineered my request to leave from the Housemaster.
It certainly explains the chip on his shoulder. The shame of having to go to a school you could see from the street! *shudder*
It does indeed. Clearly no suppers with Matron for him, or chest rubs, or the left over orange segments at half time sequestered discreetly about her person.
At least I don’t still walk around like I’ve been dressed by Nanny
I went to a comp. Such deprivation. We had to get bumraped in our own time.
It was the only way to get red trousers in those days
It was only the skag that got me through it.
Well, I say skag, I think it might have been Kwik-Save scouring powder.
Christ, you did Kwag in your school? You’re clean now, I hope?
Yeah, well clean.
Scoured, in fact.
I think the joke worked just as well without the Beano-style explanation, but there you go. I’m wasted here.
Did someone say Beano?
Beano, Beano, becauuuse
Beano
Yihlo Moja Yihlo Moja
The man is dead,
The man is dead
And the eyes of the world are watching now
When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red (and black stripes)
I have three pairs of red trousers:
one pair of red jeans
one pair of red corduroy trousers
one pair of moleskin trousers
I also have one pair of orange chinos and one pair of pink chinos.
Basically, there’s no hope for me, is there?
Are you Lionel Blair?
Isn’t it about time we had some kind of celebratory thread about the Colossus of Light Entertainment?
*silence*
Apparently not.
You’ll have to wait until he dies before you get the reassessment you crave. In the meantime…
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/08/12/lionel-blair-i-cant-bear-gay-marriage-and-im-not-camp-just-flamboyant/
This is possibly the saddest paragraph that I have ever read. It’s hard, if not impossible, to imagine a more devastating, searing indictment of the warped, pernicious times in which we live. In.
During one pantomime performance in Stockport, as part of the act, Lionel asked a boy in the audience his name. The youngster retorted: “Touch my nuts and you’re dead.” The audience laughed but the comment was enough to make Lionel quit panto.
Sorry Saucy. I meant to reply but I got into a rather unsavoury tangle with some hogshair attached to a stick.
I give you John Finnemore on the subject:
Excellent.
I have a friend called Tim who lives in Henley, goes to the regatta every year without fail and is wearing red trousers virtually every time I see him.
Does he get some kind of bursary from the National Trust?
Coming straight from the New Words thread, might I suggest that some of you “detrouser” at once.
(Or is it untrouser?)
Otherwise I fear you will be forcibly depanted by a Twittermob.
I am in my office about to do a tutorial with a bunch of 19 year old undergraduates. Is this wise?
I believe the word is “debag”
Quite right Sniffity. Just remembered that too. But that word has rather specific connotations. It suggests being detrousered as a prank or punishment. Often by 19 year old undergraduates!!
Depant seems to have a more erotic meaning. I bet that the erotic best-seller 50 Shades of Trouser has a lot of both panting and depanting.
Taking new bugs to see the blue goldfish.
Happy Days….
Nowt wrong with red trousers…as long as they´re not leather….they´re not leather , are they ? I sit here typing this wearing a pair of camo-print trousers and birkenstocks. so I should probably stay quiet
Jeans = Blue (Antique/Distressed Look – now bright orange stitching) x 3
Black X 2
Stonewashed Grey x 1
Verdant Green X 2
Indian Cotton Trousers = White with Blue Pinstripe x 2
‘NO bright orange stitching’
Trainers/sneakers are despicable footwear. Not at all fitting for the Gentleman Head.
Oh come now, Mr RobDude, you’re being a little bit sneakerist here. As it happens, here is a distinguished Gentleman Head and his Dunlop Volleys, snapped at the beach only the other day, admiring Mrs thep’s groovy Andy Goldsworthy-style cuttlefish art. A lot going on here, i think you’ll agree…
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g401/mikethep/IMG_0981_zps483axmjj.jpg
Oh God Goddess No.
At least your shorts are above the knee.
Please yourself.
Oh, don’t take it to heart Mikeybabe. You have a shapely calf and your knees are holding up well, considering. C’m ‘ere. Astral Man Hug Time. Feel the Love. Let’s take a long deep cool swim in Lake Us .
Those are great pumps, Mike. Kudos.
They’re daps, ain’t ’em?
Not taking it to heart, that would be absurd. But I think it’s important to keep it dapper on the beach, particularly in Australia. As so often, I ask myself what would James Bond do, and I’m pretty sure he would wear Dunlop Volleys, the traditional gentleman’s beach footwear, along with his happicoat and drawers.
Impressive cuttlefish crop for a man of your age
I think they could do with some blue stitching to match the varicose veins.
Red? No, but I have some puce hued strides that I enjoy wearing with my yellow Ts, of which I have a small range. I have a goatee of some wildness and haven’t had a mid life crisis for some few years. I enter my 7th decade next week, on the occasion of my 59th birthday.
(I, um, grew out of my lime green trews during the autumn button crisis of 2015.)
I have never, as an adult, worn any of the following:
Jeans
A tie
A watch
Jewellery
A apologetic smile
You’re an outsider, Gary. A rebel. You don’t compromise. Not on the things that matter. Like the taste of a great cigarette. That’s why you choose Consulate.
Thank you, H.P.. Notice how I am forced by the laws of punctuation to insert two consecutive full-stops after your name. One to indicate the use of your initial, the other to demonstrate the end of the sentence. I don’t enjoy doing that. It looks clunky. But I can’t see any way around it.
You could try adopting HRT (High Rise Terminals) when addressing Mr. Saucecraft.
“Thank you, H.P.?”
Call me Saucy, Gary. I like my special friends to call me Saucy. And I like to think you’re special.
But not to work, of course, where it is wall to wall tweed and elbow patches.
You work at Nandos too? Wow!
Agree about ties. A slave rope collar nose to The Man. As for watches, don’t wear them. Jewellery ? Ear ring, finger rings, assorted bracelets, bangles ( some Celtic themed) , Om sign necklace, Pentagram necklace.
The effect is spoilt somewhat by the Primark onesie.
You’ve lost me there, Erniedude, or is this fighting talk ?
No, just had a mental image apropos of nothing of you in full Glasto Tor regalia for the headshot, but the out of camera bit from the neck down being a Primark monstrosity ( a la the newsreader who has collar and tie but shorts on the bottom half.
* Emerges from hole, tosses away spade and trudges off to naughty step*
*Spots Rob’s subsequent comment about lounge pants, vacates naughty step, picks up spade, jumps back into hole and recommences digging*
(Ahem) I have, on the advice of my Bannister, been advised to admit to the fact that I have actually worn £3.49 two for the price of one Shoe Zone Deck Shoes in sacred places. I wish this to be taken into consideration without prejudice.
‘noose’ ffs!
I have a pair of red trousers. I have never worn them. I now don’t know if I should or shouldn’t. I think the charity shop must be the only answer.
I have a lovely ripe strawberry brushed cotton overshirt. Mid thigh length.
Fashion them into a turban and plonk ’em on yer noggin. Get out and about and strut yer funky stuff.
Dear Mr Saucecraft
Tomorrow’s forecast in sunny ol’ Adelaide…
“Very hot and humid, hot about the coast. Partly cloudy. Winds south to southeasterly 15 to 25 km/h tending east to southeasterly 25 to 35 km/h in the morning.
Estimated maximum 39 degrees C”
As couturier to fifties Afterword gentlemen, how would you suggest I cover my legs when out in public?
Dear Sniffity
Ventilation is the keyword here. Don’t allow unsightly moisture buidup to compromise the fall of the cloth. I suggest a pair of below-the-knee football shorts, generously cut, with elasticated waistband over a pair of Damart Thermal longjohns for wicking effect. Team this with a wifebeater vest and foam antlers and you’ll be the cynosure of all eyes!
What about a wooden barrel and braces combo ?
Accessorised with a hankie knotted on the head, this can be a funky po-mo style statement for today’s man on the move! Heritage timbers add an ecological topnote. Now barrels have gone mainstream, don’t be afraid of braces in bold n’ brash colourways!
I must confess to the fact that I have leisure pants. Baggy light grey draw string jobs, and yes, I have shopped in them. I keep forgetting to wear the black pair for elegance and propriety.
Well this is a sad day. Who would have suspected that the dreaded Debaggers in Blue would make an appearance here?
Back in the dark days of the Iron Curtain, Stasi was feared. But not as feared the Trouser Police aka LederhosenSichterheit: Lesi.
End this trouser tyranny now! Let your free bags fly, BJB!
We have yet to mention the elasticated fleece lined trouserswith the cord at the front, the sort you buy from catalogues. They are probably by far the most comfortable pair I have but I would never be seen wearing them on the street.
I never wear strides when percolating from room to room in my bijou council penthouse accommodation.
One prefers the freedom of lounging kecks.
A variety of checks they are.
That’s what I wear at home if I have no plans to go out. If it’s a case of ‘once I’m in I’m staying in’ then it’s time to don those comfy cotton numbers, and come to think of it most of the plaids have a large amount of red in them.
If I’m relaxing at home, I like nothing better than to slip into a full-body corset in flesh-tone Lastene© for all-around support and that oh-so-flattering flat tummy effect! Fly-away gusset ensures no disasters at tinkle-time, and heavy-duty suspenders provide support-hose security!
Does it have a built-in washable panty-shield for those geriatric sneeze mishaps?
I think I am pretty much the only man under the age of 80 who owns and wears trousers. The rest of the time it’s like living at an Angus Young convention.
Do the Scots get as het up about their kilts?
I don’t think there’s been such a popular culture kerfuffle over a pair of strides since the halycon rock n roll days of Riff Cliché and the Rebel Trousers.
Today I am wearing orange trousers. Orange camouflage trousers to be precise. Handy if I need to blend in to one of the many lava flows in this vicinity.
Very useful on Mars, dude.
When at home relaxing of an evening or weekend in my family tartan kilt, high heels, fishnets and suspenders, scratching my rather itchy sporran, I often ponder and pitty those poor Afterworders of oversized girth poured into their pink/red/flamingo drainpipes.
What a distressing vision.
“Family tartan Kilt” It that a huge kilt that will easily accommodate all the family or do you take turns in wearing it?
I suffer from itchy sporran meself and I’m not even Scottish. It must be contagious
My God, you’re right. There’s eight bloody legs sticking oot the bottom of it. No wonder I feel so itchy.
The truly modern flaneur is never seen out of doors in anything but an oversized onesie, preferably with peek-a-boo cigarette burns.
http://lookatmyfuckingredtrousers.blogspot.ca/
Moose, Afterword Flaneur’s, what a wonderful concept and vista.
Cue bedraggled, overweight, lengthy but grey-haired tired looking lump, crazy-eyed, smiling incoherently, knowingly at much younger ‘chick’s’. Wandering the Edinburgh streets, possibly Scottish of aggressive political disposition. Wearing pink trousers.
No, I can’t think of anyone either.
And, this site’s contributors are just so not with it.
They are no longer Red Trousers.
They are just RT’s. Got it?
I’ve seen somebody in EAST HULL wearing red trousers.
I’ll repeat that – EAST HULL.
They are just so over darling.
Oops. Obviously somebody has become losted on their way to that Harrogate.
Very lost. Legwear in that part of the world is normally grubby nylon tracky bottoms, worn loose to facilitate the quick and easy transmission of chlamydia (this process vaguely resembles what the rest of the world calls sexual intercourse)
I am given to understand that Michael Portillo wears red trousers.
No further evidence, m’lud.
Not to mention eau-de-nil jackets.
Portillo dresses like he woke from sleep in a burning building.