Forward planning with big clothes and tight haircuts

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Few things – apart obviously from the mere presence of their parents in the same room – can annoy kids as much as buying clothes that are too big for them.

“Sure, you’ll grow into it” must be the recurring nightmare of adolescent dreams (well, one of them anyway) as they are forced to exit the front door with trousers pulled up higher than their waist like Simon Cowell and jumpers hanging off them like a bag lady’s.

“You won’t get the wear out of them if they just fit you now – we’d better get them a size bigger” might smack of adult logic, but you don’t have to traipse around town while constantly rearranging your clothes so it doesn’t look like you robbed them off some bigger lad.

It might explain why so many teenagers now wear jeans that expose more than they cover; they’ve just taken the notion of loose fit to new heights – or lows – because that’s what they’re used to from birth.

The difference now of course is that they could never grow into these jeans because they’d have to double their midriff to hold them up and shorten their legs to get them to cover their calves.

But we have to accept some of the blame for the fact that they simply refuse to tuck anything into anything else – shirts will be worn outside at all time, even with a suit, and loose and free beats the tailored look every day of the week.

It’s understandable that parents of new-born babies would buy clothes than are too big because otherwise, during those first few months, they’d have to do a weekly shop for clothes.

You don’t bat an eyelid at the sight of a tiny tot in a baby grow that’s designed to fit them in six months time. And they’re not traumatised either because clothes at this stage in their lives are really just an extension of the blanket.

Given that they do shoot up in spurts during those first twelve or fourteen years, you do have to make some provision for expansion, so a little wiggle room is no bad thing – just not so much bug and baggy that they look like a very unhappy rapper.

Worse still is the second child syndrome who not alone has to wear clothes that are too big for them, but they’ve also been worn by their older sibling. So any sense of shape or structure has long gone in the wash.

School uniforms are always a size too big in September and at least a size too small in June, but there’s some justification here because students see uniforms in the way that prisoners see handcuffs – and they wouldn’t love them one bit more if they fitted them like a glove.

The uniforms – even the best of them – lose their shape over the course of the school year anyway, so that even when they do fit properly, they probably have a hole or two on the elbows or knees and an unravelling along the waistband.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.