The Sartorialist Speaks

Young girls typically (or stereotypically) grow up thinking that if and when they marry, their husbands will 1) weigh more than they do and 2) be less fashionable than they are.

I had to give up those preconceptions when I married Carlo. He's skinny and he's way more into clothes than I am. Or maybe I mean he's way more into fashion than I am.
In any case, he definitely wears clothes better than I do.
However.
He came home a few months ago all excited about the great deal he found on these, um ... well, we'll call them shorts.
He tried them on.
"Do you like them?" he asked. (Carlo is always eager for his family and friends to like what he likes, so this is no idle question for him.)
"Ummm ... no," I said.
I thought I might as well be honest, since he only paid ten bucks for the shorts.
To my eye, they were ridiculously cut, and I wasn't a big fan of the strange, rust-colored wash that I was betting accounted for their place on the deep-deep-discount rack.

He queried the kids, who pretty much laughed.
Undaunted by our prosaic sensibilities, he wore them anyway. One day. Two days. A week.

If we were pro-rating the cost of the shorts based on number of wearings, we're quickly arriving at the point where the shorts will actually owe Carlo money for being worn. And, oddly enough, I am beginning to like them. Or to appreciate something about how dedicated he has been to the wearing of them, anyway.

My enjoyment of them reached a pinnacle recently when one of our kids referred to them as his "ghetto jorts." Which cracked me up to no end, and made me think of this website I'd seen a couple years ago.

So there you are. I threatened Carlo that I would draw him in his ghetto jorts, and I have. And for the sketchnerds among you, I will also boast that it took me a mere 4 minutes to do the gesture drawing that became the pen-and-ink and watercolor image before you. I was relaxed. I'd had two and a half glasses of wine. It's possible that I draw better when I'm a little lubricated, though this isn't a well-tested theory.

Oh, postscript: I have been informed by Carlo that I misspelled culottes on my sketchbook page. He is correct, but not correct enough for me to go to the trouble of Photoshopping a correction onto the page.