Duck boots, barn coats, and turtleneck sweaters seemed deeply eccentric in the sunny, laid-back suburb of Silicon Valley where I grew up, in the eighties and nineties. These garments—among the talismanic offerings of the J. Crew catalogue that somehow appeared in the mailbox— might as well have been for wearing on Mars, and my friends and I, many of us the children of immigrants, were only dimly aware of the heritage that they were inviting us to access. (I had no idea that a person could be called a Wasp, other than the Wasp in my comic books.) But we knew that J. Crew was, enticingly, just out of our reach. And, because these clothes communicated in an insider’s code, lacking the self-identifying mark of a little swoosh or a tiny guy on a horse, they seemed mysterious, too.
I picked out the most unusual item I could find: an unlined, plaid zip-up jacket. When it arrived, it clashed with my middle-school wardrobe, a mix of basketball sneakers, my father’s old corduroys, and skate-themed T-shirts. I didn’t understand that my new jacket was something one might wear to go boating, or even that people went boating for fun. Yet I delighted in wearing it along with my normal clothes, creating a garish mishmash of stolen subcultural valor. The look was awful, and it was mine.
この記事は The New Yorker の March 27, 2023 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は The New Yorker の March 27, 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、8,500 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
TRIPLE FAULT
A meal is never just a meal in a Luca Guadagnino movie; each bite is a prelude to a kiss, every feast a form of foreplay.
NIGHT MUSIC
“Stereophonic” and Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” on Broadway.
LITTLE OLD HER
Is Taylor Swift doing too much?
BEASTLY MATTERS
Where the logic behind the concern for animal welfare begins and ends.
PULSE
He footed off his shoes, the logs balanced on an arm, and tugged the door shut.
TOWER IN FLAMES
What kind of right is academic freedom?
THE BATTLE FOR ATTENTION
How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?
ON NATIVE GROUNDS
Deb Haaland faces the cruel history of the agency she now leads.
DESIGN FOR LIVING
Can converting office towers into apartments save empty downtowns from ruin?
HOROSCOPES WRITTEN BY MY MOTHER
Your zodiac alignment this month is governed by Venus, the planet of intuition, something my daughter Bess seems to lack.