I have never been a big clothes horse.  At least, compared to what you see in the rarified air of Manhattan, where even straight men do things like get bespoke suits (a term I only even learned a few years ago), and read GQ, and actually, you know, have a sense of fashion.  I don’t keep track of whether my lapels are supposed to be wide or narrow, or what kind of vents I’m supposed to have in my suits, or, frankly, what vents actually are.

Essentially, the extent of my fashion knowledge boils down to some basic points that I’ve gathered over the years:

• Three button suits, which were really in a few years ago, are not so in.
• Double-breasted suits, which haven’t been in for a while, are still not in.
• Pleats go with cuffed pants, flat fronts with no cuffs (I think).
• In casual wear, don’t tuck your shirt on (it took me a long time to grasp this).

My only real fashion principle is that I throw out my ties every few years, sometimes if only because of the tomato sauce stains that end up on the ones I have.  But I also know that the fashion police have realized that ties are the one relatively affordable item that even fashionphobics like me will bother to replace periodically, and so they reinforce that impulse by making ties the one “fashion statement” that even schlubs like me can grasp and follow.  So ties get fat, then they get skinny, then paisley is in, then paisley is out, etc.  That’s why when you watch a late-90s sitcom like Frasier, where all the characters were ostensibly fashion plates, you see Frasier and Niles wearing dark shirts or those goofy ties, and realize just how old the show is.  Essentially, replacing your ties is a lot cheaper than replacing your suits, so the fashionistas change tie styles often enough to at least force the schlubby to go shopping every few years.

So the general point?  I’m not a big fashion guy.  That said, I’ve always had at least some degree of “Manhattan fashion sense,” which basically boils down to having a lot of black clothes.  Now that I’m in the suburbs, though, I’ve started to notice a change.  Less black, more jeans, more super-casual wear.

It’s a slow change, but it’s starting to happen. I can feel my impulse to put on dressy clothes when we go out ebbing, as I realize that I’m very overdressed for the crowd at the local restaurant or even at a bar or something.  What passes for normal on the upper west side, or even the lower east side, seems like pretension in the local Nyack eateries.

Thus, it was with some degree of fascination mixed with revulsion mixed with anticipation that I stepped into Marshalls for the first time.  Marshalls, the epitome of the suburban “place to buy clothes where you don’t really care what you look like anymore” mall store.  Or, as we call it in the suburbs, “Marchalles,” with a frenchified accent.

And, you know what?  Not so bad!  Lots of ridiculously cheap stuff that is clearly not “trendy,” but reasonable looking and ridiculously cheap and, have mentioned, ridiculously cheap.  I’m not going to buy a suit there, I haven’t fallen over that cliff (at least not yet), but got a couple of pairs of jeans (one fashion principle I refuse to accept is the idea that, one pair of jeans is different from another pair of jeans), a bunch of very discounted “Life is Good” t-shirts that I wear around the house or theoretically if I ever go to the gym, and some socks. Socks are socks.  These ones were socks like other socks, but cheaper.

From a SUMA perspective, here’s the way to think about Marshalls. If someone opened a “remaindered” shop somewhere in Dumbo, or in some burned out storefront on the lower east side, and didn’t put a sign out, and spread the word through Twitter or whatever about the amazing deals you could get on cheap jeans and tshirts and stuff like that, all the trendies would flock to it in that “semi-ironic so we don’t admit that we’re doing something uncool but really in our hearts we know that we’re being ridiculous” way.  They’d all be telling their friends about this super-great discount store that popped up, and they’d be staggering out laden with all sorts of cheap booty that they’d wear ironically.  Take out the burnt-out storefront, and the underground viral whispering campaign, and replace it with a big airconditioned supermarket clothing store filled with suburban housewives, and that’s Marshalls.  Same stuff, just a different attitude.

So Marshalls is okay in my book.  I just have to squint a little to blur out what it is I am actually doing, and keep repeating a mantra to myself that an $8 tshirt that I’ll wear about 100 times in the next few years is a great buy.  Fingers crossed, though, that I never get to the point that I’m buying my suits there……