Damn!

I was whizzing down the road at noon in the direction of a latte when I saw the back view of a slim red-headed young man gloriously dressed in pink and purple. In fact, it would have been impossible to miss him.
My first response was a grin, because the combination was so fearless and happy. And deliberate. My second response was to duck into the carpark at the bottom of the hill and fumble for my phone.
I bought said phone before going to Canada. The one I discarded was virtually antique, even though it still worked like a charm. but, so the 2Degrees website had informed me, I needed another kind to be able to call in Canada. I also wanted a camera. For just such occasions as now, when I didn't have my real camera with me.
I wish I hadn't been wearing trackpants preparatory to working in the garden, because I felt foolish explaining to the nice young man that I wrote a style blog. He was too polite to comment. The purple jeans were tight on his narrow legs, and the pink was supplied by a fully tailored, candy-striped sports jacket. He happily agreed to let me take his photo, seemed flattered, even.
So why isn't there a photo here?
Because I couldn't find how to work the damn camera on the damned new phone, that's why. Neither could the nice young man. I knew if we stood there fiddling for long enough, we'd work it out, but how long can you keep a perfect stranger hanging about on the street for your own ends? 
I thought there was a good chance he might pass the cafe in 10 minutes or so, so once installed in the window seat there, I had another fiddle with the phone. Still no go.
I asked my neighbour, a man in cycling lycra, if he could help. He'd owned a phone like this, he said, and yes, he could.
I glued my eyes to the pavement and waited. Sadly, I never saw the pink and purple young man again. Some opportunities are just plain lost.
But in spite of not having a picture, I'm grateful to have seen and spoken to him. It was exhilarating - like spotting a rare bird.

Sex and suits

Not my title but that of a book I'm reading - Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress by art historian Anne Hollander. It's no light-weight read, but the prose is lively for a quasi-academic work, and bursting with fascinating ideas.
I'm only 27 pages in, and already Hollander is well on the way to convincing me that, contrary to popular opinion, men haven't spent the last 200 years donning some version of the suit because they've opted out of fashion - far from it:

"... I have come to believe that male dress was always essentially more advanced than female throughout fashion history [which, according to Hollander began in the 1400s], and tended to lead the way, to set the standard, to make the esthetic propositions to which female fashion responded. ... The history of dress ... so far has to be perceived as a duet for men and women performing on the same stage."

She claims that the first quality of clothing is sexuality, and identifies fashion as modern, in that it's a process of constant, deliberate, self-referential change. She opposes it to non-fashion - all the other dressing and personal adornment human beings have gone in for, which traditional societies regard as time-honoured and are therefore concerned with preservation rather than change: the chador or the sari, for instance. Whereas, "In fashion, all social facts about the wearer can theoretically be masked except for personal taste ...".
She argues that to link, with the benefit of hindsight, specific modes - such as huge 80s shoulder pads - to social facts is simplistic and almost certainly misleading.
It's refreshing to see such serious attention given to a human behaviour that is so abiding and so routine it's as good as invisible to many.