Many,
many years ago, when I was a teenager; I
bought a jacket. It was a dark yellow corduroy jacket and I was about
seventeen years
old. One day I saw a picture of the Rolling Stones on a magazin in which
Brian Jones wore
a dark yellow corduroy jacket. "That is a jacket I like", I thought.
After that I always wanted to wear a jacket
like that. And one day my father saw beautiful corduroy jackets on
display and on sale at a downtown
clothing store in our provincial town. The owner of the store was a
friend of his and he thought it
would be a good idea to buy one of those jackets as corduroy was
becoming the
fashion in those days. He asked my older brother and I if we would want
to buy a jacket
too. “Well,” I said, “Let me see those jackets first. I'll walk by that
clothing store and check what they have on the shop
window." So, next day I was walking by the street where the clothing
store
was and lo and behold, the corduroy jackets were there in full display
on the shop window, but
what really got me thrilled was a dark yellow corduroy jacket that
looked almost
exactly like the one Brian Jones wore in that Rolling Stone’s picture.
“Yeah! I
like that jacket; I’ll tell my father to buy it for me." So my father
and I went to the store on Saturday afternoon and after trying on
several Brian Jones’s style, I ended up finding the
one that fitted me perfectly. I couldn’t even wait to arrive home to put
it on. I
left the store wearing my good-looking jacket, and I felt my fantasy was
coming
true.
I wore that
dark yellow corduroy jacket everywhere. I wore it in church; at the youth club, in
the dancing halls. I felt very proud with my Brian Jones’ jacket everywhere I
went. And the thing is I wore that jacket three winters on a raw. It was a time—they
were the sixties—
when apparently young people began to feel free about dressing
the way they like it, which was just a mirage: young people have never
escaped from the tyranny of fashion. I knew it wasn’t the normal jacket I
was supposed to wear in a provincial town, but I made myself the
commitment of
wearing those clothes I felt happy with regardless what other people
thought about my jacket. My sense of personal integrity was very strong,
even knowing that it was always a risk in a provincial town to show
such disregard for conventionalism. I
enjoyed my Brian Jones’ corduroy jacket until I felt tired of it. It was
many
years later, perhaps thirty years later when I realized what other
people
thought about my jacket.
Coming
back
from the United States after fourteen years living there, I started
meeting old friends or acquaintances in town. And, oh surprise! I
realized my elegant Brian Jones's dark yellow corduroy jacket was one of
the few things some of these people could recall as an identity sign of
my past as a teenager, even the ones I thought they were
quite liberal and open minded at that time. Thirty years later some
of them dared to confide me,—thinking that I was already mature enough to look back on
time—and
recall what a funny and silly jacket I wore. At a get together party
some of those “good old friends” spent time recalling my yellow corduroy
jacket as
a weird eccentric taste; kind of ridiculous piece of clothe I wore which
made
them something to laugh at. All those supposed friends of mine were at
that
time struggling to stick to the normative fashion of the time as they
were still doing. Being
really free to dress as you liked took too much psychological pressure
for young
people in that provincial town in the past as well as in the present.
Regardless how unusual or outrageous is the fashion of the moment, they must remind you this world is a world of
enforced uniformity.
Looking
back at those times I felt proud of myself for being able
to wear my Brian Jones’ yellow corduroy jacket as long as I damn well
like it. But thinking things over I also realized how easy is to become
the target of prejudice, or if somehow it wasn't a stupidity by my part
not being aware that my good-looking jacket served as a pretext for
provincial jerks to laugh at my back. I guess we all shared our part of
the prevalent stupidity.
