How to Dress for a Basement Rave
I’m sitting in a basement rave on a leather ottoman. I got my ticket last minute because I can’t plan anything, and because the friend who bought the ticket got COVID. The air is hot. The fog machine makes the hot air sticky. Everybody in the room is dressed according to their own needs and desires. Some more so in the direction of desire, and less in the direction of being dressed at all.
Anybody who thinks about the clothes they wear is going to try things. I can tell you I have looked like an asshole sometimes. Like a peacock. Maybe even like a clown. Most often I probably look like someone trying to figure out how to buy their first shitty boat.
In this little window between taking acid dropped on an Altoid and when my phone screen starts wobbling around, I’m going to try and describe a rubric for figuring out what to wear. For a basement rave. For whatever. Having sat sweating at the party in the piece I wanted everyone to see, and rain soaked at the train station when I bypassed my beloved Pertex jacket for a more “classic” style, I can say I’ve finally come to a focused process for getting dressed that almost never fucks me over.
The trouble here is that it can’t come from Trunk Club or from a “hottest short sleeve button downs of SS22” list. It comes from knowing your body, and the things you like to do with it. My friend Forest Eckley of Glasswing knows this process well, and due credit to him for elucidating it for me too. Glasswing is the best store on Earth for people who care where their clothes and ceramics come from who also like to go to basement raves. Tonight Forest is wearing a black linen short sleeve shirt from Jan Jan Van Essche, and wide legged, high rise pants, probably also from Jan Jan. He chose these things because they move well and won’t make him too hot if he dances all night, which he will.
There are some things that don’t make sense, right? That big cowboy hat in this basement nine hours from another northwest sunrise for example. The sun doesn’t even rise here anymore anyway. I wanted to wear a lovingly repaired wool pullover from Arpenteur to this party, because I feel most like myself in that sweater. It would have been way too hot and besides I haven’t lovingly repaired it yet.
Before acid and molly and pulsing house music wrestle the idea from my brain, I’ll tell you what I put on tonight and why. Feet up in menswear tradition.
I’m wearing Merrell Jungle Mocs that I bought from Cabela’s in 2020. I was camping with my girlfriend and when I realized I’d only brought Crocs for riding my dirtbike I stopped on the way and bought these shoes after trying to shop for a sold out AR7 next to rows of empty shelves that were stocked with ammunition a month previous, before the pandemic. I have worn them walking ten miles a day in Tokyo, on the dirtbike, and on photo sets - but never in Mexico City because although I have been there twice, both were second dates. The only thing Jungle Mocs can’t do is impress a woman (or can they?).
Inside of these perfect shoes are Rototo’s Hiker Trash socks, because I love their simple color blocking and because I have bikepacked and partied and seen a dozen airports in them and never once noticed how my feet felt. They’re a merino blend which is the appropriate material for socks regardless of season or application.
The 1” hem of my tapered, single pleat, high waisted pant is sitting exactly at the ankle opening of my sock as I sit legs outstretched smoking on an electrical box outside. The pants are from Goldwin in a Cordura stretch denim with big swooping pockets that carry my phone and wallet somehow without showing their shape against my goddamn leg. They have a built in webbing belt and an easy snap at the closure as insurance against the confusion in my near future. There’s a hidden zipper pocket inside the right hand pocket and there’s nothing in there thanks for asking. Most importantly, these look like regular jeans to most people.
I bought Lady White’s pocket t one size too large. I just took five minutes off from writing to smoke a cigarette with a woman named Zoe who sat down next to me in a blue wig and lilac trench and little else, apart from six inch platform boots. To my absolute shock, she said she liked my Jungle Mocs and told me she has some in pink. I didn’t tell her about my friend Paul Ruffles who’s revitalizing the Merrell brand, but she didn’t stay long anyway. My t shirt is in Lady White’s own medium weight jersey, which has drape and structure while I also completely forget I’m wearing it. I chose the pocket t because if there’s one with a pocket and one without it would be insane to go without. It’s white because I only wear white t shirts. It’s tucked evenly into my waistband, where the extra size allows it to raise and move if I were to try dancing, which I won’t.
All apologies to my mother if she finds this but I chose my final layer because it has two chest pockets that are each exactly perfect for a half empty orange pack of American Spirits with a brown Bic lighter tucked inside. Either pocket would do, but the left pocket as far as I know has never been opened. The right pocket with the cigarettes is engineered somehow that it doesn’t bulge and so the flap closure drapes over the top of the pocket without sticking up awkwardly as it would on a lesser shirt. I could use the concealed button to fasten it if I wasn’t reaching inside, which I am.
Someone just congratulated Zoe on her white eyeliner debut. I bought this cotton herringbone field shirt from Evan Kinori’s online store without trying it on in 2016 and it was the most expensive garment I had ever bought at the time. I didn’t need to try it on because I’m a size large and Evan Kinori makes clothes correctly. I wore this shirt on both second dates in Mexico City and walking in Tokyo and on day hikes and I’d wear it anywhere a man would need to wear a shirt. It’s almost brown now, sun faded from its original charcoal, which is great because I don’t wear grey anymore. If I have ever sweat in this shirt it doesn’t seem to notice, and most importantly nobody else does either. I have never washed it and never will.
In the basement somewhere near the leather ottoman is my navy tote bag from Tanner Goods in a fabric called Konbu that lasts like Kevlar and wears like cotton canvas. Inside is a travel tumblr still unblessed with strangers’ wine, a bunch of rainbow carrots rubber banded together next to another bunch of bananas with my beloved pertex jacket stuffed around all of it because in Seattle in June 2022 it is still January. The tote, while beautiful, has been unnoticed or uncared for all night by anyone but me, which is why I use it.
There’s a hiking cap from Cayl jammed somewhere near the carrots. A gift from my friend Sam at Meridian in Hudson, which is the best store on Earth for Anarchists who work in fashion and who also go to basement raves. It’s a lightweight beige nylon twill, with no structure apart from a shock cord fitment at the back and subtle wire for reshaping the bill if it were to be wrested from aside the bananas. I’m not wearing the hat because it took me thirty five years to figure out how to take care of my curly hair and I’m enjoying it. The hat doesn’t exist until I need it, which is all I need from it tonight.
Right now I Iook like I might work in a shipyard, which I have done. I am communicating with what I’m wearing in a way that is accurate to who I am. Zoe in the lilac trench was doing the same. I have to believe that’s true for the cowboy hat person too. These clothes will not stick to me no matter what the fog machine says. I hope that when people look at me, they know what kind of person they’re dealing with. I think it’s working because Zoe walked off five minutes into an orange American Spirit which is a ten minute cigarette at an enthusiastic pace, which is my pace now that I have sat on this electrical box outside the rave in front of my friend Peter’s bookstore for a half hour.
The only acceptable way I have found for getting dressed is with things that I am in love with. Not with things that withstand how I live but with things that respond to it. This is true if I’m spending a whole tenth of this month’s income for a third date to the ballet in a suit (18east)((worth it ten times over)), or if I’m at home looking at shitty boats on Craigslist in a fleece and sweat shorts (both also 18east). Since I can’t plan anything, everything I own has to work for anything I might end up doing. All my decisions about what to wear are made by deciding what to buy. By knowing myself and knowing my clothes just as well.
I know I would wear and carry all of these things through the apocalypse because that’s what I’m doing. I don’t care at all how I look because these things that I adore save me from having to think about it. My two friends are on the sofa now at home. I’m sitting, legs outstretched on the floor. The Kinori shirt looks better draped on our bench than it does on me. My t shirt is still tucked in. My pants hems graze my socks. The Jungle Mocs will be fine wherever they are.
