Travel in clothes
All travel clothes are fake. They are just clothes. That’s it, that’s the whole text. I lied, here is more text.
I recently saw a blazer that was billed as a carry-on blazer. This automatically conjures images of a jet age: you sauntering onto business class in a suit, using the coat hangers they provide you, and coming off looking like you’re ready for your meeting in Tokyo. It’s a romantic idea, one that few people actually practice. You are not Tyler Brûlé. You don’t know who Tyler Brûlé is. You roll onto the plane in athleisure, regardless of your cabin, and you travel like a regular person, which is to say you dial in a nice fit and rock that as a uniform.
We’re in a moment when more people than ever can actually do what they’re thinking when they see the travel blazer. Long-haul travel is reasonably affordable if you have amassed a squillion points though your credit card. Entire industries have sprouted up to support all of this.
Hence the blazer, which is a blazer and an idea surrounding the blazer. Nothing about the blazer makes it better at traveling or being a blazer. Maybe it doesn’t wrinkle as much. Maybe it’s thinner. It is still a blazer. The ontology gets bogged down by its marketing, which also creates the biggest risk: you buy the blazer, and you use it for traveling and at no other time.
This particular blazer is so named on a store’s website, but in person it’s just on the rack. It’s not a travel store. It’s a store that contains real clothing for real people, and nothing else has the word “travel” or “carry-on” anywhere near it. You can fly there, see this blazer on the rack, and there would be no name to it. Garments lose their names once you buy & start wearing them. They then become yours.
The main travel clothing brand pivoted away from “all clothing” and towards “underwear” recently, for people who hike for days in the middle of nowhere, I guess, which fine. Who knows, performance underwear could be a thing in those situations. But I view that as a sign that the company is doing what everybody else has realized: clothes are just clothes, and if you want, you can travel in some of them.