This is my response to the dreadful Fashion Focus column by the Home and Style Editor, Susan Martin, of the The Buffalo News.  If you read it, you would think that the only “fashions”  worth reporting are those worn by mostly white, middle-class, shop or gallery owning, suburban-looking types. Most, who I assume, are her friends.

https://buffalonews.com/topic/fashion-friday/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fashion Focus brought to you by me…

Meet the professor who according to

Rate My Professor 

“Is cooler than the flip-side of a pillow”.

 

Name:  Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., Ageless

Who He Is:  A Black-Marxist Intellectual, Scholar, Full-Professor, Writer, Activist

     Soldier, Warrior, and probably someone’s lover.  Or depending on your perspective, a really scary, and angry Black guy.  A Tennessee native with a penchant for raining on people’s parades, who came to Buffalo because the struggle is really happening here. He’s won multiple awards and is affiliated with numerous professional organizations.  You will not find him at The Buffalo Club.  Nor is he an “Uncrowned King”. 

     He can’t sing and he can’t dance.  But, he can act. He knows all the lines to The King and I.  He can whoop your ass ‘cause he knows karate.  He exercises regularly to maintain a level of fitness that keeps him ready to work at all hours of the night, and morning, and day, and evening.  Oh, and he drives a little sports car that he named, “El Diablo”.

He is a black cat: smooth, singular, and indifferent. 

What He’s Wears:

     Whatever the fuck he wants! The important question is what he won’t wear: a Polo golf-shirt, a suit with a tie, Sperry boat-shoes, socks with sandals (unless it’s really cold in the office because the air-conditioning is on and no one else is around), a leather logo jacket, a sweater vest, or anything that is defined as being “professional” or that screams “white-guy”.   

Signature Pieces:

1) Sunglasses:  A Black-Marxist Liberation Movement soldier has no problem looking white people in the eye.  But, sometimes, that soldier cannot afford to be identified.  

2) Wrist Cuff: In direct opposition to the cuff-link, Taylor can always be seen with an Afro-centric leather cuff, a Native-American silver cuff, or a beaded bracelet made by one of his beloved students from Future’s Academy. 

3) Necklace: An Inuit face-mask scrimshaw carving on a leather cord.

Fashion Statement: 

     Cool by all standard definitions. The fashion intellectual center of the left in Buffalo; and uncompromising in his resistance to the oppression of the established  fashion order. Upscale (i.e. expensive) athletic sports clothing: Black Hugo Boss sweat-pants coupled with a black Calvin-Klein (super soft t-shirt) and a black or brown military-style sneaker.

Last Purchase:  He won’t say.

In The Market For: 

     A pair of Fort Belvedere Napa-leather, hand-woven, driving gloves, with an adjustable snap-button and woven knuckle pattern, in British Racing Green and Off-White.