I’ll make a confession. I have a Doctor Who scarf. Actually I have two of them.
One was made by my mom, the other by my aunt. I don’t really wear them out anymore; they just sit very ornately on my coatstand, gathering yards of dust. But in high school, with a devil-may-care attitude that frankly surprises me to look back on it, I cheerfully wrapped them up and wore them around. They are very handy to have on a cold day, I will admit.
Anyway, it got me to thinking: what TV characters have inspired very particular clothing items, wardrobes, or “looks”? And which of these have you adopted yourself at one time or another? Anyone have an old pair of Mork suspenders or a white “Crockett” sport jacket in the closet?
When you say “Crocket,” I think of Davy’s coonskin cap – of which I have a replica hanging in my foyer. I’ve never actually had the nerve to wear it in public, though.
Anyone remember the “Friends” flashback with Ross and Chandler dressed a la Flock of Seagulls/“Miami Vice”?
I have a dentist who blow his nose . . . Oh, what? Never mind.
Back in the mid-80s, the folks at my ad agency decided to have a Dress Like Don Johnson Day. We all came in wearing pastel T-shirts, unstructured linen jackets with the sleeves rolled back, baggy pants, loafers with no socks, and big ol’ sunglasses.
The scary thing is, we all had the outfits at home.
Somewhere I may still have a “DaveTV” shirt, bought from MTV (with a rubber check!) tying in with David Lee Roth’s “Just a Gigolo” video.
Continuing the MTV theme I have a satin MTV/Twisted Sister jacket that I got as part of the prize package when I won MTV’s “Twisted Invasion” contest in high school.
I too had a Doctor Who scarf. I wore it all the time during college, when we were supposed to be eccentric. Right now, I’ve got a hitai-ate – a headband with a metal plate that has a leaf logo engraved on it – from the anime series Naruto. Does that count? I never wear it for anything, though…
I really wish I had the two-shades-of-maroon Doctor Who scarf from the later years of Tom Baker.
I have a couple of long, velvety shirts with interesting designs on them that my husband calls “Phoebe shirts”. (Friends)
Other than that… hmm… this might barely count, but I have a black MST3K T-Shirt with Crow T Robot on it, saying, in huge letters on the bottom: “BITE ME!”
Oh, and I like to dress like a boy sometimes, loosely inspired by Utena. I once had long, long hair that nearly reached my tailbone, I dyed it a light, frosty pink and liked to wear dark blue business pant suits, or just dress tomboyishly… (is that a word?) in baseball shirts or sports jerseys, and sometimes wear my husband’s clothes out, though they are quite obviously man’s clothes.
I wear a lot of retro-looking button-down shirts, much like Kramer wore on Seinfeld. Bowling shirts, Hawaiians, guayaberas, real vintage styles like that (plus two-tone black and white spectator shoes). I refer to this as my “hipster doofus” style, referring to when a girl called Kramer a hipster doofus.
Yet another Dr. Who Scarf. I made it myself after getting the official color pattern. But I don’t knit so crocheted, using the afghan stitch, which looks very much like knitting. Went to a convention back in the 80’s and made a few more before I went. A friend of a friend was in SCA, and they had a table in the vendor’s room. I paid them for some space on their table, and ended up making enough to pay for almost all my expenses at the con.
