Bad Fashion Knows No Color

April 17, 2008 — -- It's one of the greatest things about America: you can go to work in jeans, hit the club in a ballgown, visit a tractor pull in a tux. While some may bat an eye, no one's gonna stop you.

Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses in their burkahs, cheongsams, dashikis, and saris. It's a "Come As You Are" party, so dress to impress. Our ethnically diverse melting pot has gained so much of its strength by letting people settle here with their individuality and eccentricities intact. There is no fashion police at the border stopping fashion disasters from coming in.

However, in the mix of this "Koom-baya" vibe there are several fashion statements, that come with particular ethnic and cultural groups, that I personally think are grounds for deportation. My judgment has nothing to do with anyone's ethnicity or religion or sexual preference — it's simply based on taste. These people just need to stop dressing so bad.

Why must the gay kids with clearly flamboyant personalities dress in the loudest, most attention-grabbing fabrics and design elements? Why scream when you can whisper? If you whisper, people come closer. But if your personality and your outfit are competing in a screaming queen match, I'm stepping back.

Why must some of the biggest, finest brothas insist on disrespecting any form of respectful dressing with this millennium's adaptation of the Zoot Suit? We had come so far from Jheri curls and M.C. Hammer's parachute pants! But when I recently passed a poster of the sexy Dion Sanders and his picante wife Pilar, I saw his suit and lost track while trying to count the number of buttons on his jacket (at least five).

And then there are those who take this look farther — among them, comedians Steve Harvey, Bernie Mac, and Sinbad. Think matching gator shoes and belts with faux gold trimmings. What are they thinking? And all you athletically/genetically blessed brothas — how many pleats do you really need in your pants? Once you pass the three-pleat mark, when the wind blows, you begin to look like a sail!