The Reason Why …

From the first chapter of Walden, where he discusses clothing. Here is the full excerpt:

"A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes…

— derek guy (@dieworkwear) March 28, 2026

From the first chapter of Walden, where he discusses clothing. Here is the full excerpt:

"A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet -- if a hero ever has a valet -- bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soires and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes -- his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind."

...I went back to wearing blue jeans (all of my youth), and have stuck with button down shirts for 45 years.

Or it’s just easier than thinking…🤔

(In my youth I admired Thoreau. Now I know he never really lived at Walden Pond, just spent days there as it suited him. As a naturalist, he’s admirable. As a thinker, now I find him little more impressive than his friend, Emerson.  And his use of metaphor is both strained, and clumsy. Especially since I’ve lived through about four enterprises that literally, and metaphorically, required new clothes.

I think that’s turned out to be a good thing. Of course, I’ve already lived a good deal longer than Thoreau. And though he lamented the sound of the train whistle at his shack on Walden Pond, I’m of the generation that, a century later, still mourns their passing. 

So it goes.