THE NEHRU JACKET
Fashion. You know how that works. It changes constantly. As Oscar Wilde said, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” Sometimes fashion brings lovely things like, oh, miniskirts. Sometimes it brings sack dresses. It’s fashion. Whattya gonna do?
In my late teens, back before the Flood, one trend which did appeal to me was the
Nehru jacket, sometimes called the Mao jacket. It was intended for casual dress wear, tended
to fit snugly, and buttoned all the way up to the chin, to a little notch, much like a priest’s
collar.
Everybody seemed to be wearing them. Why, there was Sammy Davis Jr. in a Nehru
jacket! Even the Beatles, fer cryin’ out loud! And I wanted one. Oh, how I wanted one.
But…money, you know. That which acquiring the jacket required and that which
I had not. For a long while, I had not. Then, I got a bit ahead in the dollar department (I
assume theft was involved) and decided to fulfill this wish. So I made my way to
Louisville’s Fourth Street where the treasures of fashion were caged and nurtured.
The store I chose had some Nehru jackets on the rack and I found one which fit
beautifully. It was black and had a raised pattern, a 3D feel to it. To me, it was gorgeous. “Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh.” My memory, that lying biyatch,
thinks it cost $30, a fortune for me at the time, but I did have the money, just, and I did want
the jacket so the transaction was made. By the way, $30 in 1967 equals a little over $250 in
2023. In other words, it was a fortune.
I took my purchase home, tried it on, showed my mom who thought it looked
‘nice’. And I figured I’d soon find an occasion for actually wearing it.
Here comes the punchline, the gods getting their big laugh.
That night, that very night as I recall-- I was watching Johnny Carson on
The Tonight Show. One of his guests was Tony Randall, who always had interesting and
funny things to say. That night they started talking about fads and trends, and Tony
Randall said, “Take the Nehru jacket for instance. Last month everybody was wearing
them. Now nobody would be caught dead in one.”
Okay…so…picture a teenager who’d just spent way too much for something,
being almost instantly informed that he was a fool who had just thrown his money
away. I remember sitting there, thinking, over and over…”what?…what?…what?…”
Once recovered from the shock, I decided that, fashionable or not, I would get at
least one good wearing out of my millionaire’s wardrobe. And I did.
A bunch of us in Student Theater were going to see a show at some other high
school in the area. In those days, even kids got dressed up to go to the theater. Even
high school theater. All the girls were in nice dresses, nearly all the boys in suit and tie.
And one large, nervous nerd showed up in a Nehru jacket.
Not just a Nehru jacket, but a Nehru jacket over a bright white turtleneck, with a
huge golden medallion on a chain around his neck. If I’d had matching bellbottoms,
they would have been there too. Oh, I was quite the sight, I’m sure, quite the ‘60s
stereotype. Still didn’t have a date, but I can’t blame the jacket, that was pretty much
the casewhatever I was wearing.
I got some compliments and also some mild ribbing. Truth be told, I genuinely
liked the look, but whatever my feelings on ‘fashion’, I felt too embarrassed to ever
wear it again. It hung in the closet for a while then it … didn’t.
I can honestly say that, as far as I can remember, I never again bowed to the
pressure of ‘fashion’.
That was, at least in part, because I so rarely had $30. In any year’s money.
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