Santa Fe has made GQ magazine’s list of “worst dressed” American cities. That’s really no surprise — nearly any midsize city west of the Mississippi would probably make that list. (Salt Lake City is on there; so are Boulder, Colo., and Portland, Ore.) East Coast fashion directives like lapel widths, tie patterns and cuff depths just aren’t that much of a priority out here in North Face-and-Teva land.
But GQ’s main complaint about Santa Fe’s dress code seems to be that it’s kitschy — “leather cowboy hats and designer buckskin jackets,” sniffed the magazine.
Makes you wonder what Santa Fe venue GQ chose for its “deeply scientific, irrefutable” fashion research — we can’t recall seeing fringed buckskin anywhere hereabouts since approximately 1974.
GQ also claims the Southwest’s trademark turquoise-and-silver American Indian accessories “clank like cheap radiators.” The magazine’s writers must have made that up, too. Otherwise the Santa Fe Indian Market — a scant month ahead, by the way — would have to be shut down for violating the city’s noise ordinance.
A closer look at the entire 40-city GQ list reveals that some of the hippest towns are on the “worst dressed” list — Santa Fe and Boulder, for example, were both top-listed as the nation’s “coolest” vacation spots by the same magazine barely a year ago. Boulder and Portland make just about every media outlet’s list of “best places to live” on a routine basis.
But GQ’s worst-dressed list includes some of the nation’s most sophisticated places. Boston? San Francisco? Newport Beach, Calif.? Even Manhattan — arguably the country’s couture capital — can be badly dressed, according to this month’s GQ. “Yes, on any given day, the people walking Madison Ave. or Soho or Harlem can appear as if they’ve leapt off the pages of GQ,” it says. “But for every strike of greatness, there is an equal force of evil at work.”
Evil?
Okay, we get the idea that GQ’s worst-dressed list was pretty much an excuse to have some tongue-in-cheek fun with just about every cool American city’s self-image. And the magazine seemed most upset about how it says New Yorkers like to gussy up when they visit us, not the much more dull reality of locals in REI fleece or Dallas Cowboys sweatshirts.
In any case, we say long live the bolo tie and Chimayó vests. And we’re not throwing out our turquoise stuff.
