For many, our fashion choices have been one tool to express our outrage and frustration through the Trump Era. While some of these will have fruitful lives even with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, many items should head to other uses hopefully never to be relevant again.
Here are two of my favorite shirts that, I deeply pray, will not be worn after President Biden is sworn in.
Desole pour notre president
Remember when it wasn’t a problem to travel … where one could go board a plane and the biggest issues were annoying security line waits and questionable food service? Seems like a different age. Way back in those days, that is mid-2019, my (like rest of family) activist sister sent me a shirt just prior to traveling to Europe (combined business and vacation).
Not only an incredibly comfortable shirt, “Sorry about our president” truly reflected my feelings thinking about how to deal with U.S. politics while overseas. This shirt ended up being the most worn item — four countries and on planes, trains, buses, and walking streets.
This was (sadly) the best door opener I have had in my life: got me a free drink on a flight as a “thank you” from a flight crew; given a seat on a train crowded with US women’s soccer supporters who cheered on seeing the shirt; and, well, easily 25 people (of perhaps 10 nationalities) asking if they could take a photo with me.
That ‘photo with me’ extended back to the U.S. This was my go to shirt, most of the time, for rallies and easily 10 photo requests during one BLM rally in DC.
Wearing it right now … and plan to take it off at 11:59 with no intent of it seeing the light of day (hopefully) ever again.
Considering this shirt’s message, perhaps the concluding tag-line:
President Biden
means never having to say sorry again.
The White House Effect
Regrettably, not all Trump relevant sartorial splendor choices dated just his occupation of the Oval Office.
Famously, candidate George H.W. Bush — in claiming that he would be a real environmentalist President” — said that he would deploy “The White House Effect” against “the Greenhouse Effect”. Thus, the two-sided Union of Concerned Scientists’ shirt to the right from (sigh) Earth Day thirty years ago.
As a (sort of) good environmentalists, things don’t get easily thrown out and (very sadly for us all) this shirt was all too relevant for three Republican presidencies and was (sadly) appropriate for reuse time and time again. Of my protest t-shirts from the Reagan and HW Bush eras, this was the only one not archived in photos and recycled long ago.
President-Elect Biden has named a dream team of climate advisors in the White House and many climate hawks to positions across the government. Truly, it looks like there will (three decades later) a quite serious White House Effect dedicated to leveraging all tools of government to act on climate.
With that in mind, this UCS tshirt will go the bottom of the drawer to, hopefully, just be an item of (painful) nostalgia in the years and decades to come.
How will a Biden Presidency impact your wardrobe?
Are there (well worn) items that, as of noon today, no longer will be relevant and which you won’t wear out into public any longer?