Acrilan Wear-Dated Clothes- Acrilan. Wear dated clothes!

People tend to view the past with rose-colored glasses. All of us here at Phil Are GO! are as guilty as anyone. However, all was not well in 1962. Here in The Future, they've gotten much better at making synthetic fibers that don't feel like you're wearing a door mat. Lots of perfectly normal clothes have some cotton and some stretchy syntho-fiber in them, and they feel and look okay. Back in '62, it was all very different. Chemstrand, a division of Monsanto Chemical Company, was partially to blame for the avalanche of plastic clothing that did so much damage throughout the sixties and seventies. Behold... the beast.

The Beast has many names, but here it is called "Acrilan". "Buy when you see this tag. Trust the big red 'A.'" They make a big deal about being rated for a year's wear. Does that sound so great? I mean, apart from the general awfulness of polyester clothes (Call it what you want, Chemstrand. It's polyester), is a year's use such a great achievement? I have clothes that have lasted several years. Hell, there are plenty of clothes that become dated and fall out of use before they wear out. Maybe Chemstrand means that their clothes can be work for a continuous year without structural failure? I'll ask the obvious question. Does anybody want that?

The man in the photo is draped provocatively over a school desk in front of a cyc wall (concave wall with no visible seams or corners). Obviously, he's someone's teacher. Bleah. Ladies, imagine you're back in school. If you walked into a classroom and you were greeted with this, how would you feel?

"Hi, Monica. You're early for class. No no no, that's just fine... great, in fact. I was... hoping to see you. Did I notice you noticing the great fit of my Charles Meyers slacks, by Chemstrand? I know. They're wear-dated. Are you? Hey! Where are you go- ???"

Did you have one of those teachers in high school who wore the exact same clothes every day, like a cartoon character? Except for special occasions, cartoon characters always wear the same clothes. Homer's white shirt and blue pants. Mickey's bizarre red shorts with the two yellow buttons. These clothes are part of the character design, which basically IS the character.

Your creeepy high school geometry teacher's Acrilan shirt and pants were part of his character design. He was divorced smelled kind of like Fritos, which basically smell like feet. ("Feetos"? Hm.). We have Chemstrand to thank for this guy. They put the idea into his head that it was okay to own one shirt and one pair of pants. Why not? It says right on the package that it was okay to wear for a year. Pity that it was someone's sophomore year.

Click for a big version, if that's what you're into.