Mrs. Franzos: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Start Loving Elastic Waistband Pants, Which Are The Bomb

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

I've lived in Pittsburgh for eleven years now. Although I've developed an acute case of civic pride, I can never be a real Pittsburgher, as I'm indifferent to televised sports. Good for the Steelers, the Pirates and the Penguins, but my blood runs red, not black and gold. As a child, I hated airplanes and flying, but I loved airports and watching the people in them. My brain worked over time as I tried to make out a person's character based on how they dressed and presented themselves to the world. Short stories cropped up in my mind and entertained me through many a flight delay. With my little face perched on my hands and my legs swinging from my gate side seat, I observed the hustle and bustle of airport terminals like a tennis match. Business men and women dressed in suits. Europeans wore black leather jackets and fancy sunglasses. Flight attendants were called stewardesses back then; they wore lots of make-up and fussy silk scarves. I miss the days when people dressed up for travel, but I understand. Air travel is a sordid business now. My stomach lurches every time I forget socks and have to shuffle through the security line barefoot, positive I'll contract plantar warts, or worse.

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

Traveling in the 21st century has neutered our sense of style in favor of comfort (on the plane) and function (of getting through security lines). What is the point of dressing up to travel? We have to take our shoes, belts, jackets, watches and jewelry off. We worry about leaving something behind. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we have to assist the other younger, older, sicker people we are traveling with. It's just easier to wear less and forgo belts and extraneous accessories. Yes, we understand these precautionary measures are in place to secure our safety, but it's still stressful. There is an internal countdown for when the plane leaves. The seats on the plane are narrower, the rows are cramped, closer together than ever before. It is uncomfortable. Babies just do what we all wish we could do, scream at the top of our lungs for being massively inconvenienced. Though I long for the romantic Humphrey Bogart steamer-trunk era of travel, when men and women wore suits and chapeaus, I understand the threats of terrorism and the airline's struggle for viability. Here in lies the reason why elastic waist band pants and socks with sandals have become de rigueur. There's a saying while traveling, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." I'd like to amend that with, When in an airport, wear stretch pants. Fashion blogger. Stretch pants. Fatal system error, right? No, seriously, I'm not talking about your Grandma's stretch pants. I've developed my own version of an air travel uniform that includes elastic waistband pants and I think it looks so cool, I want to wear it all the time. I want to be this cool, world-wise traveler all the time!

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

In his essay, The Philosophy of Travel, George Santayana wrote, "We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what." Perhaps we travel to experience new and interesting things or to revisit something we once knew. We might travel to feel a sense of wonder and bigness of the world but are often reminded just how small it really is. We travel for that personally significant moment and we will accept the massive inconvenience and discomforts of air travel as a matter of course. The important thing is we are moving and as an object in motion, we will gather no moss.


photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

Mr. Franzos and I got off the plane and checked in to the Sully Mansion Bed and Breakfast, in the gorgeous garden district of New Orleans. Instead of taking off our shoes and socks, walking barefoot on the carpet of our room and making fists with our toes (I hear it's better than a shower and cup of coffee after a flight. Thanks Die Hard!), we immediately headed to the New Orleans Botanical Gardens. We checked our mental baggage at the Japanese garden and got into the vacation mindset for a long, oyster-y, bourbon-y weekend in the Big Easy. There is an uncanny duality between the idealized, natural space of a garden and the act of travel. When we travel, we long for the comforts of home, but also want for things that are not home at all. Serenella Iovino writes, "the garden most of all represents the human aspiration to harmoniously live inside nature and, at the same time, to morally and culturally step outside her."* We are humans, we want it all and yet we don't. So in the tradition of the never-ending human dichotomy, we morally and culturally, stepped out of the zen garden to see what debauchery we could find on Bourbon Street. Follow my blog with Bloglovin

*Iovino, Serenella. Universita di Torino. "Redeeming Nature? The Garden As A Moral Space." Awesome article. Read it here.

What I wore: Vest and Tank: past season, Angelos Frentzos. Crop Pants: past season, Free People. Boots: past season Jeffrey Campbell, roscoe cut-out boot. Necklace: 1976 Magic Pyramid Talisman Guild Necklace, vintage. Bracelet: vintage.