The Trend Setter

Once in a while, quite often actually, hubby will come home to tell me that someone would be asking where he buys certain items, normally clothing. You see they wanted to emulate him ( I prefer to copy Jokontan's term rather than use the word "copy").

1. The shirts

Hubby is a very meticulous person (read : very cerewet) about his clothing. He wears cotton shirts a lot. He used to buy John Masters cotton shirts a lot. But for the last few years he has been buying gshirts from a tailor. This tailor not only does tailoring job, but he sells items of clothing (jeans, shirts, pants, t-shirts) which are rejected for export. Very much like the reject shops or factory outlet etc. My hubby has been frequented this tailor since his grandfather's days. At that time the tailor's father was the one doing the tailoring business, but now he is an old man and already retired, and the business is taken over by his son.

So my hubby is a familiar face at the shop. Besides that hubby has also been recommending customers to the shop. So hubby normally gets special price for the items he bought there.

When his colleagues asked hubby where he bought his shirts, of course hubby would take them there. So everyone in the office from the boss down, would now be buying shirts from the tailor, and my hubby is now in dilemma. He cannot buy shirts (unless, some new stock arrives) from the same tailor anymore, unless he wants to risk running into someone wearing the same colour and pattern. :-)

2. Still on shirt.

This happened very recently. When you are using pure cotton material, ironing is a big problem. Being someone who is extra fussy about his clothing, hubby cannot tolerate creases on his shirt. It has to be ironed so smooth, with no double line on the sleeves. Older person (maybe in the same age bracket as me) would remember how our mothers would use starch solution to starch our fathers' clothes. Those were the days when starched pants could stand by itself after ironing hehe much like what was potrayed in Lat's cartoon.

Again I digress.

No, I do not need to starch hubby's pants. But I do use quick starch solution for ironing. It works well on hubby's shirt. A few of his friends were asking him how his shirts are so well ironed, so smooth without creases. When he told them that I am using the quick starch, they turned around and ask, " Ada ka? Tak pernah tengok pun" Laaaa So after this I would expect the whole department would be creaseless thanks to hubby hehehe.

There are other things which they seem to like and wanted to copy. At one time I saw his ring which I bought for him as a birthday present was missing from his finger. He has never taken off the ring from his finger before. When I bought the blue sapphire ring he was still plumb and now when he lost so much of weight the ring has become loose. So I thought that it might have slipped from his finger and it was lost. Naturally, I was concerned, but when asked he told me that a friend liked the design so much that he, the friend had asked to copy the design. So he had to leave the ring with the jeweler as a sample and at the same time had it cleaned.

There was another time when he was also asked from which optician did he make his spec. It was a simple plastic rimmed spec, small and looked nice on him. Aiyoo, sampai spek pun orang nak tiru, hehehe.

Me? I am not a trendsetter because between hubby and me, I am the one who is not really very bothered on how I dress. I am very comfortable in jeans and t-shirt. At most time hubby would tease me whether I would be going to the market rather than to work dressed so "selekeh" Hehe. There are times that I would get a lecture (berleter lah tu :-) ) on how a person of my stature should dress. Ketrampilan diri tu penting kata hubby hehe. Working in a factory makes dressing down easy, there were times when we were given uniforms so that it would cut down on our expenses as well as time to choose what to wear every morning to work. Now, I no longer wear uniform so it's a headache trying to choose what to wear to work and the need to upgrade the closet once in a while when you get fed-up with wearing the same item over and over again. Lucky that our baju kurung is never out of fashion.

Has anyone ever tried to emulate you?