The Thing About Three-Quarter Length Sleeves

Fashion and high school have one very fundamental thing in common, which is that they are both supposed to facilitate our accumulating identity. Both institutions are there, at least as far as I am concerned, to provide the resources we need in order to formulate who we are, or want to be. They’re both supposed to provide unbiased choice — underscoring their own senses of identity in an already-executed puzzle, allowing you to put your pieces together however you deem appropriate.

But the thing about my high school, a modern orthodox Jewish day school planted on the middle of the Upper East Side, is that it doesn’t — or didn’t — quite know what it was. According to similarly-minded Jewish schools in the Tri-state area, we weren’t quite religious enough to plausibly call ourselves orthodox in any of its varying permutations. Next to the prep schools, though, we were whimps primed to extoll the virtues of studying humanity’s greatest piece of literature: the bible. The bible!

That we didn’t quite know where to position ourselves outside the walls of our classrooms during those malleable years of personal evolution might seem problematic, right? But maybe not. Maybe providing more room to chalk up the definition of “identity” to what we wanted to make it given the lack of existing format made all the difference. Like a road less traveled in a Robert Frost poem, or whatever.

And you can argue the same about fashion. Without direction — without the proverbial boxes in which we are supposed to be placed, brimming with de facto garments that speak for our opinions and policies and ideas and thoughts, clothes are just clothes. Sure, they can talk, but they won’t say much.

Of course, though, in this current era of personal style, these boxes have been abandoned. Who wants to be subjugated to a box? I am individual, hear me roar! Let me explore the gray area! See my pants — they vary in trend! Notice my sleeves — they do ten different things! Which brings me to a recent trend that’s been resurfacing in its confused glory: the three-quarter length arm. Here’s a length that’s like a waiting room. You’re not in, you’re not out. It won’t keep you warm but might get you hot. It’s not short, it’s not long, and as far as I’m concerned poses the same question fruitcake does: why ruin two good things (fruit and cake, long sleeves and short sleeves) by combining them?

But maybe I’m being close-minded here. Or thinking too granularly. Maybe three-quarter length sleeves are like the therapy session you never went to. Not a girl, not yet a woman, the length is perhaps a placeholder for dressers looking to say what they think they want to say but haven’t quite figured out. Like a school that maintains two disparate belief systems, they’re kind of a work in progress.

You should further your education on sleeves. Or get educated on Summer Wine. Or perhaps you want to read about a dad with cool style. Or the bed of which you’re depriving yourself. Or a workout routine that you can do at your desk!

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