On Realizing Your Accountant Dad Is Your Style Icon
The author with his father. This was totally unplanned—seriously.
My father has been an accountant for over twenty-five years. His place of business, Gary L. Black & Associates PC is in a sleepy office building in a suburb of Atlanta, the city in which he was born and raised. It’s an extremely laid back environment, with few employees, which matches his personality.
My dad cares very little (read: not at all) about clothing. He hates shopping and often tells me I’m crazy for some of my more extravagant purchases (unfortunately, as my accountant, he knows exactly how much I spend and on what). But growing up, I would occasionally catch a photo of him during his college days in Clinton, South Carolina, and even as an asshole teenager who only cared about punk rock and skateboarding, I recognized that he looked pretty cool.
Long hair, flannel shirt, Levi’s 501 jeans and Clarks Wallabees—I could almost taste the canned Budweiser and hear the Led Zeppelin. These days my Dad basically refuses to wear pants—he only wears shorts—and luckily for him it doesn’t get too cold in the South. His daily look is khaki shorts, a college t-shirt (he collects them), and running shoes (he’s an avid runner).
I like my clothes to be very simple and like a lot of guys I’m constantly on the hunt for the perfect t-shirt: Not too thick, not too thin, just long enough and able to withstand countless washes. During the summer I like to wear a white t-shirt; I know, I’m a boundary-pushing style icon. I had searched high (James Perse, Acne, Our Legacy) and low (Hanes, American Apparel, Champion). They were all good, but none perfect.
Years ago when I was visiting my parents and needed a t-shirt to work out in I opened one of my dad’s drawers and found it was stuffed to the gills with Calvin Klein white t-shirts. The shirt fit perfectly: it was the right weight and length, and had been washed countless times by my laundry-obsessed mom. Since I discovered the contents of that drawer, I have “borrowed” probably ten of those white t-shirts. I wear them constantly. And recently, I realized that my dad’s look has actually informed my own. I’m often wearing old Levi’s, Clark’s Wallabees or running shoes with one of those Calvin Klein white t-shirts.
My dad is bright, funny, well-read and extremely supportive, but much to my surprise he also turned out to be one of my biggest style inspirations. Who would have thought? Not me and definitely not him.
