Benjamin Bixby blog/ By David Livingstone on April 7, 2009

I'm old-fashioned. I love a Johnny Mercer lyric, "the starry song that April sings" and digging in a dictionary. Today, I'm looking for a word for my condition. Curmudgeonly, though I've been called it to my face, doesn't do it. Churlish, yes; avaricious, no. Crabbed is closer, I tell myself, owning up to the perverse, sour part of its meaning. But the mot juste, that combination of consonants and vowels that fits like a glove and cuts like a knife is crotchety, as in, given to peculiar notions "on some (unimportant) point."

It doesn't surprise me. After a career spent as a fashion writer in the company of important handbags, you inevitably accrue a few of your own tics and conceits. Over-reaction lurks around every corner; your grasp of what matters may fray; you learn to beat your gums over nothing. Don't get me started on Michelle Obama's false eyelashes.

In short, you can go on long. And I have, all by way of saying that I hope it's not just me, all quaint quirks and dottiness, who thinks that blatantly age-ist remarks have become a tad common and sometimes even try to pass as cool. Now, I haven't lost my sense of humour completely. I laughed the other day--even felt the tickle of wanting to cheat--when the cashier in the subway booth offered me the seniors' fare. But when a bright, young fashion blogger the other day asked me what I remembered from the shows that Kate Aitken was putting on at the Canadian National Exhibition in the 1940s, I had to stamp my heels.

The urge to take up the umbrella to shake it with thin-skinned hands came over me again when reading interviews with "the boys" of Project Runway Canada, carried in the March 4 issue of Fab, reporting from the frontlines of the gay scene in Toronto. In response to the question, "What is the worst fashion mistake most men make?" Brandon Dwyer answers, "Clearly socks and sandals. If your feet are cold wear shoes. Sorry Grandpa."

But Grandpa's not taking the rap. I'll forgive Dwyer for knowing zip about Saint Laurent. When he admitted that on the show, the outrage among the judges stopped just short of throwing stones, and I-- feeling contrary, which is another shade in the sky at twilight--talked myself into thinking how fresh to be so unsaddled by history.

But just for the record, it should be pointed out that any blame you want to attach to giving socks and sandals a bad name goes to Greatgrandpa. Metallic sneakers over forty, that might well be an offense you can pin on the baby boomer. But it was also the boomer who broke socks and sandals from hold of the nerd and seaside vacationer and turned the look into a new proportion.

It was already back in the 1970s, a thick pair of work socks went well with those flat, buckle-strapped, brown leather sandals that Dr. Scholl used to put out or with fisherman's styles in plastic that downplayed the hippie-ish vibe which broke out again in the 1990s. In 1998, Narciso Rodriguez brought fuzzy hose and Birkenstocks to the runway in Milan.

And this revenge of the geezers lives on into this season. In the look book for the spring/summer collection designed by André Benjamin under the Benjamin Bixby label, socks and sandals are paired with aplomb.

That Benjamin. He's a smart child. He's the one who last year promoting his line in Britain, told The Observer, "My biggest inspiration is old people. Their style is not pretentious." I'm not sure certain about that. Nor am I sure of what's worse: a slight knowledge of history or a knowledge of slight history. Then again, if we must bear the burden of the past, might as well pack as light as possible.

Items from the Benjamin Bixby line can be purchased at Holt Renfew