Cheering for laundry

Anybody who’s met me will likely understand how laughable my commenting on fashion is yet, not that long ago, I did just that. Much like a guy walking around an art gallery loudly proclaiming “I don’t know from art, but I knows what I likes,” I recently voiced my displeasure with the Torontos’ current logo and uniform.

But, personal preference aside, fashion is an art. What’s considered “in” or “out” of fashion, what’s timeless? I don’t know. But I do know someone who does.

Emma Yardley is a fashion expert. Her work, as both a fashion writer and editor, has been featured in too many magazines and newspapers for me to list here. She’s on twitter and blogs about fashion. And she’s nice enough to rattle off a response when I ask her opinion on the “classic Jays uniform vs. modern Jays uniform” question.

I set up a couple of photo galleries, asked Emma for her for her thoughts on the two sets of uniforms and her response was pretty interesting:

There are very few rules in the fashion world. Fashion-forward people strive to break out of the boring everyday uniform and wear something that excites and interests the people around them. But if you’re on a baseball team, rather than Vogue’s editorial team, my advice is keep your clothes clean and classic.

Now maybe it’s childhood nostalgia from sorting through my brothers baseball cards or that I prefer realistic drawings to angry cartoon drawings, but the old Blue Jays uniform is by far the superior outfit. The typography is simple yet bold, the blue jay looks like a blue jay, and the colour palette is neutral and universally flattering.

The modern uniforms look, well, cheesy. While I do actually prefer the black, navy and slate grey (the classic uniforms should lose the red in my opinion), the lettering font is dated and no style-conscious person would ever put that on their body. It makes me ask, why did they change it in the first place?

I understand that redesigning a uniform is a way to create new revenue and drum up media interest for the team, but I’m not sure the modern uniforms would get the positive reaction they might have been looking for. A solution would be to combine the two looks into one cohesive design, taking the strengths from each and dropping the weak points, but that might just be a little too fashion forward.

So there we have it. An expert opinion. While I agree the old uniforms are superior, I don’t know how I feel about dropping the red — that’d drastically change the logo, and that’s my favourite part of the old uniform. But I’m not impartial. As much as I might argue against it, maybe it is nostalgia that keeps me clinging to the old unis.

Or, more likely, I have no fashion sense.