Mystery of the Missing Shoulder

I grew up believing that the egalitarian, fashion-free, gender-equal utopia aboard the Starship Enterprise was a microcosm of the real world. Long before that vision was dashed, I received a rude awakening of the sartorial kind. When I was a little ‘un, our family went weekly to a local shopping precinct. One Saturday, we were strolling up and down, enjoying the day and gathering our purchases when a ripple of laughter running through the crowd caught our attention.
It was almost a medieval scene, the shoppers pausing in their business to stare at and lampoon a young man. Nothing remarkable about him except that the trousers he wore consisted of one navy-blue leg and one white leg. Young children, matrons, adult men, all tittered and wondered at this sight. The wonder of this story is, of course, our wonder, our sheer lack of sophistication. We really had never seen anything like it before. I remember thinking that maybe the tailor hadn’t enough of either navy or white fabric, and had cobbled together a garment made of left over pieces – in which case, the trousers were very innovative indeed. This is the same mindset with which my Mum regards those tops and dresses that have one shoulder cut away: it looks like they hadn’t enough cloth to finish the garment.
The Day of the Trousers pitched me into a lifetime of conservative dressing, a state from which I have never emerged. Over the years, I have bemusedly observed the procession of fads and fashions that contribute to the montage of life; the ripped and torn, the faded and distressed, the uneven hemlines and faux patches, without so much as a pang of longing - or a missing shoulder.