Congratulations!

We'll Be The Judge

The time has come to announce the winner of our "Show Me The Polyester" contest. As the contest progressed we were encouraged by the variety of the ages of those who entered. There were quite a few younger people who seem to have an inborn sense of the beauty (and the Majesty) that is polyester, and whose embrace of it gives the lie to the idea that "you had to have been there".

True, there were many entrants who seem to relegate the wearing of polyester to the wearing of a costume, or re-enacting that time in their lives when they were young and free to act impulsively, and no doubt, still hold a place for hilarity, defiance, loud times and even louder clothes.

But as judges we leaned less toward this re-enactment than toward our love of design, and the conviction that polyester is it's own reward.

And as much as we were entertained, moved, even stimulated by some of the more robust attempts to win our favor with displays of our recordings, or scenes depicting themes from certain songs and album covers, and even ecological messages corresponding to beliefs and convictions known to be held by us - in the end, it is the clothing itself that we look to as a beacon of our belief in humanity's place in the cosmos.

Now…. it is very hard to choose between one beautiful thing and another. We began creating categories we named for the various photos submitted. "Don't Try This At Home", "Stay Where You Are, We'll Come To You", "Downright Beautiful", "Who's Your Daddy?", "The Truly Awful Factor", and "What? These ARE My Clothes", etc., trying to create subcategories of distinction, perhaps hoping to expand the winner's circle. We would have liked to recognize a great many of the contestants as possessing (or being possessed of) a keen sense of style, panache, and of irony, but in the end we had to admit that there can only be one winner. So much of what Polyester is, is not open to debate.