In Search of a Nike Air Horn

Snake America is an e-mail newsletter that covers vintage clothing and sometimes furniture, usually for sale on eBay, sometimes on other digital auction platforms. There are over 100 issues, the majority of which devolve into topics not entirely germane to the auctions at hand. Some past columns are on GQ.com.

Polo Monkey Pants

In the fall, Ralph Lauren posted a job for a corporate historian for their library. Not sure what's in there. Is it the archive? There’s a WWD book about the brand that’s incredible, but there has to be more in the library than just one book. A building somewhere in town with a room that has each Polo piece made or designed in the past 50-plus years? Maybe? Which would be an incredible feat, like having collected every stamp. I can’t imagine a non-criminal librarian making more money. They say there's no such thing as a perpetual-motion machine, but if you looked for all the stamps out there, you could go on forever. Same for Polo. They made so many pieces of clothing encompassing so many styles that such a search would not end. When I graduated from college, I moved to Boston without a job but sold Yankees Suck shirts outside Fenway. Since money was tight, I stopped buying records. I went with my friends to look at collections, though, and on one trip to Revere, this old man's house. He was old, real old—29—and told us he’d completed collecting hardcore records, as in he had them all. At the time it sounded like an impossible claim, as if he had collected every stamp. I didn't believe it. But once I got into country and techno music, I realized there was a whole other world out there. It's a finite genre. I'd say getting all the Polo pants designed in the past 20 years is an achievement north of collecting the entirety of a genre's rare and hard-to-find artifacts.

The pants are an important reference. They take the cut and design of the P44 HBT Monkey pants that Marines wore in the 1940s. HBT is Herringbone Twill, which is the same fabric my granddad's sports coats were. The pants haven't been re-released as military surplus, though you can find a niche retro here and there. This might be because they have a big pocket on the back that looks like a diaper. It’s a boxy fit, too, and not flattering. In anecdotal experience, the pants only get traded or sold between real-deal military collectors. "Monkey pants" is a terrible eBay search term, yielding children's and toddler's pants with little monkeys on the back and very few military collectibles. But if you limit it to the militaria category, you can find a couple. In my short life I've seen one person wearing non-toddler Monkey pants, a seller at the Inspiration vintage fest in Brooklyn, back when they still had them here—I want to say fall 2015. He said he paid freight for his pair—he didn’t thrift them—and kept them as a present to himself.

I'd be amazed these pants exist if they weren't Polo. They're both a perfectly faithful re-creation from a materials perspective (from auction photos, the HBT is closer in texture to the original than any reproduction I've come across) and completely uninterested in being that. The pants are a different color, dark blue, not army green, which gives a...lack of supplication to the original item of clothing in question. Up for debate is whether Polo nailed the fabric because they didn't have to nail the color—could be a production concern. Also up for debate is when these were made. Could be anytime in the past 25 years, off top. It's just another really incredible hidden and important piece of clothing from, honestly, the most important and far-reaching brand in men's clothing. For vintage influence, it's really Polo and everything else.

Nike Air Max Day Air Horn

Air Max Day came and went, and I would be remiss to overlook the air horn Nike made to celebrate that day a few years ago. This horn falls into the grand tradition of Nike-affiliated items that aren't footwear but that might be better than any sneaker save the top-echelon mainline design masterpieces (Air Max 97 and Plus, Zoom Seismic, Mac Attack, and 100 or so other select designs). There are so many: There was a Nike Raft on eBay a couple years ago that the Round 2 store in Los Angeles reportedly won buying; there are coffee mugs, some of which have gold-leaf lettering, like the Merry Christmas 1985 mug, which I learned the hard way shouldn't go in a microwave; and store displays and shoe trees, some of which show up on thrifter Instagram accounts and on the store shelves at Procell.

I guess the air horn is for blasting when you think about how much you enjoy your Air Maxes. Whenever you look down contemplatively at your, say, original-color Air Max Pluses, which re-released this winter and look great, and realize how well-done they are, you blast the air horn. Are you thinking about them in church? The mall? Hudson Yards, also a mall? Maybe waiting in line for the movies? Or, better yet, at the movies? You can't bring an air horn into the movie theater—that is a bridge too far—but I think the best movie in the history of cinema to bring an air horn to would have been Eyes Wide Shut. That played the other week at City Cinemas Village East, and I saw it, but I didn't bring the air horn. If I did, I would have blasted it when the old guy in the leather gloves hands Tom Cruise the envelope outside Somerton, the pervert mansion. Recommended.

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