Suspenders (or Braces)- A Critical Review 

Suspenders may be the lazy man’s belt, but they will keep your pants up all day. Over the years the humble pair of suspenders have gone fashionably from the village idiot to Mork and Mindy and then from mod, ska and skinhead to Bill Cosby & Urkel. The suspender is cowboy, and it is Foghorn Leghorn, poultry southern lawyer style. It is Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt as much as it is Revenge of the Nerds. I’m sure that somewhere, at some time past, there was a whole community of folks who operated some local suspender industrial company town where you’d work all lifelong to make a suspender quota for your supervisor but could never quite save up enough dough to afford a pair of your own. Sure, suspenders have somewhat fallen out of trend with the youth of today but so have bell bottom jeans and oversize glasses and bouffant hairdos.  That doesn't mean there’s not some young hipster out there, keeping the dream alive with a corduroy three piece and a jar of vintage dippity-do hair gel. It's guaranteed that somewhere right now in Brooklyn, there’s a rebellious youngster coifing it up, slapping on oldfangled suspender straps and inadvertently altering the fashion sensibility of all mankind. Is it a future no one ever wanted or saw coming? Yes, probably, but that’s how fashion works and the future always knows best. My suspenders say they were made in Hong Kong. I haven’t been there in a long time, but I remember back when it was run by the Brits, they called suspenders braces. That never sat right with me. So, it got me thinking, are suspenders five stars? I’d say yes. Suspenders aren’t going anywhere and as long as folks wear pants there will always be that one maverick who refuses the belt and goes for the braces. I’ll give Suspenders 2 stars for support, 2 stars for affordability and one star for Robin Williams nostalgia.

Suspenders- *****5 Stars