In the end, the health minister of the hearts, Karl Lauterbach, does not make it onto the list of the “ten craziest courtship rituals” (spectrum of science). Even the competition from the hooded seal for first place is too strong. The male hooded seal has an inflatable nasal membrane that inflates it out of one nostril into a “giant red balloon” and lets it “swing back and forth”. Personally, the fifth-placed silk bower bird is even more likeable: “To make himself attractive, the male silk bower bird cleans the ground and lays out a building site.” It kind of reminds you of Berlin. Elon Musk would be the female to be courted in this analogy.
So the male builds an arbor and drapes all sorts of colorful objects there in search of great love. For example flowers, berries, broken glass “or all kinds of other rubbish” as it is in the spectrum called. You know people who do it in a similar way: set up a garden gnome, create a box hedge, scatter a bit of rubbish from the hardware store in the front yard – and wait in love for a female.
Not that anything similar could be expected from Lauterbach; but on the other hand, the art of courtship should not be left to the animal world alone. A look at the inside of the minister’s shirt teaches that. Incidentally, knowing the inside of a minister’s shirt would have been at least a scandal in the past – and Hans Blum, alias Henry Valentino, would have rhymed “seen the inside of the shirt” with “should never have happened” and “beautiful”. Long ago. But now it’s the collar, you have to say it bluntly, the same. What emerges is exactly what it’s supposed to be: quite noticeable. Sometimes it’s also unsettling.
“Set fashionable accents with fashionable patches,” advises the manufacturer
On the homepage of the clothing company Eterna, where shirts have been available for decades that are as white as possible or as light blue as possible, with buttons that are as inconspicuous as possible and cuffs that are as simple as possible, one is now asked: “Set fashionable accents with fashionable patches (… ) the modern contrast inserts on the inside of the collar and on the cuffs are a real eye-catcher.” The fashionable patches are winners of the textile evolution. You can check it out in front of the TV on a number of news programs and talk shows. Lauterbach is in good company when it comes to the light blue patches on white shirts and the overall eye-catching look. And when the patches have already arrived in the Bundestag, the matter is really over.
The manufacturer Olymp says: “Subtle contrast trimmings create modern appeal and suggest the open collar as an exciting alternative to the classic appearance with a tie.” A few weeks ago, when times were still relatively peaceful, one could even consider the chancellor to be an exciting alternative, recognizable by the open shirt and subtle contrasting trimmings. For a moment, the question was asked what the female hooded seal might think of all this.
Regardless, the unbuttoned, outrageous shirt is a logical, if not overdue, step. Ties have long been a thing of the past in today’s dress codes. Fortunately, many men have been deprived of the opportunity to make themselves attractive in the manner of the silk bower bird – for the opposite sex and of course for themselves. What used to be funny cartoon characters, penguins or a motto in life (“Will beer “) made the tie ornament of choice, must now be lived out elsewhere.
In this regard, sock production has long since reached its limits, even those of good taste. New terrain is now being cleared and assigned to self-optimization: the inner collar stand, the cuffs and the button placket. Take a look, the rapidly radicalizing look seems to want to say.
Adolf Loos, a Viennese architect at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote the work “Ornament and Crime” out of sheer self-defense against the decor mania that prevailed in historicism. It should only be a matter of time before the men of today as heroes of the still discreet men’s shirt ornamentation leave all decency behind. Many will then look like Mick Jagger in the seventies. Unfortunately without Mick Jagger being in his 70’s. Exactly then the moment has come where the ornament ends – and the crime begins.