My father and I have long maintained a correspondence of epic intellectual proportions. Usually these take the form of discussions on science and science fiction, Rick Gauger being an award-winning science fiction author, and all-around life of the party.

Recently I sent him a link to a collection of cartoons on the fashion wars of the early 1800s, which were as vicious as they were short-lived. Men and women abandoned the stiff, straight-laced wardrobes of the 1700s and briefly adopted a more modern, flowy, comfortable look. This was the famous Regency era, in which Jane Austen lived and wrote. Unfortunately for fashion, it was quickly destroyed by the severe repression of the Victorian age’s corsets, high heels, and silly hats. Dad, armchair fashion historian, elaborates [with my notes appended, thusly]:

Yes, I’ve always thought it odd that women went out of, and back into corsets in the early 19th Century. In our own time, the 60s got over in a hurry, as women went back to makeup and hairdos in the early 70s. In my century [Dad is 64], I think that the corporations panicked as they saw hair styles, makeup and tailored clothing apparently becoming obsolete, and they put on a major propaganda offensive. The majority of people (including women) never understood the 60s anyway, so they were ready to buy into it. We had a last hurrah of big cars, just at the moment when we should’ve been changing our ways.

Another reason for the quick loss of those styles was that a woman really has to be very good-looking [such as my mother, 54, who to this day refuses to learn how to use an eyelash curler, probably because she’s too busy beating men away from her door with a stout stick] to be able to go without makeup and tailoring. There were a couple of girls among the grad students of 1965 that made me froth at the mouth; most others, however smart and sweet they might be, just didn’t have what it took. One of them was the girl who welcomed me back from my first tour in Vietnam. She came out in a nightie that made her look like a joke. I would have rather died than hurt her feelings at that moment.

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Mustache Summer (1999) hath sadly passed–yet its legacy lives on in the many luxuriant ’staches kickin’ around the ‘Net these days! The Commustache Mustafesto remains as current today as it ever has:

o the shock of millions, the mustache has found itself the target of great hatred and fear among younger generations (the so-called “Goatee Generation,” or “Generation G”). These cretins think nothing of growing furry rings around their mouths (or worse, dating the goateed), and yet they scoff at those with mustaches, snorting that mustaches are “only for cops or homosexuals.” This not only betrays their ignorance, it shows a lack of respect for the two segments of our society that have kept the mustache torch burning while the rest of this so-called society trembled in the horrible darkness. It’s time to put an end to this, and the best way to do it is to celebrate the goodness that is Mustache.

Again, Mustache Summer is long in the past–but it broke us free from our servitude to the goatee and the horror of the “neckbeard.” We here at Ectomo take this moment to thank you, our mustachioed predecessors, for being there to rouse the masses when we were still wetting our beds and dreaming of facial hair!

L’Manifeste courtesy of Mustache Summer and their own rockin’ lip-rides.