Dear Fashion File,
I thought you might get a kick out of an experience I just had passing through airport security in Toronto. As luck would have it, I was rocking out the FFWD Hammer & Sickle shirt when my security screener asked, in a thick Soviet accent:
“What’s this mean?” (referring to my shirt)
I told her it was just a shirt advertising a weekly newspaper from back home.
She then wanted to know why the hammer and sickle were there. I told her it was because the political leanings of the weekly were seen as “socialist” or “leftist” in the town I was from, and so it was kind of a joke. My screener began to tear up and, with a shakey voice, replied that only someone too young to have lived through “the hammer and sickle” would make fun of it. That it was awful-that the regime did awful things-and that therefore both me and my shirt were awful!
I apologised, but her tears of sorrow had already become tears of rage, and she said I was too ignorant to understand.
. . . so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was “randomly selected” for a thorough search, where my bags were pulled apart, dare I say, in a manner not unlike the old KGB.
I think I’ll think twice before wearing this tee in the future; particularly if I think my day’s activities will lead me to contact with any Russians, Poles, Ukies, or McCarthyists.
(*the photo below sports the offending shirt, as well as a flag that was made for me by a 12 year old boy I had the pleasure of meeting during one of my stints working at summer camps in America. He made the anti-Commie flag, and when I probed him as to why, his only response was: “Because I hate Communists”. . . I think someone’s grandpa drinks. He gave me the flag at the end of summer because he figured I was the one who “got” him the most, and he knew I loved it. I did, and I do)
