Anonymous asked:

what is your professional opinion on the fandom-reviled Tom Paris Vests

background-alien-deactivated201 answered:

anon, i’m glad you asked. because these vests…they are not good.

here’s tom in “non sequitur”, looking like that one person in every community college class who kind of dresses like a magician as harry desperately tries to get back to a universe where this vest doesn’t exist. in short, there’s a reason why this kind of vest is overrepresented in every goodwill. they’re very 90s and very bad. my professional opinion on them has always been what are they and why do they exist? they’re not suit vests being worn over clothes. suit vests have buttons. suit vests are tailored. they’re something else entirely, a nightmarish liminal space between formalwear and something tim allen would wear over a turquoise t-shirt in a critically-panned family vacation movie from 1994.

this one is a classic Tom Paris Vest (though if i remember correctly, there are others). it looks about three sizes too big for him, which may be part of the Look? in any case, if someone brought this thing to me and told me to make it presentable, making it a little more sleek is pretty much the only thing i could do to it. because the pattern on the front of it looks like a vinyl-covered booth seat in a black bear diner and the back is Just Satin. at least it doesn’t have lapels, which these horrible things sometimes do. but like…tom, buddy? maybe invest (no pun intended) in some uhhhhhh fucking sleeves.