The cycles of fashion

A thicket of tweed chokes the alley near Eighth and H streets NE. Men in newsboy caps and knickers crunch over shards of glass in their leather hunting boots, looking like they're on an urban fox hunt. Ladies twirl parasols and tug at their full-length silk slips, which are growing clingy in the insistent November sun. They wipe their brows and mind their 1970s bicycles and snap self-portraits on their cellphones in a queue that stretches down to I Street.

Bike bells jangle. Crispy red leaves fall from backyard trees. A gray cat perches on a fire escape, keeping a yellow eye on this clash of eras, this queue to the starting line of the District's first-ever tweed ride, in which dapper cyclists will sally forth across town simply because it promises to be a jolly good time.
Is this mere dress-up? Folderol on wheels? Another hipster stab at spontaneous coordination, flash-mob conformity in the name of pretentious originality? The motive, the purpose, the paradox of it all -- such cogitation furrows one's brow, dislodges one's monocle. Zounds. Perhaps there are answers in this alley.
Heather Guichard, 24, sits astride her silver '71 or '72 Gitane cruiser, wearing a cardigan, tweed knickers and a flapperish hat. She says our hyper, sloppy, postmodern society has begotten a longing for the classic elements of any era, for purposeful fashion and polished behavior.
"I miss the style," she says wistfully, then catches herself. "Well, I can't say I miss it because I wasn't alive then."
No matter. A mash-up generation has mash-up tendencies. We steal the tailored vests of the Victorian era for our office wardrobe, we play Gatsby in whatever neo-speakeasy has opened around the corner, we add a tie clip to evoke Don Draper and we hop on our mustard-colored vintage Schwinn for a tweed ride. It's the inaugural recruiting event of the District's newest social club, Dandies and Quaintrelles, which materialized in the blogosphere a week and a half ago and attracted hundreds of people to this alley on short notice, as if everyone were sitting at home with their outfits already laid out.