Buttonholes and Mounties

When Don came on screen for tonight’s Coach’s Corner, I was struck by two things about his sartorial choices: first, the jacket’s sedate colour and pattern (a return to vintage Don Cherry, perhaps?), but second, the oddly prominent buttonhole on the front lapel. It’s oddly prominent because the lapels have equal width when the upper right button is not buttoned—that is, this seems to be the correct way to wear this suit—so why put the buttonhole there at all? It just looks…well, weird. (Compare this double-breasted suit jacket from Wikipedia if you can’t spot why I think this looks strange.)

However, unusually, I did like his tie on this segment. In contrast to some of the odder members of Don’s tie collection, his tie for tonight’s Coach’s Corner, featuring Mounties in honour of an upcoming event in Edmonton memorializing four slain RCMP officers, is relatively sedate and even cute:

A lime-green interlude

I don’t know about you, but I’m suffering through my mid-week lack of Don Cherry crazy fashion. So to relieve the pain caused by this dearth of crazy fashion, here’s Don Cherry in a crazy lime-green number introducing an episode of his Grapeline interview program:

More from Hockey Day

As an intro to the Coach’s Corner segment during the Toronto–Vancouver game (which the Canucks won when ex-Leafs captain Mats Sundin scored the shootout winner against his old team), they showed a number of handmade pictures, banners, effigies, etc. the good townsfolk of Campbellton, N.B. had created to honour the event in general and Ron MacLean and Don Cherry in particular—and this was first among them:

Recognize that? It’s the picture from the Don Cherry Jacket Watch playoff edition of 24 May 2008:

So to review: an image from Coach’s Corner was reproduced on the Internet, which image was printed by someone onto a sign, which sign was shown on a later Coach’s Corner, which was subsequently picked up and reproduced again on the Internet. Truly, ladies and gentlemen, the future is now.

Hockey Day in Canada

It’s Hockey Day in Canada 2009, hosted by the CBC from Campbellton, New Brunswick, and Don graces us with an old favourite suit, spiced up with some local sartorial flavour in the headgear department:

(Sorry about the slightly lower quality of the capture than usual; I don’t think the cameras they were using to shoot Coach’s Corner in the hockey rink in Campbellton are quite as high-definition as the ones they’re accustomed to using in Toronto.)

“I know they’re supposed to be done up, but…”

All throughout last night’s Coach’s Corner and After Hours on Hockey Night in Canada, Don prominently displayed one of the gifts he received for his seventy-fifth birthday last week: a pair of what appear to be magnificent cuff links. Unfortunately, we can’t see what they actually look like properly done up, because Grapes wore them undone for the entirety of both segments. The result:

Amazingly, during the first few seconds of Coach’s Corner, Don made the following incredible claim: “I know they’re supposed to be done up, but it holds up my cuffs.” Not only is that something of a contradiction in terms, but seriously, Don, don’t you think it looks ridiculous?

Not like that looking ridiculous has ever been an especial concern of his…

Don and Douggie, sitting in a tree

As promised, here are the three instances of The Kiss between Don Cherry and his BFF, the “best hockey player of all time”, Doug Gilmour, on Hockey Night in Canada. The first is from 17 May 1993, just after the first game of the Toronto–Los Angeles series to decide the Campbell Conference champion, which LA would go on to win 4-3 (and there’s video of the original kiss on YouTube—it quickly became a Canadian television classic). The third instance of The Kiss is from the Leafs’ Doug Gilmour night on 31 Jan 2009, when his number was honoured by the Leafs organization. I don’t know when the second kiss is from; if anyone can date it, history will thank you, or something. Anyway, here they are:

Happy Birthday, Grapes!

Today is Don’s 75th birthday. NHL Live is currently featuring him on the phone talking hockey. Many happy returns, Don!

Circles jacket redux

We’ve seen this jacket before, in all its hideous black-and-white circular glory, but this time we get a much better view of the black stripes—which themselves have iridescent black circles on them:

In recognition of the night the Toronto Maple Leafs honour Doug Gilmour’s Number 93, Don favours us (once again) with his Maple Leafs tie, evidently having switched his allegiances back from his temporary foray into Habs territory:

We’ve seen both this jacket and this tie before, but not combined together like this. I’m not sure the blue maple leaves (or leafs, whichever) on the tie go well with the black, white, and black suit jacket. Grapes seems to be having a little trouble matching his jackets and his ties lately—let’s hope, for the sake of fashion and hockey lovers everywhere, that he gets back on track quickly.

(The game also featured yet another Don Cherry/Doug Gilmour kiss—but that’s a subject for a separate post. Stay tuned.)

A Habs fan at the All-Star Game??

(Administrative note: welcome to the new Don We Now Our Gay Apparel blog on WordPress! Hopefully we’ll stay here for the future…or at least until the CBC finally gets fed up with Grapes and kicks him off the network.)

So, we’ve got quite the backlog to get through. Live, or at least last week live, from the 2009 NHL All-Star Game in Montréal, we bring you shocking news: it appears that Don has done the unthinkable—he has—gasp!—switched allegiances—to the home team, the Canadiens!

Ron MacLean asked him why he was wearing a Habs tie, and Grapes answered noncommittally—someone gave it to me, the pink colour went with the jacket, etc., notwithstanding the fact that when Don’s worn this jacket before, his tie has actually gone with it (more or less). After this, the two of them they had an annoying conversation during which Don revealed his ignorance of what anthropology was, and immediately after learning that it involved other cultures, belittled and dismissed it.

Ah, it’s good to be back.