“The reviews on this place are amazing.”
I was standing in line with dozens of people in front of me, the queue snaking up a black metal staircase all the way to the front door of an apartment in Little Italy. The apartment had been converted into a pop-up museum. Montreal had taken the pop-up museum to a new level, as only a city pulsating with hipsterism could. Pop-up museums had quickly gone from public to private spaces, with people hosting museums in their apartments.
This was the best one. It was only supposed to be open for a week, but it had been open for three months, and the enthusiasm surrounding it had not abated. I was in town visiting friends and they raved about it. I was skeptical: how can a museum about khaki pants be interesting?
I finally got to the front door, where to the left of it read a sign: “house of the torn khakis”. I payed the 5$ admission to a thin man with the biggest smile I had ever seen.
“Welcome!” he said, his good cheer infectious. “I hope you enjoy my humble museum.”
I went inside. The first thing I saw were a pair of light khakis, with the bottom of one of the pant legs completely frayed, mounted to the wall. Surrounding it were various pictures of the big-smiled man at different events, taken with an analog camera. Here he was, enjoying the last days of autumn warmth in Parc Lafontaine. There, he was studying in a library. In each picture, he was wearing the mounted khakis.
Then I turned right, into the bedroom. There were three different khakis, each a different shade. Along with more pictures, both posed and candid, there was a poem titled, “50 shades of khaki.” It really made you think about finding the small differences between people in increasingly similar social circles.
Finally, I went into the space that was both kitchen and living room. Some khakis were draped across a couch. A burnt pair were located on the stove. On the dining room table were the pages of a journal from the owner of the khakis.
Some of those pages were in English and some in Spanish. The pages detailed his first days in Canada, adjusting to his new environment. On one page he talked about people he met. On another, he mentions classes he attended at McGill, some interesting and some less so. It felt uncomfortably intimate: a strangers life, strewn across a table. But it resonated with me: the idea that everyone, irrespective of background, experiences the same emotions, the same uncertainty in new situations.
I now understood the appeal, and genius of the museum. Khakis, a workhorse article of clothing worn by so many people are the perfect vehicle to turn the personal into the universal. The focus on one person’s mind-boggling variety of khakis provoked the visitor to feel the joys and sorrows of all the strangers around them: each stranger a world unto themselves.