Dressed Up (and Someplace to Go)

ORLANDO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT -- If you want a smooth flight -- and the best chances of making your connection sand appointments all day -- take the earliest plane possible. Don't start thinking, that you'll miss all the crowds.

Because of its favored-city status among trade-show planners, Orlando remains one of my frequent destinations. I've made the march through its convention center halls at least 10 times in the last dozen years, and I'm sure I'm missing a few trips along the way.

I've become an expert at dealing with Orlando International Airport at 5 a.m. to catch early West Coast flights. It's a place where baggage check is best avoided, as the lines fill with cranky, tired children complaining about the end of their vacations to cranky, tired parents with wallets sucked dry by theme-park amenities. Or there's the foreign tourists attempting to bully clerks into accepting 100-lbs suitcases possibly containing several uncomplaining children.

There's no avoiding the long early-morning security line at Orlando, unless you use a retinal scanning service that's always sat without customers when I've been there. It's an average 15-minute process, which is a massive advancement from previous security iterations that took at least twice as long with lines stretching the length of the main terminal.

Snaking around the bollards and belts forming the line, you get to see the same people several times, which is no pre-breakfast great. Occasionally, though, there's a surprise, as you can be shocked by neatness.

I looked up in the line this morning to see a woman dressed to perfection in a blue worsted-wool suit. This was no fashionista, but instead a middle-aged lady at least 25 lbs over optimum body mass. The suit looked like she had it sewn before grabbing a cab to the airport; the outfit included a simple white blouse and a single-strand small-pearls choker. She looked fabulous and ready for business.

What' s sad, though, is how she stood out in the crowd. She showed simple, good taste with some smart clothes. For that, she wasn't unusual; she was an aberration.

I confess my membership in the Old School of Travel Fashion, where you put on something from the better side of the closet. There's a picture of me, circa 1972, in a snappy Robert Hall blue blazer and Peter Max clip-on tie as I waited to board a plane at Fresno International Airport. Yes, even when you stopped over in Fresno, you looked snappy.

You still find folks in their best, although it's usually some East Coast exec types in full grey-suit mode going from New York or Boston to Los Angeles on an early a.m. run, using the gained hours in-flight to bill a few more hours and get ready for an afternoon meeting. Occasionally, there'll be someone in first class in some fashionable attire, as part of the rare breeding always looking to keep up appearances.

Unfortunately, most of the crowd at airports resembles some kind of beach slumber party, with raggy T-shirts and fraying cutoffs for men, and a collection of frowsy sweatshirts and shorts for the women. For footwear, the main fashion seems to be flip-flops, or sneakers sans socks for the more-formal.

In a word: sloppy. Airport lounges are places where people look their worst in public, and usually add a lazy demeanor that treats flying as an onerous inconvenience. The journey from Points A to B can barely. E tolerated.

Granted, the corporate attitudes of some airlines doesn't help this, with a serial addiction to add-on fees and a skinflint approach that cuts out a 25-cent bag of pretzels on a three-hour flight. Air travel, despite being one of the continuing marvels of the modern world, is being cheapened daily in service to the level of buses.

That's why it's heartening to see, in the early morning hours at an airport, that someone still takes travel seriously. Maybe she didn't have a choice and went straight from the plane to business at that day's destination, but she still made the effort to look sharp for the journey.

I don't wear the dress shirt and tie anymore, but I always wear good chino or dress pants, along with comfy-but-sturdy shoes and a better-class golf shirt (with pocket for ticket and ticket stub, in case of deplaning). And, yes, a sport coat, for the notch up from casual Friday wear. In today's fashions, it's outright dressy.

And, for me, it's entirely appropriate. After all, I've someplace to go.