The distance between my desk and that of the publisher is 25 feet, 2 inches. But in the sartorial world, at least a thousand miles separates me from the man across the hall.
A connoisseur of suits and the shirts, ties, shoes, and accessories that go with them, he paints from a textile palette every morning. Grays, blues, and browns in a dozen different hues are offset with reds of varying shades and whites with subtle brightness gradations. The whole ensemble is topped off with hand-tooled shoes, including a plum-colored pair I swear he must have arranged to have teleported from the court of Louis XVI.
His wardrobe is reinforced not infrequently by the arrival of boxed shirts and he is the only person I know who uses “my tailor” in a sentence.
I think Workforce Minimalist is the best way to sum up my fashion sense — I won’t say “style,” because I readily concede that I have none. I own one suit I wear to funerals and weddings and two blazers. I feel uncomfortable in hats, and I don’t like sweaters, although my wife likes when I wear one. I like tuxedos.I even bought one from A. Voyiagis — one of my favorite Lynn stores.
I write this column wearing a nice blue dress shirt my wife bought me; a pair of pants straddling the dress pants/jeans line, and Merrell ankle-high lightweight hiking boots that I swear are the most comfortable footwear I have ever owned.
A serious fashion critique would probably conclude that, A: I dress the way I do because I am secretly looking down on other people’s fashion choices. B: I am suffering from latent depression manifested by my borderline “don’t-give-a-(bleep)” approach to dressing.
I won’t dismiss either conclusion out of hand and, in my defense, I will point out that my forays into serious shopping usually ended with me dressed like an aging track tout or a seedy version of Miami Vice‘s Sonny Crockett.
I think a love or disdain for fashion is planted in infancy with our initial contact with clothes. The first experience we are forced to endure as new people is getting stuffed into all manners of onesies, jammies, and absurd and overpriced children’s versions of adult fashion.
Anyone under 30 who stumbled upon this column will probably be surprised to learn that there was once a time when the wardrobe of most people under 12 years old consisted of “play” clothes; “school” clothes, and “church” clothes.
Your mother took you shopping for shoes in August before school started and the sneaker selection was limited to Keds, maybe Converse. The only time you saw words emblazoned on clothes was when you walked by the janitor in school and saw his first name stitched on his shirt.
With apologies to my mother (who has impeccable fashion sense), I think a host of itchy childhood sweaters, too-tight kid blazers, and painful dress shoes doomed me to a lifetime of fashion aversion.
That’s OK, the sartorialists may yet save me. Lawrence of Arabia is one of my favorite movies and I think the best scene is when the desert warriors make Peter O’Toole celebrate his true calling as a leader and don flowing white robes and other desert finery.
Here’s hoping my fashion muse bursts forth one fine day and guides me confidently to the clothes I was born to wear. Until then, don’t waste a lot of time trying to spot me in a suit.
