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Damage control

Even a sartorially challenged guy can learn - in time - how not to be a loser.

A surprising thing happened to me on the way to middle age: I started caring about how I looked. Not my shape or build or hair - I can live with those - but my clothes. I didn't want to start looking especially good; I just wanted to stop looking particularly bad.

The problem was, and is, that I lack both fashion sense and sensibility: I wear clothes until they are threadbare, hardly notice what other people have on, ignore ads and fashion news. Dressing for work or play has always been a practical matter, not a cultural, artistic, or even very personal one. The last thing on my mind is "fashion statement." Then a friend remarked that obliviousness is a fashion statement.

And I thought: What if she is right, and, if so, is this the statement I want to make? I realized that almost from childhood, when I adopted red-and-black-checked flannel shirts and wore them, untucked, until I was about 25, my sartorial life has been one thoughtless-bordering-on-inappropriate fashion choice after another, often leading to unsolicited, and ignored, advice. With a non-statement fashion statement that resembled a cry for help, I decided that it was time to accept some.

"Too bad about the tie." This was colleague Ron's coda to an otherwise neutral assessment of my sartorial situation. Something about my ensemble must have caught his eye that day, because the impeccable Ron, always in perfectly draped suits, rarely wasted a breath on clothing clods like me. But he was right: Too bad about the dated, florid neckwear. Ron was usually correct about such things, and I never made that mistake again. No more ties, period.

"Lose the beige." This was the advice from a female co-worker who had suffered my beige for years. I thought it must have been simple beige overkill - the tan blazer worn over the beige shirt tucked into the khaki trousers (it seemed like a safe color) - but what she was saying was that beige clothing made me look like a cantaloupe experiment gone awry. "You are a winter," she said, meaning I had the complexion of someone suited to blues and other rich tones but not beige. So it was goodbye, beige; hello, navy, cobalt, and plum.

"Please, for the love of God. Think of the children!" These may not have been my wife's exact words, but they convey her reaction when I donned a pair of blue denim coveralls, said I had an errand to run, and headed for the door. My new all-purpose uniform - one-piece, a winter color, so many useful pockets - apparently was OK in the privacy of our own home but not outside the house. It was the only clothing wish that my wife ever made, and I granted it. But I had to ask: "Do all men in denim coveralls look preposterous, or just me?" Her consoling hand on my shoulder told me all I needed to know. Like flannel shirts, the color beige, and 5-inch-wide ties, another of my wrongs was righted, and another garment was peeled away.

And so it went.

A recent fashion ad suggests that what people see when you enter a room "isn't your personality." Once upon a time, that ad copy would have made me think: "Oh, no! Is something unzipped?" Today, slightly more enlightened, I think ... the same thing. A hopeless case? Perhaps. The problem, I guess, is that when by chance I do wear something tasteful or stylish or becoming, I feel like an impostor.

Not that it happens often. Despite my bid for clothing cogency, my wardrobe remains pathetic (the process has been more elimination than acquisition), my sense of style lacking, and any serious interest in clothes nil. However, even at this sluggish pace of sartorial evolution, I feel pretty comfortable when I enter a room. Any day now, I can imagine myself joining a crowd and hearing the collective whisper: "Clothes sort of fit. Nothing awful. Colors in the ballpark. Too bad about the hair."