How is it that all women instinctively understand men’s clothes? They know what shirts go with what pants, what ties go with what shirts, what shoes go with what belts. Did I miss a meeting? It’s alien to me.
My husband will put on a charcoal gray turtleneck sweater and a pair of brown corduroy pants and ask “Does this go?” He might as well be asking what the square root of Canada is. I have no idea. But I can hear my friend Marty screaming at her computer screen right now, “NO it doesn’t go! Tell me you did not let Larry leave the house wearing charcoal and brown! Did you put black shoes on him, too? And a black leather belt?” (Answer: Yes. And yes.)
A model once asked me to help him “adjust” his bow tie during a photo shoot, and I did so by tucking it under his collar. He looked in the mirror and burst out laughing. “No way!” he said. "Are you kidding?”
“Sadly, no.” I said.
It just seemed like it needed to nestle.
It’s times like these that I feel like Jo Polnochek on The Facts of Life. I can change a tire, but I can’t tell my husband whether or not to change his shirt.
When I was in college, I was our musical theater group’s costume director for one season. Unfortunately for the men, it happened to be the season we performed Cats. I did fine on the women’s costumes—unitards with fur collars and cuffs. But for the men’s costumes, you’ll never guess. Oh yes. Unitards with fur collars and cuffs. (What’s good for the goose, as they say.) My boyfriend was in the cast. His unitard was a shiny gold, onto which I fastened little scraps of faux mink to accent his waist, wrists and ankles. From the front row on opening night I’m pretty sure I could hear his father whispering, “DUMP. HER.”
I guess I can understand how he felt. You’d expect a girl to know better than to dress a straight guy in a unitard.
But still, he didn’t have to be so catty about it.
