Fashion Blues

I’ve always had trouble getting dressed. I no longer scream when they pull a shirt over my head like I did when I was little. I don’t generally struggle any longer to tie my shoes. But I still face problems, serious challenges, every day when standing in front of my closet. Where others might see a field of sartorial possibilities, I see nothing but a matrix of subtle rules and conventions at work, vague and implicit lines in the sand of fashion, brightly colored invitations to cause some sort of stylistic misdemeanor.

Negotiating these tripwires takes a sensitivity and determination I have trouble mustering before breakfast. I try to get the upper hand by enforcing upon my clothing a strict hierarchy in order to control the chaos. That’s why, except for those on the floor, all my shirts face the same direction. It lends a sense of order and helps me in my private moments, those long minutes when I peer into the dark closet at a thousand errors waiting to happen. I feel every day so much like I did when I used to try to write essays in college. So many mistakes just waiting to happen. So many hidden rules. The malicious grammar of clothing rustling in my closet, waiting for me to pick something wrong. Often, I find myself exhausted by the time I sit down to my humble bowl of cereal, wearing only underwear at the breakfast table, utterly defeated.

Like writing, dressing is generally a private business. Nobody wants to see you in the midst of the process: the agonizing, the trying on, the tearing up and throwing away. The tears. The recriminations. Nobody wants to see you trying to balance on one foot, metaphorically or actually. They just want to see the product, and don’t want to be shocked by it. The recondite flowchart that steers us from error is of course quite secret, as I’ve mentioned. I have yet to find anyone who is brave enough to tell me about it. They’ll even deny that there are any rules, defaulting to the tired line that “It’s just all about how you feel.” But this is plainly not the case. There are, for example, a whole set of tacit and unspoken guidelines about matching things up and the way they go together. Some are plainly not recommended any more than mixing chlorine bleach and ammonia, or oil and water, or my brother and your new car.

Imagine attempting to wear an innocent checked blue and green shirt with blue and green pants. Nothing good will happen there, but you must admit that, at the level of theory, there is nothing wrong. Blue and blue, of any shade, are sanctioned. They have the same name, even. It has to be safe. Green with green is an approved combination. Blue and green are both good friends, the colors of the water, of the ocean, even of pirates. Put them all together, and you may think you have found a combination that will make the pretty ladies give you their hungry glances – but no. I have had women move to the far side of the hall when I strut by dressed in this checkered celebration, this profusion of plaid. Why? Because I violated a rule that everyone knows but no one will admit to: one must wear only identical checked clothing. Don't ask why. Just accept this as fact. Thinking will only exhaust you. Likewise, you cannot wear perfectly identical colors lest you be accused of wearing a pantsuit. I do not know what a pantsuit is, but when I bought a pack of RIT dye and dyed several shirts and jeans all the same color, I was not celebrated for my inventiveness. Ditto with khaki shirts + khaki pants. No one smiles in a good way when you wear five shades of brown (shirt, tie, pants, shoes, hair). What is wrong with brown?

We have established that identical colors are somehow bad, and that there are certain toxic combinations. Green and orange, for instance, are anathema for reasons no one wants to talk about, though I swear I have often seen lovely red-haired Irish women wear green and orange at the same time and no one laughed at them. In fact, people wanted to talk to them all the time! Another hole is torn in the rules for fashion. Red and green are apparently forbidden also — my best guess is that together they are redolent of Christmas. Though countless flags combine red and green -- South Africa and Italy and even Lithuania Minor come to mind -- does anyone ever think of South Africa as “The Christmas Country”? They do not! Perhaps someone can explain why, then, it is nearly illegal to wear red and green into the secular American classroom.

There are more rules. Pink and blue are bad (perhaps inducing gender confusion?), black and white are bad (waiter?), blue and black are bad (makes you look like a giant bruise?), yet the same fashion liberals will aver that “black goes with everything.” It plainly does not.

There’s more. Dark colors must go on the bottom of an outfit because they are heavy; if you wear, say, white pants and a black top, you are not only imitating a waiter in reverse, but you also seem imply to passersby that you might suddenly and uncontrollably capsize. Fear of witnessing me flip up in an extraordinary fashion misadventure is, I assume, what has driven my colleagues and students to avert their eyes when we ride up on the elevator together. Yet I was never warned of this danger, not once.

But I’m trying to tell you something important here.

There are many people who know these rules and are either unable, unwilling, or afraid to talk about them. Think with me for a moment about frequency, the issue of frequency. You can wear new clothes for the first time only after you have thoroughly washed them. The theory at work here seems to assume that rodents or pests crawl through new clothes, and that not until being run through the spin cycle should we risk putting them on (a theory that conveniently ignores the fact that we try on clothes in stores and don’t feel we need to bathe afterwards).

There is clearly a bit of duplicity at work here.

What baffles me is why we hide the rules with a straight face. I know a woman who would slather her nude self in oil-based house paint before she’d wear the same outfit for a second day. So there is to be variety. One is expected to dress a bit differently M-F, but not too predictably. For instance, if you dress Italian one day and Mexican the next, you are likely to be ostracized; in contrast, if one plans to eat spaghetti on Monday, and tacos on Tuesday, people assume you reflect good middle class household organization skills. Furthermore, it is tacitly forbidden to assign a certain outfit to each day of the week. Though in my experience it will take some months for people to catch on, when they do figure out that you have sequenced outfits by workday, you will be eating your lunch at the only empty table in the cafeteria for the rest of the school year. And nobody will help you revise your essays for English class.

I know of which I speak.