April 30, 2007

Not Really Suitable

Not too long ago I had to wear a suit. Honest, a jacket, a tie and everything.

And socks!

It was my nephew’s wedding, and my wife convinced me that the Dockers, golf shirt and dress flip flops that I had laid out for the occasion would fail to demonstrate the proper respect for the occasion. Even though they were my good Dockers.

I was worried that my nephew might not recognize me wearing a suit, and I was right. He thought I was a Jehovah’s Witness.

That’s pretty much the way it is with me and suits these days. I wear the one suit I own, a black Funeral Director Special, to weddings. And, of course, to funerals.

There was a time, years ago, when I wore a suit to work every day. I did this on the advice of a guy named John T. Molloy, detailed in his book Dress For Success. Mr. Molloy believed that to be taken seriously in the business world a young man had to dress a lot like an FBI agent, only with better shoes.

His advice, thankfully, did not extend to dressing like legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who, it turns out, liked to dress a lot like Lauren Bacall.

All of this took place during the 1980s, a golden time when we as a society decided to shake off the altruism and free spirit of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and return to the core values of unbridled greed and corruption that shaped America throughout the first half of the 20^th Century. Boy, I wanted aboard that train!

Before I was introduced to the idea of using a power necktie to subjugate the proletariat, my idea of getting dressed up was to put on relatively clean jeans and a tank top with no holes in it. My hair was generally shoulder length, and every winter I grew a beard that made me look like a scrawny Grizzly Adams.

OK, for a short time in the mid ‘70s I did own a “disco” outfit, consisting of powder blue polyester pants, shirt and jacket, with two-tone platform shoes and matching belt, but that is something that I am not proud of, and that I would rather forget, thank you very much.

Like a lot of guys in my generation, my antisocial dressing preferences probably date back to rebellion against a well-meaning mother who thought of her kids as dress-up dolls. One of my earliest memories is walking into a restaurant with my family, my brother and I dressed in matching black and red pedal-pusher pants and “cute little tops,” with white socks and sandals.

Yes, it is possible for a six-year-old to have fashion sense. And to be suicidal.

My Dress For Success visual transition from hippy to predatory businessman had to be a little bit shocking for my wife. Even though she had been on hand, and even complicit in the “disco outfit incident,” she always seemed for some reason to be comfortable with a husband who looked like he came straight from dancing in the mud at Woodstock.

And yet through those years of picking up dress shirts at dry cleaners and gently reminding me that the black socks would probably look better with the navy blue suit than the brown and green argyle ones, she never complained.

Well, decades have passed and I’ve abandoned the idea of putting on that Brooks Brothers battle gear and becoming a captain of industry. Other than when she cleans me up for the occasional wedding or funeral, my wife has her happy vagrant husband back. And still she does not complain.

I have no idea why not.

  © 2007, Michael Ball