As I watched the last few Republican debates, I was distracted, not for the first time, by a most nonpolitical thought: Don’t they feel silly all wearing blue suits, white shirts, and red ties?
It seems obvious to me that dressing exactly like your companions is absurd, unless you are 6 years old and the person who is dressed like you is a sibling and neither of you selected the outfit. But even then, it seems questionable. My dear mother used to dress me and my two brothers in homemade sailor’s outfits—blue up to the neck, with a white collar and a red neckerchief, but no, we didn’t look at all presidential.
We were thus outfitted, in the late ’70s, for a family photo, which then sat in the dining room of the house I grew up in but, these days, is on exhibit at my mother’s place on Long Island (admission free, appointment required). And even now, when I see that photo, I am embarrassed. It’s like watching one of my own children make a fool of himself. My head gives a rueful shake, and I wonder, What in the world does he (my 5-year-old self) think he is smiling about? Doesn’t he know how humiliating this is?
If I arrived at a dinner party and found myself dressed exactly like all the other men, I know what I would do. I would go home and change. Extreme, perhaps, but it would, in my mind, be a good bit less absurd than the alternative of joining the cast of clones and making tiresome jokes about “the memo,” though in that case the cliché would, I grant, be especially apt. One thing I do respect about older men who think very little of clothing is that they do not even think to make that tiredest of jokes.
If only I could be so indifferent. When I am about to meet with friends, I rule out certain sartorial combinations based on the likelihood that they will be wearing something similar. No white-collar shirts when meeting Jeff for drinks. No bow ties if having lunch with William. I will wear a necktie on weekends and a turtle-neck on a Monday just to avoid the dreaded possibility of seeing my mirror image across a table or desk.
The problem is not limited to members of the same gender. More than a handful of times, I have been close to leaving the house when I noticed my wife Cynthia and I were dressed similarly in, say, jeans and gray shirts. Full stop. Here’s what I do when this happens: To the sound of my wife laughing at me, I go quickly to my bedroom to change.
It’s become a house rule, though I am the only one who cares about enforcing it. Cynthia and I cannot wear khakis at the same time. Or denim shirts. Or oatmeal sweaters. There is a uniform for the middle-class suburban male, and I can sometimes be found wearing it, but there is no way I am going to androgynize and twinify the appearance of my marriage.
Women, of course, are usually more sensitive to the possibility of running into a fashion doppelgänger, and celebrity mags make light of famous women photographed in the same or similar dress, asking, Who wore it best? Recently, while looking for a gift for Cynthia at her favorite dress shop, the owner, who knows me as a returning customer, gave me a brief seminar on how she shops for her store.
With her wholesale catalogs in hand, she indicated many outfits that she liked but would not stock because the product was too similar to something that could be purchased inexpensively at a lesser store. And her customers, though she did not come out and say this, pay a premium to distinguish themselves from all of the women who shop at discount.
Perhaps you think I should disapprove. I can’t remember the source, but somewhere I read about a woman who got upset when she saw her maid wearing a hat identical to one that she owned. From the telling, it is obvious that we should judge this woman harshly.
But remove the fact that the other woman is her housekeeper, and you have simply the awkwardness of an unintended repetition, an accidental rhyme, everything that is the opposite of elegant variation. You have an uncanny resemblance that makes both women seem less individual. A comedy of the self, like Shakespearean twins. You think you’re one of a kind, but your clothing tells a different story.
Now, I can live with my wife making fun of me, but I will not be a punch line to my gold-button blazer. That’s why I stopped wearing it years ago.
