Those ads from Mohan’s Custom Tailor never fail to get my attention. They are always the same, and always have been from the time I began noticing them many years ago. Run in the Times, they promise three custom suits (which can be defined as a sports jacket and slacks) and some extras for a bit under $2000.
Every time I see this ad I regret that I do not and never did own a single piece of custom made clothing. I bought my wedding suit off the rack at a discount store, and to this day think that the $200 Barney’s suit was one of the better deals I’ve ever found. But all the magazines that I turn to for fashion advice – GQ, Esquire, Men’s Health – tell me that a man my age should own a custom suit. Am I in some way inadequate because I don’t own one, or can’t justify the cost?
I never really learned how to dress right. I was never wildly inappropriate – my clothes were always clean and free of obvious holes. But my color palette hovered in the gray zone (a result of never having the energy to separate my lights and darks in the laundry). I did not know or think about matching my clothes. Fraying and small, less obvious holes did not bother me. I wore sneakers whenever I could.
Over the years, I have become my wife’s reclamation project. She taught me what colors look good on my and the basics of identifying clashing patterns. She points out to me unacceptable fraying. She encourages me to prefer shoes over sneakers. Whenever I wear an article of clothing that she has bought for me, almost inevitably – and this really is uncanny – someone will compliment me on it.
From a very early age my wife learned something that took me some four decades to realize: looking good invariably comes down to dressing well. Genetics and physical shape play a role, of course, but what people notice first and foremost is how you dress. That is where the battle is to be fought.
Reading the men’s magazines is fun, but their fashion tips to a man like me, struggling to figure it out and with a limited clothing budget, they are worse than useless. They are downright counterproductive. How, in the photo-shoots, can I possibly learn anything from a black and white photo of a man in a $6000 suit? What exactly do these chiseled models whose hair has not yet begun to thin and who do not pay for their own clothes have to do with me?
This is where I would like to offer my own 12 point plan for good dressing. But, of course, I don’t have one. Most of the time, I make an effort to match, and I know what colors work best on me. Like my European friends, I sometimes go through phases of wearing a sports jacket wherever I go. Often, though, I regress. Lately I wear my jeans with sneakers more than I know I should, but it’s easy, comfortable, and cheap to do so. My periods of regression inevitably come after several months of dressing better, but without any discernible results. Is anyone noticing that I’m wearing shoes and not sneakers? Does anyone really care?
I will not be buying a suit from Mohan’s, or the custom shoes that I want. In the meantime, I do my best with the conflicted hope that somebody really does notice.
