Streamlining the wardrobe liberates the tartan Armani

After the annual wardrobe cull. Photo by Reuters.
After the annual wardrobe cull. Photo by Reuters.

I've done the annual wardrobe chuck-out, applying a system of cold logic.

This requires that you first create a pile of clothes you don't need, don't wear, or else bought during your colour-blind period.

Next you sit down with an English breakfast tea and Afghan biscuit, and reflect on your life.

Then, your sense of proportion restored, you return to the heap and reclaim the maroon trousers and all the other gear you can't bear to part with.

What survives is carted to the Sallies' shop.

If you think this means the Sallies only get the rubbish, you're entirely wrong.

They receive the top togs, too.

Only last year their Queenstown outlet got an as-new Armani suit - yes, the real McCoy.

This majestic piece of Italian tailoring was made of fine cloth woven in a Prince of Wales pattern.

If you're not familiar with the classic old P of W design, picture a man with tartan golf trousers who buys them a matching jacket.

The suit was in mint condition, because I'd taken 10 years to admit there was no circumstance whatever in which it could be worn in a public place.

When I take clothes to the depot, I wonder who'll wear them next. Somewhere in Queenstown now lives a bloke who saw this spotless suit on the Sallies' rack, and thought: "Wow, a new $30 Armani - it's got to be worth a thou.''

He will curate it (as they now say) for about three years, before he returns it, still unworn.

For a good few years I was a suit man.

Each weekday I'd put a tasteful tie around my neck and go to the office.

Every second year I went to the US to exchange pleasantries with an associate company in New York, and it was here that I realised Saks Fifth Avenue was the best place in the world to buy snazzy Italian suits.

I'd lay two in the suitcase and return home believing I'd made an investment in convincing customers I was sound.

Today, after a few years of reluctant culling, I'm down from north of a dozen suits to five and a-half.

(A navy double-breaster has carelessly mislaid its trousers).

Two haven't been worn since the millennium, and there's a dinner suit I'd have thrown out but for advice I heard from Downton Abbey's dowager Countess.

The Earl of Grantham had decided that rather than going down to dinner dressed up in white tie, he'd wear his dinner suit.

"Really?'' sniffed the Countess.

"What's next? You dine in a dressing gown, or your pyjamas perhaps?''

(Maggie Smith got the best lines).

The sad thing about studying a wardrobe of unused suits, is realising if you don't eventually toss them, someday there'll be an undertaker picking the one to bury you in.

I should pin a note to a sleeve saying: "Please R. him I. P. in his trackies, the Rod Stewart T shirt, and the blue fleecy.''

I suspect I'm one of the many who think they dress well, but actually don't.

It's partly generational.

Ours lived through the sexual revolution wearing clothes so appallingly gauche they should have ensured we weren't invited.

Hot pants were the joyful exception.

The girls wore them so tight I couldn't breathe.

(Apologies, Benny Hill).

Despite what some believe, clothes are important.

If we study the history of mankind, we realise that at its key turning points, naked people have had remarkably little influence.

The world would have been spared a great deal of bother if Herr Hitler had been forced to address the torchlight rallies in his underpants.

And of course clothes make a statement about their wearer.

Take Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the most elegant woman of her time.

This American blueblood said: "The trouble with sex is it rumples the clothes.''

If you believe this proves she was a spoilt, prissy clotheshorse, think again.

Her statement actually reveals the First Lady wouldn't let being all dressed up get in the way of a quick opportunity.

So what then should we make of America's most popular president?

What kind of man was JFK?

A 36 regular, I should think.

- John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.

Comments

Les culottes chaud. 1971. Was it not ghastly? An entire industry given over to female design pleasing to the male gaze. People made records about Hot Pants, DJ's chatted about hot pants on the asinine station "Mini Show with The Maxi Sound".

That was another good reason for Feminism