Fiction/Humor Memoir

Dress Code

It is not so unusual for guys of my age to say that they only wear a jacket and tie anymore to weddings and funerals. The last suit (and I really do hope it is the very last suit) I bought was last year when I needed to buy a tan suit (the sort that got President Obama into trouble) for my son Thomas’ wedding last Labor Day (2023). I haven’t worn it since and have no clue when I might have occasion to wear it again. Unlike those guys who are totally retired, I do have a few times when I need a jacket and tie for work when I am doing a deposition or giving testimony in a trial. When those are via Zoom, obviously the pants don’t matter, but I do actually need a suit or maybe two for in-person trial work. And to once again quote My Cousin Vinny, it is preferable that it be a suit made of some sort of cloth. I have trimmed down my suit collection to perhaps a dozen from twice that number, but there is absolutely no reason in the world why I would need even that many. The next time I work on my closet contents, I really must dispose of say, six more suits, keeping only those that I am most likely to grab to throw in a suitcase for a work-related trip. At most of my business meeting that are not trials, few if any people actually dress up more than a pair of better caliber slacks and a tailored shirt. If I manage to get myself down to two suits there is a life symmetry to that in that I landed in New York City in 1976 fresh out of business school with exactly two suits (one blue and one grey chalk stripe).

In another two weeks I will be in New York City attending a memorial service or the equivalent to a funeral. The guy we will be memorializing, Peter, died a month or so ago at the age of 84. His picture on the memorial gathering notice had him in a coat and tie, smiling from ear to ear. However, the cover note from his children said specifically that the memorial service, to be held in lower Manhattan (Peter used to say he was strictly a downtown kinda guy) was to be in keeping with their father’s lifestyle and that the attire was to be “entirely casual”. Peter would regularly show up at events where the majority of people were in suits or at least sports jackets, wearing a pair of black skinny jeans and a bulky cowl-neck sweater, also usually some shade of black.

In addition to my suits, I have perhaps six sports jackets, two black and two blue for each the summer and winter, as well as one that is checked blue and black and the other camel and black. Whenever I due to go out somewhere requiring a jacket I grab the checked ones, look in the mirror and take it off in deference to the solid black (my usual go-to preference) or blue. I can never get out of my head the old expression on Wall Street that blue blazers were like assholes, everyone’s got one. The checkered ones just never seem to look right on someone of my, shall we say, stature. I also have a dwindling array of slacks that range from what would qualify as lined dress slacks to more formal chinos. Those are all a bit dusty since they almost never get worn. When I have a sport jackets occasion, I almost always opt for a pair of jeans since that is both acceptable and at least mildly cool for someone of my age.

Tonight we are invited by one of Kim’s Encore vocal group gang to dinner at the LaJolla Country Club. This is a very nice, very liberal couple where the husband was a long-time corporate lawyer for Qualcomm. They seem to be quite affluent, as one might expect, and live in the most tony spot in San Diego County, the beach community of LaJolla, named after the Native American tribe that used to inhabit the area and now keeps a modest reservation quite a ways inland where the land values are equally more modest than in their namesake beach community. Despite their liberal inclinations this couple seems to be more of a golf & tennis crowd sort. I’ve played my share of both sports and participate in little or none of either at this stage. Some of that is physical constraint (the case against tennis) and some is psychological constraint (golf just feels to bourgeoise to me after years and years of playing the game). Truth be told, I also worry that the twist of a golf swing is more likely to tweak my back in ways I don’t like as well. Muscle memory is too strong in me and I doubt I can force myself to not swing like I was 20 years old.

Kim has been told by her friend that the LaJolla Country Club has a dress code that does not allow jeans to be worn, no matter how nice your shirt, jacket or even tie may be. I have giving this tidbit of information way too much thought of late, wondering what I will wear for pants. My pants of choice these days are literally all from Duluth Trading, the guys who take pride in the elimination of plumber’s butt crack by putting gussets in their pants crotches and making the “Firehose” pants with flex or stretch attributes (imbedded Lycra that we have grown to accept and love). I have what must be 20 pairs of Duluth Flex Firehose pants in various pocket configurations. Most of them are some form of cargo pants that range from work cargos to what they call painter’s pants that have just a few extra pockets and loops. I even have a few “foreman’s” pants with no extra pockets whatsoever, but still are made of Flex Firehose. A dozen of the pants are in khaki, so not unlike chinos or traditional cargo pants. The others are in grey, steel blue, dark brown and black. One of my obvious questions to the dress’s code universe is whether “no jeans” just refers to denim or whether it encompasses such things as work cargo pants as well. And what if your cargo pants are black or grey? Do those survive an inspection by the dress code police? I am sorely tempted to test the waters, but then I think that these are nice people who we want to socialize more with rather than less (Kim really connects with the woman she sings with). I do not want to give them or their club any reason to think I cannot color within the lines of a dress code. I was a member of Westchester Country Club and the New York Athletic Club for God’s sake. And next week I will go to stay at the Cornell Club in midtown Manhattan where they allow jeans, but only ones that are not ripped or too scruffy.

I understand the rationale for dress codes, but I still hate them. Fundamentally, they are elitist and, in my humble opinion, unjustified. Social norms are either something people want to follow to conform or they are specifically blasé about them. I think dress codes just make people like me want to find loopholes to get around them (hence the cargo pants debate) and they make people more militant than me flaunt them just to force the hand of the institution to call itself out on their elitism. I’m getting way too old for these sorts of games, so who am I kidding. I have appropriate attire in the closet and I need to just use it. I think I will wear a suit and go in the complete other direction, suggesting that the dress code is so ridiculous that I need to overshoot. If only I had a set of formal tails I could pull another My Cousin Vinny and wear some period getup that looks like it belongs on a southern plantation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *