I just spent an hour this morning sorting out my folded shirt collection. For the last thirty years (or at least the thirty before I moved out here five years ago) I had all my suits and all my collared. shirts custom-made. This had little to do with an affectation and everything to do with the inability to buy suitable and proper-fitting clothes off the rack. For casual clothes I could find a growing selection (most recently from Duluth Trading), but no so for shirts that had to fit my unique body from collar to cuff. Every time I ordered new suits, I always seemed to add to my shirt collection. I would suggest that 80% were business attire and 20% casual. It came to be that 90% of my shirts could do double-duty and only a few were simply too colorful to be useful for business. Today I took the trouble to count the number of shirts I have. You see, I rarely thew out shirts since I had them professionally laundered and after a while, I had so many that they came up in rotation to be worn only once in a while. In other words, my shirts didn’t get a lot of mileage and since they were stored mostly in plastic bags from the cleaners, they kept pretty well. I’m not sure how old my oldest shirt is at this point, but I stumbled across once from 2000 and I’m certain that there are some in the collection that go back to the mid-1990s. There is a small tag on the tail of the shirts with my name and the date it was made, which is what allows me to be so certain about the history of these shirts. By my count, I have about 175 shirts, 50 of which I have cleaned and hung on hangers. The other 125 are folded and packed in plastic bags, which makes them convenient for packing for travel.
I have been parring down my suits and sports jackets, giving them to my nephews or the Goodwill, whoever wants them. I am down to less than ten where I probably had over thirty at my peak. I probably wear a suit three or four times a year at most, so I probably still have too many and will probably pare my suit collection down further over time. I doubt I will ever buy another suit again. I am less sure of my future shirt needs, but I bet I have enough to last me and that they will hold up well enough so that I won’t be needing any more of them either. I did buy six while shirts 18 months ago since white shirts show wear more than covered ones do. If I do need more shirts in the future, I suspect white ones will be the need. Since I was sorting the shirts our, I decided to group them by color to make them easier to find when I needed them. There is a preponderance of blue shirts in my collection, but the variation of blue shirts is pretty broad. White is white, but blue can range from dark to light, striped to checked, and more. I also have grey, tan, a few purple, a few green and some that are in ecru/yellow palette. Despite the variation in color and pattern, all of my shirts are cut the same way and have button-down collars and with single button cuffs. We all have our preferences and mine is to have a button-down collars that always stays in place and can be worn with or without a tie, buttoned to the top or left open. It’s all about versatility to me and the button-down is far and away the most versatile shirt.
For many years I cared a great deal about how my shirts were laundered. I like folded with light starch to keep the cuffs and collars tight. I used a place called Cameo Cleaners for most of my years in NYC and they were top-notch. They packaged shirts like they were new. they always replaced loose or missing buttons with perfectly matching ones (truth be told, my shirts all came with extra buttons sewed onto the tail). I am much less particular these days, but when I came across a few of my shirts still in Cameo wrappers (my rotation system is far less systematic these days), I found myself missing Cameo. These shirts were cleaned and packed over five years ago and they look as fresh and crisp as the day they were cleaned.
On most days I wear knit shirts from Duluth and Carhart, short-sleeved in the summer and long-sleeved in the winter. While they are all solid colors, they have as broad an array of colors as my collared shirts have. Like with my button-down fettish, with knit shirts I strongly prefer mine with a breast pocket. As for pants, I sort of follow the same pattern itch shorts in summer and long pants in winter. Duluth makes all their pants with gussets and slightly stretchy material so that big guys like me can be comfortable in them. They offer a wide range of pocket configurations from full-on cargo pants to more “polite” foreman’s pants with five pockets. The colors basically range from khaki to grey to navy and black. I have about 20 pairs and another half dozen dark jeans made the same way by Duluth. I see no reason to stray from the Duluth brand other than to support Carhart with a few shirts. I may like a deep inventory of clothes in my closet, but I don’t need so much variation in brand and style (other than color).
Today I went to our cleaners to have my tuxedo pants altered for our upcoming trip to my Goddaughter’s wedding in Tuscany next month. When I tried on the pants today they fit like clown pants. It was hard to imagine that I used to wear them and I was reminded how long it has been since I had the occasion to wear my tuxedo. Back in the day, I might don my tuxedo several times a week, but I am happy to say that those days are way past. If I didn’t already own a tuxedo, I doubt I could justify buying one these days. Depending on how the seamstress is able to cut these pants down (she estimated at least four inches needed to come out of the waist), I will either go through the rest of life owning a tuxedo or not. At least I can say that the jacket still fits quite well (not sure how that works, but it does). I have yet to find one of my tux shirts, so maybe I’ll be avant-garde and just wear one of my new button-down white shirts and find a shiny tie to wear with it. I’ve never liked bow ties, so that will suit me just fine while still looking formal enough for the occasion.
It is said that clothes make the man. The phrase, “clothes make the man” has a rich historical lineage dating back thousands of years. While many mistakenly attribute this proverb to Mark Twain (who did famously add “Naked people have little or no influence on society”), the concept is much older. The proverb was recorded in Latin by Erasmus in the Adagia as “vestis virum facit” meaning “clothes makes the man.” Erasmus was quoting the Roman rhetorician Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus), who wrote in his Institutions: “To dress within the formal limits and with an air gives men, as the Greek line testifies, authority.” Quintilian was in turn referencing Homer’s work from around the 8th century BCE. In English, the proverb is recorded from the early 15th century, though an earlier saying in classical Greek was “the man is his clothing.” Shakespeare’s version appears in Hamlet, where Polonius says: “The apparel oft proclaims the man.” The phrase essentially means that people will judge you based on how you dress, and that your clothing signals your status and character to others.
That suits me just fine at this stage of life. I am increasingly irrelevant and the plainer my clothes the more accurately they reflect my status. Quite frankly, I am very happy with how my Duluth duds make this man, and I am happy to “dress-up” with one of my 175 collared shirts about once or twice a week, thank you very much.