As this is fashion week, and as the city is full of people who have forgotten more about haute couture than I will ever know, my ignorance on the subject will be even more apparent than usual.
Usually this is not such a big deal. But Fashion Week demands an expertise that I have not developed as much as I should have. The paint-stained khaki pants and the old running shoes are clues.
Such ignorance can be embarrassing. For example: I attended two concerts last week: my friend Cindy Church’s CD launch at Hugh’s Room and Eleni Mandell at the Drake the following night. And I was so bowled over by both of them, I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what either of them were wearing. What they were wearing was the furthest thing from my mind.
Not that I don’t like fashion. I’m a Giorgio Armani guy, myself, a relationship that — so a quick glance through my closet will reveal — has no basis in reality whatsoever. But then, I’m used to having no basis in reality.
I’m a man. I’m a Julie Christie, Emmylou Harris and Penelope Cruz kind of guy, too. Not much cooking on those fronts, either, I’m afraid. But one lives in hope.
I’m sure fashion needs at least a week to explain itself. But were I called upon to summarize everything a man needs to know about men’s clothes, I’d say five words: “Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest.”
Take your fashion cues from the one blue, two-piece suit that is featured throughout and you can’t go far wrong. Stick to the classics. A useful rule of thumb for any man thinking about getting out of the shower: if Cary Grant wouldn’t have worn it, don’t. Men’s clothes are easy.
Things get tricky for me when I’m asked to make an observation about women’s fashion — a request, I have to admit, that has yet to be made by anyone. I appreciate the fact that the view of a post-middle-age, pre-elderly heterosexual male is an extremely narrow demographic during Fashion Week. But I’m not sure it is a view that should be dismissed entirely.
After all, nobody loves women like we love women. We’ve been around the block once or twice. And now we stand at the golden moment when experience has not yet been eclipsed by incontinence. Even so, here is the difficulty that I have with fashion. And I very much doubt I’m alone in this confusion.
If you put a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress, there are those of us who can’t see the latter for the former. No matter how hard we try. Eyes. Hair. Smile. Etc. If you’re paying attention to how beautiful women are, the parts often add up to: “Dress? What dress?”
This is especially true when the beautiful women in question are beautiful songwriters and beautiful performers. If you feel like falling in love twice in one week, I recommend seeing Cindy Church one night and Eleni Mandell the next. But they could have been wearing rain barrels for all I know.
Church’s new album is called Sad Songs Make Me Happy and if it were walking down a runway, swishing the silky train of its jazz standards and wearing its broken heart on its sleeve, it would have the place on its feet. Either that, or in tears.
Mandell’s new album is I Can See the Future, and by the time she was finished singing charming, sexy songs such as “Iowa City” or “Girls” she had her audience at the Drake entirely under her unique spell.
If you have an opportunity to see either one, don’t miss it.
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