An Englishman in New York, perhaps? I can almost hear the old, jazzy Sting tune from the late 80s about writer Quentin Crisp.
Here's a link to an interesting article in The Atlantic magazine about miscommunication. While the article itself is not about attire, it is very easy to see how what we wear might possibly send signals we would rather it didn't. Why risk that? Far better to get your rear end in gear and spruce yourself up (quite) a bit say I.
Admittedly, a walking stick, a furled umbrella, and/or bowler might be a bit much for most of us in 2015, but how about some creased dress pants worn with a damn belt, polished leather dress shoes (without squared toes), and a sports jacket of some kind over a pressed and tucked in shirt, hmmm? Get 'em new, on sale, or go used/vintage, but be sure to have the necessary basic alterations as I have mentioned many times before. You want to avoid pants and sleeves that are too long for you, which will make you look like a small boy trying on Dad's clothes. Or, to use use a Pennsylvania German expression that I haven't heard in years, you'll look like a "doofter". . . something akin to a doofus, a schlub, or a schlemiel.
The point is, that it's high time to rise above the middle, the average, the commonplace, the crass, the uncultivated, and the mean (think about it) in our everyday appearance and behavior, men. As my parents and grandparents used to say to us many years ago now whenever my sister and I brought home average to low grades/marks from school, "Average is nothing to be proud of. You can do better than that."
We are off to Michigan this afternoon to begin the odyssey of trying to find an acceptable dwelling of some kind for the next several days (I'd frankly rather chew broken glass), so I will be away from the writing desk until Sunday evening.
-- Heinz-Ulrich
This made me nostalgic for the days when one could assume that college teachers read The Atlantic and Harper's (in addition to knowing how to dress).
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