Like It Or Not, Clothes Send Out A Message

‘I don’t design clothes. I design dreams.” - Ralph Lauren

Dear Jennifer James: I wonder if you have ever thought about the meaning of clothes. I am 55, male, divorced and don’t have much money.

I met this lady a few times, I thought she liked me. I invited her to the opera. When I picked her up she seemed uncomfortable. I thought it must be the way I was dressed. Afterward she wanted to go right home and she hasn’t answered her telephone since.

I feel embarrassed. What does it matter what a person is wearing? Is she shallow or am I just a fool or something? - Paul

Dear Paul: Clothes are everything and nothing depending on the person and their dreams. Clothes were once class. Wealthy people dressed up because they could afford the clothes, had servants to maintain them and it set them apart from “blue collar” working people who had neither money nor time.

When you know very little about someone you judge them by traditional standards, cleanliness, neatness, clothing, language. The opera was once a test of one’s class, i.e. expensive formal wear, as much as one’s love for music.

You made two mistakes: assuming she could see beneath your surface on the first date, and treating the opera as an average event. After your friendship developed you could have talked about clothing, asked for her opinion and dressed more casually for the opera. She would by then know the man and have gotten beyond the clothes if she was interested in you.

Or, maybe not if she was more interested in style than relationship. It is hard to know where the line is. A more open woman might have teased you, gotten to know you and then told you she wanted more care in your dress and you could have said yes or no.

The problem was her unwillingness to talk about it. A woman who would not communicate about clothes might choose not to answer her telephone about more important things. Let her go.

Find a male or female friend you believe has a nice sense of style. Tell that person you are back out in the dating world and you need advice. Grit your teeth and invite your friend over to clean out your closet. Hide your favorites for around the house or anonymous errands. Take your friend with you to shop for one pair of pants and two shirts.

You can buy very inexpensive clothes if they fit well and are cut well. Then stick with casual dates until you can afford to fill out your closet. I’m not your mother, but clean up your body and your hairstyle, too.

Why do all this? Because it gets people past the first signals in the first meeting and lets them feel safe enough to get to know you. It is the same for you. You are unlikely to be attracted to a woman who is unkempt and frumpy or lacquered and bejeweled.

Most of us have to dress in ways that may not interest us. I am an overalls kind of woman. I find Eddie Bauer too high style. But I have to work in a business world of thousanddollar suits and expectations. So I have business “ensembles” that I wear as rotating uniforms depending on the weather.

I used to buy “classy” clothes but my closet is full and I never wear them. At a fund-raiser last month at my house my neighbor made me go upstairs and change clothes. I thanked her because she knew what was good for the occasion and I was ignoring it. That’s all you need to do: evaluate the occasion and dress in a way that lets people talk to you. - Jennifer

Dear Jennifer: In a recent column you published a letter from Roy, who stated, “I find that my greatest weakness as a liberal is my open mind.” You responded by criticizing the liberal’s sense of reality and the conservative’s need for control. The truth is that conservatives are for less government control. Please be more careful when you make these liberal open-minded judgments. - Anne

Dear Anne: First of all, conservative or liberal, I say “pooh” at these meaningless labels. Most of us are mixtures because politics and values are too complex for such simplistic boxes. I remain a fan of open-mindedness.

Now to who wants more control. History tells me that governments that invade bedrooms to control sex, deprive groups of their civil rights in order to enforce a class society or legitimize discrimination, tax the poor more than the rich, favor term limits, support prayer in schools, want to limit women’s reproductive choices and build more prisons are big into control. I support some of this need for control. The main issue for me is whom they want to control and why? - Jennifer

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