My good friend was in town for a deposition. His law firm had recently transferred him to Manhattan and he was in shock over housing costs. “The place I rented is smaller than my living room in Lauderdale,” he said over lunch. “I don’t even have room to hang my suits.”
“How many suits do you have?” I asked. He shrugged. “A couple dozen, I guess.” He saw my look of surprise. “Why; how many do you have?” he asked.
I changed the subject. I am embarrassed to admit it to corporate suit-and-tie types, but I don’t own a suit. I go to work in shorts and a tee shirt, and the dry cleaners lost the one suit I would wear to weddings and funerals. Since no one I know is planning to marry or die anytime soon I see no need to buy a new one. My track record with suits is not good.
The first suit I ever wore was at my big sister’s wedding. I was four and my brother was three, and my mother, in a fit of “cute” I have never forgiven her for, dressed us in matching sailor suits, complete with blue serge shorts and black knee socks. At family reunions, insensitive relatives still discuss those suits.
After the sailor suit debacle my father decided to take charge of his sons’ wardrobes and for my big brother’s wedding several years later he selected seersucker for me, which I wore with a bow tie and Hush Puppies. I remember him telling my horrified mother that seersucker “would never go out of style.”
I was a freshman in high school when my next sister married and I had a major fight with my mother who, in honor of the bicentennial, wanted me to wear a red, white and blue houndstooth suit. Inexplicably, I decided that brown plaid polyester, in a style and cut favored by generations of circus clowns, was more tasteful. Thankfully the marriage did not last and my sister destroyed the wedding pictures.
By the time of my senior prom I was fully in control of my wardrobe, so I have no one to blame but myself for the lime green polyester tuxedo I selected. I remember that my date and I took pains to match my tux to her lime green gown which made us look like guests at Kermit the Frog’s wedding.
After college I was hired as a flight attendant for a start-up airline which forced me to wear a suit which, they insisted, was “teal” but everyone else called turquoise. Later, when the airline folded, I somehow thought it appropriate to wear my turquoise suit to my best friend’s wedding. At the reception the conversation was evenly split between “The bride looked lovely” and “Who is the idiot in the turquoise suit?”
The last suit I bought was for my niece’s wedding. Given my sartorial history, I decided to stick to basic black. Unfortunately my brother, a thrifty soul, had a “buy one/get one free” coupon so we both ended up, once more, in identical suits: double-breasted numbers that looked good on him but made me look like I was wearing a straightjacket. Together, we looked like pallbearers at a Staten Island funeral. As fate would have it, I spilled a cup of coffee on myself at the reception, took the suit to a dry cleaner and thankfully never saw it again.
Now, my friend brought me back to reality. “Really,” he said, “how many suits do you own?”
I waved my hand dismissively. ”Who’s counting?” I asked.