Making Tailors’ Best-Dressed List Is a Tall Mail Order

Once again the Tailors Council of America has selected its list of the 10 best-dressed men in America, and once more my hopes of being on it have been dashed.

I would suspect the tailors of prejudice against newspapermen, given the reputation we have for sloppy attire. Heywood Broun, the New York columnist, was said to have looked “like an unmade bed,” that being a description that fits many of his colleagues.

It is true, however, that one of the tailors’ 10 categories is media, which presumably includes not only columnists but also reporters, anchormen and even editors.

And this year’s winner in the media category--I’ll bet you guessed it--is none other than Ted Turner, the television network tycoon and husband of Jane Fonda.

How can a lowly street reporter, or even a columnist, hope to compete in sartorial excellence with a man who could buy out every haberdashery in the country? Also, during his courtship of Miss Fonda, Turner was the darling of press photographers. His picture was in every magazine.

In another category, television, the winner is Mike Wallace, co-host of “60 Minutes.” Wallace is usually well-dressed. His suits fit. His neckties are not too flamboyant. But no one ever sees him except when he’s dressed up for his show. How does he look on weekends? What does he wear to the supermarket?

How can a reporter who is up to his knees in a mudslide one day and covering a drug bust in a dingy tenement the next expect to catch the eye of the judges? Even if he did, he would probably need a press, a shine and a change of shirt.

All the other winners also seem to me to be selected for their celebrity and not necessarily for their attire.

In government, for example, the winner is Bill Clinton, the governor of Arkansas. Clinton is a candidate for President, which inevitably puts him in the public eye.

In sports, the winner is, naturally, Michael Jordan, the basketball player nonpareil. It doesn’t matter that most of us, and that includes the judges, have never seen Jordan in anything but his basketball togs. The excellence of his street attire is taken for granted.

What about Magic Johnson? Magic has probably been seen in his street clothes, off the basketball court, more than any other athlete this season. On him they look good. Why would the tailors scorn him in his hour of greatest public exposure?

As you might guess, Lee Iacocca, retiring head of Chrysler, is the winner in the business category. Like Turner, Iacocca has millions to spend on his clothes. He doesn’t have to use his imagination. He just buys whatever his wife tells him to.

Not surprisingly, Warren Beatty is singled out as the best-dressed man in motion pictures. I assume Beatty was chosen for his wardrobe in “Bugsy,” not for his everyday clothes. He really looked snappy in “Bugsy,” but I don’t think he should get the credit. His clothes were ordained by the script and provided by the studio’s wardrobe department. I doubt he had any choice.

I suspect, as usual, that I made some fatal mistake this year. Assuming that the judges are watching me pretty closely, I have always been able to put my finger on the ensemble that probably did me in.

A couple of years ago it was almost certainly a lime-green jacket that my wife bought me by mail order. It is not easy to find accessories to go with a lime-green jacket, and one day when my gray pants were at the cleaners, I wore blue pants with it. That might have been the very day I was spotted by a judge.

This last year I suspect my rejection was brought on by a cream-colored raw silk jacket my wife also bought me by mail order. It has a nubby texture and is quite pretty, but it doesn’t fit me. The right shoulder stands up about two inches and pooches out, leaving a gaping open space. I have tried holding my right shoulder up when I wear it, but this causes me to seem to be leaning to the left and might have caused a judge to disqualify me.

I recently took the coat to a tailor and had it altered, for $20, so that it sits fairly well over my shoulder and no longer makes me look like a clown. However, the damage was done. Cream silk is probably out of style this year.

Whether I win next year, I suppose, depends on what my wife orders for me next.