Trench Coat Can Cover--or Expose--Many Sins
The clothes we wear visibly define us. They can also become one of the more prickly sources of contention between the sexes. In this first in a weekly series of columns, two Times writers talk about how men and women justify their wardrobe purchases, from everyday wear to shameless indulgences, such as a trench coat Mott once lusted after--and bought at full price.
SHE: A $600 trench coat? For Orange County? How can anyone justify a purchase like that?
HE: I wanted to be James Bond. And I justified spending the money because I’d always wanted one and it made me feel absolutely great.
SHE: How much use have you gotten out of it?
HE: In Southern California, damn little. Traveling, quite a bit more. Also, I’m going to be buried in it.
SHE: What you’re saying is you bought this trench coat, which you wear maybe six or eight times a decade and the rest of the time you parade your Tobacco Road duds in front of co-workers. This is typical of men. They commit aesthetic assault on the rest of society with their everyday wear, yet can justify the most absurd purchases that only benefit themselves.
HE: That trench coat is hardly absurd in a downpour. You have to realize that men are not slaves to fashion. They buy with an eye on the calendar, not the clock. Take Cary Grant. He was one of the legendary dressers, and he kept wonderful, classic sport coats and suits for many years. Name the female equivalent of Cary Grant. In Orange County, women outspend men by almost 3 to 1 on clothing. Nationally, it’s the same. American women--get this--spend between $90 billion and $95 billion every year on fashion.
SHE: If women outspend men 3 to 1 and end up looking four times better, I’d say that’s a hell of a return on an investment. And bear in mind that women take tremendous pleasure in the sport of finding the bargain.
HE: Hunting and gathering in the untamed wilds of the mall?
SHE: Where else? We bring our purchases home to display our great skills before our families, much the same way a cat brings in a limp piece of prey to show off its prowess. That sense of triumph is what puts a Cheshire smile on a woman’s face.
HE: Don’t try to apply logic to an illogical situation. I know exactly what happens. Even though you paid half price, you say, “I’ve got the dress and now I need, um, everything else to match!” And off you go. You already have an avalanche of accessories. But you need something that looks just, oh, just a little more right than the one you have.
SHE: It’s just that women know how to treat themselves nicely on a day-to-day basis and give in to their impulses. We deal with minor stresses, where men let stress build up until they start shouting at slow-moving traffic. If men were real shoppers, the world might be a kinder, gentler place. Certainly better looking.
HE: But some women own 40 pairs of shoes. Forty? There aren’t 40 colors in the visible spectrum. Think of the money they’re wasting on something that might last a couple of fashion seasons--whatever that means--before it becomes socially radioactive.
SHE: As opposed to men, who’ll wear the same pair of shoes until they’ve discovered they’ve left the soles 10 feet behind them on the burning asphalt. A man will consider his favorite shirt high fashion until it wears out in the washing machine. That trench coat will probably be the only fine article you’ll buy with ingenuous passion.
HE: Money’s the key. If someone came along tomorrow with, say, $100,000 and said I had to spend myself into shock on clothes, I’d go to some posh men’s store and make those salespeople rich. But most guys aren’t Adnan Khashoggi.
SHE: You’re waiting to hit the lottery before you begin to dress well? Isn’t that a little extreme? Women are dressing well despite the recession, and they’re not bankrupting their families, cavalierly saying, “To hell with the car and the food and the rent.”
HE: I know a lot of women who dress fashionably and, not coincidentally, their pocketbooks hold an incredible collection of credit cards, all pushed straight to the fiscal wall. That would make me very uncomfortable.
SHE: These women who max out their credit cards on clothes are like men who try to buy themselves out of a midlife crisis with cars that look like UFOs. If you define clothes and cars for what they really are--adult toys--men far outspend women and have no trouble justifying their purchases. But bear in mind that once a man gets out of his sports car, he still looks like a sack of yesterday’s laundry if he’s spent all his money on the car.
HE: What I think we’re coming down to here is that men don’t see clothing as decoration. We’re more utilitarian about the way we dress.
SHE: That may be true, but it’s not right. Men really owe it to us to care more about how they look. I mean, it’s only fair, because looking good is what you expect from us. Think of how much better you react to a good-looking woman than to a dowdy one. Don’t even think of denying it!
HE: I would never deny that. But what you have to concede is that being in style doesn’t automatically mean looking good. Trying to keep up with the dictates of fashion is what maxes out those credit cards. Men should dress well, but you have to grant us the right to reject fashion. It really has nothing to do with dressing well.
