When It Comes to the Sartorial Easter Parade, Spring Is in the Flair

S urprise! They’re bickering again. She wants to dress up for Easter brunch; he’s thinking about wearing Bermudas and one of his you-know-what shirts. She puts “Easter Parade” on the VCR, begs him to get a load of natty Fred Astaire strolling on “the Avenue, Fifth Avenue . . . .” He, well , comes around.

SHE: An aloha shirt on Easter? I bet Don Ho doesn’t even wear one. Look at Fred--all elegance and panache. Those were the days.

I know we’re hitting a poolside brunch. But why not Vogue it? I can’t wear my ecru linen suit, white straw hat and pearls if you look like you just jumped off an outrigger. Maybe we should do brunch in Barbados.

HE: Since you put it that way (big travel bucks or a new suit), I’ll dress like Robert Redford in “The Great Gatsby.” Which, now that I think about it, doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Those ice cream suits can be pure hell if they come near anything that resembles dust (on an outdoor bench, say) but as long as you remain indoors or vertical most of the time you can cut a pretty fair dash. How about blazing white cotton with a powder blue shirt with a white collar and a fairly bright primary-colored tie? Or would that show you up (hee hee)?

SHE: And your Panama? Perfect.

I can’t help thinking about Easters gone by when I start planning my Easter Day ensemble. I see a parade of my old hats--the goofy white number that looked like an inverted lampshade covered with rose petals, the pink pillbox that made me feel so sophisticated because it had a wisp of net that covered my forehead.

Then there was the clear plastic one I made out of the top of a hatbox when I was in eighth grade. I wasn’t the most imaginative student around, so when our teacher asked us to create hats for an Easter parade at the local park, I pulled a lid off my mom’s hatbox, threaded it with blue ribbon and topped it with blue silk roses. I didn’t win any prizes.

HE: But you were acting in accordance with a very old tradition: the wearing of brand-new clothes on Easter. And that’s not just something dreamed up by Macy’s a few decades ago. It goes back to the time of the early Christians, when the wearing of new clothes at Easter time symbolized a cleansing from sin and a new, pure life.

Think that’s why we tend to get a little lift every time we wear new clothes for the first time?

SHE: Indeed. Especially at Easter. They talk about spiritual renewal; why not sartorial renewal? I’ll take a little lift wherever I can get it.

For years, my mother made my Easter outfits. I’ll never forget those moments of standing perfectly still while she fitted each dress--the blue and white striped cotton one, the pale yellow organza, the tea-rose polished cotton--to my scrawny frame. Such a labor of love. How I wish I’d saved those dresses.

HE: I learned to tie a necktie for the first time at Easter. It’s a little rite of passage for every boy, but this one had comic overtones. My dad had bought me my very own long tie, but he discovered that he couldn’t tie it unless he was looking into a mirror. So in order to show me how it was done, he had to plant me in front of a mirror, stand behind me and reach around with both hands to knot the tie under my own collar.

Weird science: Apparently it’s hereditary. I can’t do it without a mirror, either.

SHE: Bring on those ties--in pastels, stripes, zigzags, even cartoon images. They are to a man’s face what a ruby or emerald necklace is to a woman’s. I know they’re a pain, and awfully expensive, but a perfectly chosen tie lights up a man’s face. They also tell a woman: “I care enough about myself to go the extra mile.”

HE: Hey, I’ll cinch up that noose every time if I can be assured of seeing a big roomful of women wearing print dresses at Easter time. Those dresses seem to get better every year. I don’t know what it is about print dresses and Easter, but springtime would fall completely flat without either of them. Besides, they both go together like May and baseball, June and picnics, July and fireworks.

I tell you, a bright, flowing print dress being stirred by a spring breeze is a better tonic for me than Dodger season tickets and, believe me, that’s saying a lot. If they appear at a wedding, I think they upstage the bride. On Easter, they just plain make me feel good.

SHE: We love them too. Floaty print dresses bring out the girl in us. Too often these days, we women think we need to look like a man. We can have it both ways. A flirty print dress paired with a soft linen blazer gives us femininity with a tailored touch.

I think women have learned what men have known for ages--stepping into pants and a jacket is a snap. So we’re doing it too often. Tell you what, guys. You wear more ties; we’ll wear more dresses.

HE: My Easter tie is on my shopping list even now: the one with the huge iridescent bunny on it. And if I see, say, 25 print dresses in church on Sunday, I’ll consider your part of the bargain kept.