Partner and I both cultivate a palette of personal fragrances. He has a variety of favorites: there’s a Halston fragrance he likes, and a L’Occitane, and sometimes he branches out (I found a bottle of Sean John’s “Unforgivable” on his shelf the other day, and was very impressed that he’s branching out into hip-hop).
I am faithful to my favorite L’Occitane fragrance, called simply “L’Occitan”; supposedly it has notes of black pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and burnt wood, all twined around a musky base. I like to think it makes me smell mysterious. On ho-hum days I get by with a spritz of L’Occitane’s Ambre, and I keep their Eau des Vanilliers in the office for emergencies, although I wonder uneasily if if makes me smell a little too much like cream soda.
You’ll notice a lot of edibles on the above list: pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla. I always noticed that, whenever I wear something that smells edible, I get a lot of attention. (One day, when I was wearing bay rum, a person sitting next to me in a meeting leaned close to my ear and whispered, “You smell just like a muffin!” I chose to take it as a compliment.)
I get most of my New and Trendy Information from my work friend Tab, who is considerably younger than me; I believe he actually graduated from college after the turn of the millennium. We were hashing over the subject of fragrances, and he brushed aside my old-lady obsession with fancy scents. “There are really only two fragrances in the gay community today,” he told me authoritatively. “Older men -“
“Like you?” I said innocently.
“Well, yes,” he snarled. “Anyway, we wear Drakkar Noir.”
“And the younger men?”
“Ah,” he smiled. “’Fierce,’ by Abercrombie and Fitch.” He smiled dreamily. “Whenever I smell it, it puts me on alert. I know there's something interesting in the vicinity.”
So, kids, you know your choices. You can smell like burnt wood and vanilla orchids, like me; you can smell like a hip-hop megastar, like Partner; or you can smell young and cute.
Or you can smell like a muffin.
Which – trust me – will make you popular with a lot of people.
I don't understand fashion at all. It's like high-school type peer pressure, elevated to a cosmic level. If you don't wear this style, this year, this way - well, you're dead.
About a month ago I was walking to work and I saw a skinny local hipster waiting at a crosswalk. Shorts, porkpie hat, glasses.
He looked uneasy.
And, at a glance, I could tell you why.
He was last year's hipster. He was just a little too out-of-date. And that's pretty pathetic for someone in his (probably) mid-twenties.
How did I know this? I don't know. I am horribly unfashionable myself. But I keep up, and I read things. (Mostly the New York Times and New York magazine. Holla!)
This guy looked a little too ready-made. He looked like a product. There was absolutely nothing daring or original about his clothing, His ensemble was dull. The hat was yesterday. The shorts were just embarrassing. The glasses – well, doesn't everyone have those now? My friend Janet has those glasses now!
(Mind you, I was wearing a broadcloth shirt and pants from Kohl's while I was observing this. I do not pretend to hipness.)
(But I can still judge others.)
(Holla!)
I DRESS MYSELF is the slogan on the front of a t-shirt my friend Apollonia recently gave me. It features a picture of little Ralphie Wiggum from “The Simpsons,” wearing his bright-red pajamas upside down. “It made me think of you, babe,” she grinned evilly as she gave it to me.
Most of my friends think that, um, I don't dress well. Last week, I was wearing a lilac shirt with a nice purple sweater, and I thought I looked lovely. Apollonia called me “Purple Boy,” and later, “Eggplant.”
And stylewise: for me, it's like Edina said to Saffy on “Absolutely Fabulous”: “Darling, that blouse would look wonderful on anyone else in the world! Why does it look so terrible on you?”
My mother never trusted me to dress myself; she dressed me, and chose my clothes for me, for an embarrassingly long time. I never really learned colors, or style. And now I am the zhlub you see before you.
Partner knew this when he married me. When he gives me clothes as gifts, he doesn't just give me one thing, but two, like a matched shirt and sweater. The message is: wear these together. “But maroon and green don't go together!” I squeaked last birthday.
“Just do it,” he said. “It'll look nice.”
He was right, of course. He has a much more precise sense of style than I do, and a better sense of color.
(But I forget sometimes.)
Here's what I know of fashion:
I like cashmere. It's soft and nice. But it's bloody expensive.
Black makes me look like a seventeenth-century Lutheran clergyman. And sometimes I like to look like a seventeenth-century Lutheran clergyman.
A Facebook friend of mine told me that my profile pic made me look like the president of an obscure Eastern European country. I was so absurdly pleased by this.
I favor shirts in Easter-egg colors, but (strangely) most of the people around me think they look odd.
I also favor bright solid colors. Why not?
I had lunch with my friend Patricia last Christmastime. I walked into the restaurant wearing an orange shirt with a brown sweater, and as soon as she saw me, she hollered, “Happy Halloween!”
I give up.
From now on, I buy only clothes in blue, gray, and black.
And maybe lavender. And teal. And magenta.
