I am nothing if not completely predictable, especially in my fashion choices.
This was confirmed when I excitedly tore open a package from Land’s End recently to reveal a thrilling addition to my workwear. You see, when you wear dress shirts every day for work, you have to swap them out from time to time. Problems arise with the collars becoming discolored and the cuffs fraying. You can’t be a well-dressed professional with tiny strings hanging out of your shirt sleeves.
I am keenly aware that so many of you read New South Essays for the fashion advice and men’s couture analysis. My analytics show you also love the deeply personal revelations of a fascinating Southern humorist and influencer. This is the method behind my madness in revealing the contents of my closet in such an open and transparent manner.
If you spend more than a few hours around me, you’ve probably heard me make the tired, cliched Dad joke: “I have both colors of shirts, white and blue.” I usually make this proclamation when the conversation somehow turns to how cute someone’s outfit is, which, by the way, no one ever says about my “outfits.”
I also tend to bring up this fact about my wardrobe when discussing how easy it is for men to dress for work compared to women. I readily acknowledge this. Once I know if it’s a blue shirt or a white shirt day, the rest is easy.
A few years back I succumbed to the men’s fashion trend of going open collar with sports coats in professional settings rather than the more traditional suit and tie. I will still go bare necked (which is WAY different than “bare naked,” by the way) with a blazer, but since my day job from January to April had me down at Georgia’s Capitol many days, I went back to suits and ties out of deference for the seriousness of my endeavors under the Gold Dome and to represent my agency with the level of respect it deserved.
Santa Claus brought me some new neckwear this Christmas, and it was nice to roll those out over the course of the legislative session. It did require a level of daily planning I hadn’t encountered since my days at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
Back then, when my boss, Ben McDade, and I traveled, we had to coordinate our wardrobes. That was a business casual office environment with logoed polos and khakis. If we were on the road visiting media, pastors, donors or missions groups in some town in North Carolina and we emerged from our Hampton Inn hotel rooms wearing the same outfit, one of us would have to change. (Usually me, the sidekick.) Couldn’t have us looking like the Bobbsy Twins out there. (Yes, hearing that out loud makes me realize how dated a reference that is.)
Fast forward to this session of the legislature when my new boss, Chris, and I realized we had too many similar neckties. To avoid a scandalous “matchers” incident in a legislative committee hearing (“Mr. Green, is it true that you make all employees of the Georgia Student Finance Commission wear matching suits and neckties?”) we started texting each other every morning like middle school girls to make sure we weren’t wearing the same “outfit.”
Before you condemn my fashion choices as banal and understated, you have to admit there are benefits to having a simple wardrobe. I don’t have to waste precious time making decisions. With those extra three and a half minutes a day I’m saving I can send one more email or make one more pithy comment on LinkedIn. And by going with white and blue, I can avoid that faux pas of wearing a dark shirt with a suit and looking like a mafia boss.
The truth is, I’m just not that creative. I see attractive shirt-jacket pairings out in the wild, but I don’t trust myself to try to replicate them. When I branched out and bought a periwinkle blazer from Belk a few years back, I felt so flashy and attention grabbing that I was apologizing all day the first time I wore it for being too iconic.
Nope, it’s the simple things that make a man’s wardrobe, and I embrace simplicity. White or blue is an easy decision to start my day. Literally everything in my closet goes with one of those two options. There is no need to complicate life any more than necessary what with all these “unprecedented circumstances.”
Besides, everyone knows my real favorite color is plaid.
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