Who Controls Men’s Wardrobes?

I am increasingly discovering that were it not for wives, many men would be walking fashion disasters.

When my son was in high school (early ‘aughts), he would amusingly report on occasion that in homeroom class, the girls (it was always the girls in class - never the boys) would ask the very popular, very young, very male, very conspicuously married teacher, “Your wife didn’t see you before you left the house this morning, did she?” The teacher’s response: “No. Why do you ask?” “If she had, she would not have let you out wearing that combination (of color, of patterns, of fabric texture, or some other fashion faux pas).”

Subsequently I started noticing male coworkers wearing fabrics or styles that just did not go together (such as creased dress wool pants with knit golf shirts) or color or pattern combinations that conflict. Among the reasons I stuck with traditional solid-color or pinstripe worsted wool suits, Oxford cloth dress shirts with button-down collars, and silk ties for so long is that they are much easier to coordinate than the mish-mash of options that fit under the rubric of “office casual.”

Color mismatches started to catch my eye as well. Not all “blues” go together. Blacks can be noticeably different from one another. I’m sure some disagree, but I don’t think browns and blacks go together.

My wife is a quilter. So we make frequent visits together to quilt shops, especially when traveling. Over the years (we have been married 45 years), through her process of fabric selection, she has taught me many of the fine points of color coordination and fabric texture. She has taught me enough that she can even send me off on my own in the store to identify fabric candidates for a particular color she is looking for.

My wife’s favorite color is purple. But she had to educate me on details as minute as the differences between red-hued purples and blue-hued purples, and which went with which. I ended up with a lot of purple in my office wardrobe, especially in ties. I knew which suits and shirts they would go with, and how to mate purple (including lavender and pink) shirts with purple ties of various patterns and hues.

As a result, for the last 15 or so years of my professional work in corporate law, she even entrusted me to shop for, select, and buy my own work clothes. I have learned this is relatively rare among husbands. Several husbands have casually noted to me that their wives always accompany them to (or drag them to) clothes-shopping excursions.

A church choir director said she does not let her accountant husband shop for his own clothes - left on his own, he would choose the most ridiculous outfits.

Just this morning a young wife/mother confirmed that she is in charge of all wardrobe selections for everyone in her family, including her teacher husband. She wore a pained look at the thought of the wardrobe choices her husband would make if left on his own. :-) To be fair, my conversation with the wife was a follow-on to an assertion from the husband last week that he’d be so lost and would never show up at the right place at the right time without direction from his wife.

Men can conquer the world, but need our wives to get us out the door first!

So, husbands - do you select your own wardrobe?

Wives - do you let your husband select his wardrobe?