Suit Yourself

Suit Yourself
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday July 4, 2015

Most of us are occasionally troubled by the prospect of looking passé. Except my husband. Not quite fifty, his latest fashion fancy is dressing like a squire en route to a clay pigeon shoot.

Last week he sauntered in the door after work, tummy first, proudly sporting a new woollen puffer vest.

From the high ground beside my kitchen bench, I watched him bimble down the hallway, shuffling through the day’s mail. His puffer vest was constructed from some variety of battledress serge, gunmetal grey, with the delicate weave of an army blanket. A 360-degree matrix of padded panels hugged his torso like a mattress. He wore his new vest zipped to his throat, emphasising a dewlap of chin. Here, I thought, is a man who likes to be protected from the elements while still remaining camouflaged in the field.

“Cold outside?” I smirked.

He leaned in to kiss me hello but didn’t take the bait.

Up close, I saw his new vest had a reinforced shoulder patch, presumably to absorb gun recoil. And superfluous pockets for spent cartridges.

“Been shooting grouse, darling?”

He ignored me and settled himself on a stool, noisily spreading his newspaper on the bench. I couldn’t help myself. I took a step towards him and gave him a hug, then fondled the nap of his new vest. I hooked one thumb inside the armhole and made a pretence of checking the density of the padding, kneading the wadding between my fingertips like a Savile Row sempstress.

“Goose filling?” I enquired.

He looked up and addressed me with an expression of wearisome disdain.

“Only one goose here,” he deadpanned, and went back to his paper.

Out-foxed, I resolved to reclaim the crown of marital oneupmanship.

“Honey,” I said sweetly, reaching for his shoulders to gently rotate him towards me. “What I’m about to say is an observation, not a criticism. But a middle-aged man affectionately described as ‘portly,’ should probably steer clear of any item of clothing referred to as ‘puffer.’”

He shrugged: “Like I give a toss.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the end of our conversation. I was lost for the last word. I decided to leave the low-end of men’s fashion well alone and resumed skinning potatoes for a shepherd’s pie. Contemplating my peelings, however, I wondered if my husband had lost interest in his appearance.

In recent months, I’ve noticed his laissez-faire attitude towards costume. Last weekend, he returned, grinning, from a shopping expedition. With a flourish, he pulled from a Best ‘n Less bag, a black t-shirt shouting in white capitals: “IF YOU NEED ANYTHING FROM ME, RECONSIDER.”

I’ve never understood the point of talking t-shirts. Wearing a joke on your chest is like telling the same gag over and over until people recoil at the sight of you.

What’s more, there comes a time in a man’s life when his t-shirts no longer fit as they should. They glide over the shoulders nicely enough, but then cling to a pair of chest hillocks and a mound of midriff. ‘Thickening’ is the polite term, but I like to refer to it as ‘tittiness.’ I’d like more vanity from my husband, not less.

But what confounds me most is the enjoyment he derives from other peoples’ reactions to his lurid ensembles. This is a man who has never been afraid of colour. For a friend’s birthday lunch at a swish winery, he partnered his favourite neon-green polo shirt, (a small rip under the arm; fraying at the collar) with a pair of navy chinos, a black – possibly bulletproof – neoprene vest and his new fawn desert boots.

“Well howdy Walker, Texas Ranger!” I drawled as he emerged from the bathroom in a waft of Rexona. He rolled his eyes and pointed to his suede boots: “Soft as a slipper, light as a feather, tough as the desert,” he intoned, gathering his wallet and keys.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for self-expression. I can enjoy the irony of a nearly 48-year-old man wearing an 88-year-old man’s cardigan. I can tolerate a lilac polo shirt, brown corduroys and orange sneakers. I’m even amused when they’re worn concurrently. But I draw the line at a gaping armhole and a shirt missing twenty-percent of its collar.

We pulled into the winery car park. As I followed my middle-aged fashion plate into the restaurant, I thought I saw several heads swivel. An elderly woman tracked him as he passed, then whispered to her husband. A man seated to my left let out a soft sarcastic whinny.

And suddenly, I felt defensive of my Lone Wolf McQuade. He of the beige desert boot, the XL puffer vest, the electrified lime polo.

Vanity’s a nuisance. The conceited are by turns annoying or absurd. How refreshing to find a man devoid of narcissism. And bulletproof to boot.

Dressing Down

Dressing Down
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 29, 2014

I thought I’d arrived early, but to my dismay I was unfashionably late. A warehouse frock sale waits for no woman. The hall opened at 9. It was now 20 past and the building was heaving with bargain hunters.

I’m normally a prudent shopper, but my commonsense turns to compulsiveness when my favourite brand is discounted by 70-percent. I paused in the doorway to absorb the arresting sight of a hundred women on a shopping assault. A flock of twenty-somethings swooped past me and descended on a table of $20 jeans like seagulls on fish ‘n chips. I scampered over to join them.

A gaggle of trendy mothers, trailing their toddlers, kept up a running commentary as they rifled through a rack of embroidered shirts. “It doesn’t matter if we buy the same one,” called one. “Just ring me before you wear it!” Beside me, two middle-aged women were grousing about the lack of bigger sizes.

Finishing up at the jeans table, I elbowed through the throng and squeezed in beside a leggy exotic-looking woman who was sifting through a rack crammed with silky tops and dresses. In the presence of such lithesome beauty, I felt like a pelican in the company of a flamingo. “Swap?” she said.

I looked at her blankly.

“Swap?” she repeated with a hint of annoyance. I realised she was impatient to exchange places so she could examine the rest of the rack. Feeling stupid, I feigned nonchalance as we side-stepped around each other. She resumed her intense inspection of price tags.

I bent down to pick up a crumpled cream smock, which had slipped from its hanger. I held the dainty thing against me: could it fit?

“Are you going to try that?” said the flamingo, eyeing off my prize.

“I’m not sure. Is it a shirt or a dress?”

“On you, a dress.”

“Oh,” I replied, defeated. “My mini-dress days are over. You try it.”

“Thanks,” she said and added it to the collection of hangers already dangling from a slender hand.

After ten minutes, I’d exhausted my search but a peach-coloured cardigan, some grey jeans and a pastel top were showing promise. I picked my way towards the makeshift changeroom at the back of the hall.

Communal dressing rooms unnerve me. This one had a crude curtain barely shielding us from public view. I staked my claim to a square foot of floorboards, and attempted to undress gracefully. Strangers, stripped to bras and knickers, fussed with zips and buttons.

No-one made eye contact. I tried to avert my gaze from the nudity on parade but short of shutting my eyes, it was impossible. Hopping to remove the pair of cheap but too-tight jeans, I reflected on our different bodies: the taut tummy to my left, the pot-bellied one in front, the one now puckered from pregnancy. I sucked mine in and tried on the cardigan.

Knickered bottoms ranged from scrawny to wobbly, ample to pert. I compared my despised muscly calves with the slender legs attached to the girl beside me. None of us said a word as we wriggled into shirts and dresses and tops and pants. Some fitted. Some felt like tourniquets.

I reached for the pastel top. Lifting my arms, I slipped it over my head. Half way down it jammed around my forehead. I tried to ease the fabric past my ears, but it refused to dilate. Blindsided, I clumsily felt around the neck-hole to locate the button I’d missed. There wasn’t one. Squirming to free myself, I hoisted the shirt off my head and flushed with embarrassment.

“I can’t get my head through the hole!” I wailed.

The girl with the ballerina legs snorted. And with that, we dishevelled women dropped our guard and began to chat.

“Give it to me!” said a petite lady to my right. She looped the shirt over her head where it stuck fast across her eyebrows. I leaned over and helped her tug it free.

“Thank goodness it’s not just me!” I said.

“Nope,” she replied. “I must have a fat head too!”

“How ridiculous!” said the tall woman in the corner as we passed the offending shirt around for inspection. “Now our heads are too big for fashion?!”

“What do you think?” asked the leggy girl. Trying on a lacy dress, she was analysing her reflection in the mirror.

“I’m not sure about this bit,” I said truthfully, pointing to where the fabric billowed around her narrow hips.

“I’m built like a boy!” she moaned, twisting to frown at her rear view. And right there, I realised few women are ever happy with what they’ve got.

But the peach-coloured cardigan made me feel good. It was a steal at 40-bucks. I bought it as compensation for my giant head.

Taking it on the chin

Taking it on the chin
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday July 20, 2013

It’s lucky beards don’t hold grudges because I make damning generalisations about their owners. Shifty weak-chinned buggers they are. I like to know where the beard ends and the man begins. Why the wearers of crumb-catchers always stroke their whiskers while thinking about what they’re hiding behind.

I’ve had some bad run-ins with beards. It started in the 70’s with Catweazle, the TV wizard. I watched every episode from behind a bean bag, revelling in being scared witless. I don’t know if it was Catweazle’s ratty goatee, the crazed look in his eyes or that toad he kept in the pocket of his filthy brown cloak, but that warlock did some lasting damage. Beards gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I turned the corner in Year 6. My teacher Mr Pearsall had an Abraham Lincoln beard, bushy but neatly clipped and a vibrant shade of orange. In the afternoons, he sat on a stool reading to us from a book called Stranger from the Depths, a gripping novel about a bunch of kids who befriend an underwater alien. As he spoke, his beard would catch the sunlight streaming in through the windows of our demountable classroom. His face aglow, Mr Pearsall and his incandescent beard were mesmerising. That book came to life in the hands of a man who might well have been an alien himself.

I never quite understood the appeal of the beard; why 98-percent of the world’s lumberjacks, sea captains and bikies are so attached to their woolly faces. But then I met Gordon.

Gordon and his wife live not far from us. Their Jack Russell and my 3-year old like a morning constitutional so we always stop to chat. I’m fascinated by Gordon’s wispy white beard, the way it fans out from his chin then tapers to a point halfway down his chest.

Even the slightest breeze lifts the delicate ends of his beard and they float up around his face. Abstractedly, he gently strokes them down: “Fifty years I’ve had it now,” he tells me, “Grew it at 30. Every day I comb it, shampoo it once a week. I used to plait it to keep it out of the way, or roll it up and pin it with a clip under my chin, but I’m a fading hippie now so it can fly free.”

His wife shrugs: “I still don’t like it” and Gordon roars with laughter. I suggest he might like to reacquaint himself with the bottom half of his face just to keep the missus happy. He gives his beard a pat and replies: “Nope, too late. It’s part of me.”

My razor-sharp spouse likes to grow a beard on holidays. He calls it a beard but really it’s just ginger scraggle. After two weeks it’s like a badly mown lawn – tufts growing east on one cheek, south on the other, a prickly clump on his chin sporting a smear of dried toothpaste.

But that scruff of whiskers has a strange effect on him. Newly hirsute, he fancies himself as Chuck Norris. I play along and declare him the most macho bloke. And then the bearded one kisses me like he’s Lone Wolf McQuade and days later I’m still applying ointment to my gravel rash.

This season’s footballers aren’t doing facial hair any favours either. Those bushrangers just make the game more untidy. I say leave the chin curtains where they belong, boys: in the 70’s – on singers like Kenny Rogers and Barry Gibb.

But certain beards have the ability to stop traffic. Only yesterday, catching up with two pals at a coffee shop, one girlfriend exclaimed “Hey! Check out that beard!” We all turned to look outside and there was an old gent with a giant Father Christmas beard, white and bushy with an elaborate moustache that curled up at the ends, giving the illusion of a permanent smile.

On older men, the beard can add a veneer of gravitas, on younger men, a rugged virility. Or villainy: Fu Manchu’s evil moustache became the template for Disney scoundrels and Hollywood’s bad guys. 

Whatever the fashion, I say Brad Pitt’s untamed goatee looks one park bench away from deranged. George Clooney’s salt and pepper version gives him the kind of retrosexual manliness my mum fancies.

These days, facial hair needs lessons in etiquette. A beard is too big if you can wring it out, or it joins up with the hair on your chest. A beard must not be used as a bib for eating garlic prawns. When two beards cross paths, the bigger one gets right of way.

None of this matters in our house. Yesterday morning, as Mr 7 o’clock shadow lathered up, I commiserated that the beard-growing season doesn’t start until Christmas: “Never mind,” I said “you look just as rugged without one.” “That’s nice, Blossom, because I haven’t had a close shave in years. Maybe you could find me a razor that hasn’t shaved the beard off your legs.”

The Naked Truth

The Naked Truth
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday May 25, 2013

My days as a nudist are numbered. Last week, in the mad rush to get my brood to school on time, I streaked past my husband on the way to the laundry to collect some knickers from the drier. Normally I’d have covered up with a towel, but I was feeling frisky, so I thought I’d give him an eyeful and set him up for his day at the office.

He was sitting on a kitchen stool eating Weetbix, absorbed in the newspaper. He glanced up as I sashayed past. I remembered the deportment coach from school telling us that a woman’s derriere is mesmerising to a man. I now get what she was on about – all that roundness and pertness, the curve of the waist giving way to the swell of the hips. So I floated by the kitchen bench on tiptoes knowing this would make my width taller and my cheeks cheekier. With a toss of my head, I shot him a wink over my shoulder.

He frowned at me and grunted: “Charming!” (This from a man with a milk moustache on his top lip.)

Deflated, I dressed as a hessian sack and slouched with the kids to school. Pushing my pram-borne 3-year-old home through the park, I deliberated: Is 45 too old to be getting around in the nick? Surely a naked wife at breakfast is more titillating than the finance pages? And if I’m now too dilapidated for household displays of nakedness, then maybe I’m too old for public displays of leopard print? Or leather? Was it time for my mid-life crisis?

In pursuit of enlightenment, I detoured to the shops. While small daughter dived into an icecream, I propped on a bench and sat back to appreciate middle-aged women dressing their age.

Women land in frock shops like homing pigeons. They coo to each other over the new season’s black and white, strutting with happiness to be in familiar territory. But the first squall of winter had willowy shop girls dressing their windows with Native American flavours – Cherokee-print cardigans, woolly and oversized and flattering only to long-legged teenagers called Pocahontas. If chunky cable knits are “in” (borrowed by the fashionable set from their boyfriends’ wardrobes), how will I look like in husband’s stick-brown number with elbow patches and a shawl collar? Five kilos heavier is my guess.

But there they were queuing up for the change-rooms, champion birds in their late 40’s, flushed from the gym and trying on those dangly cardigans with  jeans so tight I winced.  

Then gliding towards me came a 60-something fashionista. She was vacuum-packed into black leather skirt with studs down the seams and a plunging silk blouse that exposed a valley of leathery cleavage. Two teenagers did a double take and smirked. As she passed by, I noticed that she had the golden tan of the well-rested and gnarled toes from several decades of pointy shoes.

It takes supreme confidence to pull off a look that has other women mouthing “Mutton!” behind your back. But she walked with the aristocratic air of a dame who has (married) money. I admired her for the audacity of her fashion hope.

I’ve no such daring. I won’t risk short skirts for fear of drawing attention to my callused knees. That also rules out hot-pants and dresses slit to the thigh like Sonia McMahon’s. But skinny trousers make my legs look like strangled sausages, so they’re out too. What’s left? Aprons, overalls and peasant skirts. “Peasant” is one thing, but I don’t want to be mistaken for some wench harvesting a field of potatoes.

Up top, I have more problems. Middle-age spread is migrating from my dinner plate to my upper arms. My chest requires a pair of hammocks rigged with hawsers and struts, and the remains of my washboard stomach need to be disciplined with industrial underwear.

Then there’s middle-aged cleavage: too much is cheap, but I’m not ready for a wardrobe full of turtle necks. And don’t get me started on my neck, I’m praying middle-age doesn’t adorn me with a pouch like a pelican.

I no longer understand the fashion pages in Vogue, but the Women’s Weekly insists on dividing women into fruit shapes –  we’re either top-heavy apples  or bottom-heavy pears. I am an apple, but I’m only one Devonshire tea away from a pear.

Why aren’t men subjected to this fashion drivel? Men are either short, or tall. Fit, fat or thin. Or average. Average is a compliment. An average woman isn’t trying hard enough.

So we left the mall, my oval-shaped daughter and I, and mooched home. And that evening, I looked up the latest winter trends and discovered I should be wearing a metallic bomber jacket, a snakeskin print scarf and Frankie pants, which look like the world’s tightest tracky-daks . On a 45-year-old mother-of-three, that’s the kind of ensemble that gets muffled snorts at Coles. Until I find out who Frankie is, and whether she’s an apple or a pear, I’m sticking with my peasant skirt.

Mutton dressed as man

Mutton dressed as man
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday January 5, 2013
Section: Opinion

My husband is so fashion forward he thinks he’s the new black. Apparently, the new black is a portly but cute middle-aged father of three with Henry Kissinger glasses decked out in an electric yellow Polo shirt and cargo shorts with a hammer holder.

He’s not alone – I know other charismatic men of a certain age who dress smartly at the office, but who throw caution to the wind at weekends and go out in public looking like a one man sailing regatta – all stripes and baggywrinkled Bermudas –  convinced they’re the ship’s biscuit.

Or there’s the dad I know who favours an oversized mustard-coloured Rugby shirt he calls ‘Golden Boy’ because it protects against every combination of chocolate, coffee and clumsiness. If you’re a stylish woman blessed with a fashion plate husband of your own, you’ll understand where I’m coming from. Mine is more a fashion platter, an XL hunk of man who only sets foot in a clothing shop twice a year during the David Jones sales. It must have been there last summer, in the men’s department, that some pretty shop assistant managed to offload some unsaleable stock by telling him: “No, no sir, you’re one of the lucky ones – your ginger hair goes with everything .” (And canary yellow was everywhere in Kazakhstan this season.)

At weekends my Beau Brummel gets around in a kaleidoscope of loud boardies and even louder shirts. The new ones are so bright they hurt my eyes. The hot pink Polo is his pet right now, closely followed by the purple one with the chlorine stains down the front. His favourite shorts are printed with a rainbow of small elephants. Friends and family never tire of taking the mick: “Hey mate, when does the circus leave town?” but he refuses to take the bait. I fear he has become what the rag trade calls ‘the technicolor middle-aged.’

Don’t get me wrong, there’s not an ounce of vanity living in this man. He is no ageing peacock, he couldn’t care less what he looks like (obviously) nor does he give a hoot what people think. Clothes do not maketh my man, they are simply for hiding his nakedness.

I have given up trying to change him, or his clothes. I’ve got enough to worry about keeping my own fashion sense in check. But I bet on Saturday nights as babysitters arrive at their destinations all over town, there are wives saying to husbands: “You’re not wearing that are you?” All those tiffs that start with: “I’m not going out with you dressed like that!” Exasperated men trying to defend why they’re wearing their own ‘Golden Boy’ as the perfect camouflage for beer drips and gravy spills: “Hey, I chose this to save you some washing – I’ll get three wears out of this before anyone notices it’s dirty.” Uncle Tony says he’s learnt to save time (and marital grief) by saying: “Okay Marg – you choose what I should wear.”

I pity all those blokes being asked: “Does this dress make me look thinner or fatter?” Every woman knows this is a minefield across which no man has traversed successfully. I can see the look on my husband’s face as his brain registers a no-win situation. He’s only been waiting for me for twenty minutes while I agonise over what to wear. And yet my last act of wardrobe desperation is to ask a man who’s wearing a shirt with umbrellas all over it whether my outfit is flattering?

Those of you who think I’m being cruel should remember that I met this man when he was sporting a pair of Dunlop Volleys. I fell in love with him anyway. Since then I have had to attend all manner of social occasions on the arm of a man who thinks dressing up is wearing a cardigan.

Last Father’s Day I spotted an old man’s cardie in a shop selling Fair Isle jumpers  and other grandfatherly  attire and knew right away he would be beside himself: shawl collar, cable knit, covered buttons, deep pockets, I can’t remember if it had elbow pads but I bought it anyway. As a joke. I’ve had to put up with him going out in it every chance he gets with all the buttons done up. When the weather’s changeable he teams it with the elephant shorts.

On occasion, my fashion smorgasbord has been clairvoyant. He came home from a business trip to Spain some years ago sporting a pair of vibrant orange sneakers: “Mark my words, I’m way ahead of my time.” He wore them until they were in tatters, and basked in the smirks from strangers. Now neon runners are everywhere, and he likes to remind me:  “Orange is the new Matt.”

Having just moved house, I valiantly tried to cull his wardrobe. I had hopes of ushering some of the faded, torn or hopelessly stained specimens towards the Good Samaritan bin, but was intercepted with a furious: “Move away from the cupboard.” I made a futile attempt to argue the merits of spring cleaning but then gave up, defeated. In the end, it would be less trouble if the offending articles came with us. (Even the homeless have fashion standards.)

I have come to the conclusion that men, as they get older, realise that how they look has less and less to do with the quality of woman they attract. Partnered and 40, they stop trying to impress women by looking slick and cool because they’ve landed the one they want. So Monsieur begins dressing for comfort, sometimes in ways other blokes find amusing. He knows it isn’t pretty but hey – he’s still gets lots of sex from a woman who inexplicably still likes him.

No man ever calls himself a metro-sexual but they’re out there, being lampooned by my husband and his mates. Apparently, those young blokes who’ve converted to man-scaping their bodies with tattoos and shaved chests and skin tight jeans are letting the team down. In the name of research, I asked my James Bond some apparel questions as he was spread-eagled on the sofa watching Goldfinger. He was in smart casual: a favourite stained shirt with a pair of footy shorts last worn during the legendary  University Football Club A-colts 1985 grand final. “Would you wear skinny trousers?” “Only if I was man-orexic. “  ”How about a man-purse?”  “Yes, if you were Pussy Galore and I was armed with a Walther PPK.”

Perhaps men’s fashion should be left to those who understand it. According to Oscar Schoffler, the  longtime fashion editor of Esquire: “Never underestimate the power of what you wear. After all, there’s just a small bit of yourself sticking out at the collar and cuff.”What about the not so small bit of my man sticking out between the shirt and the shorts? His response from the sofa: “That’s the fuel tank for a sex machine.” (The bad jokes are never-ending in our house.)

I console myself that his self-esteem is rock solid. While I dress to conceal the naked truth I see in the mirror each morning, he likes to put it about in low-slung Levis and shrunken t-shirts. He still thinks I am living with a God.

So for any husbands out there wondering what piece of apparel they should make space for in the domestic wardrobe next season, my husband says the gent’s waistcoat is going to make a comeback. In grey woollen flannel a la Sean Connery in Thunderball. I can’t wait to see if he’s right. Or how it’s going to look with a cardigan.