Photos of fashions and accessories (Cornelia Katchen); DO CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN?
Not long ago, shortly after reading Tom Wolfe’s ”The Bonfire of the Vanities” and being dazzled by Michael Douglas’s wardrobe in the film ”Wall Street,” I put on a chalk-striped shirt with a white tab collar and walked around in it all day. It was a subsidized experiment; the shirt wasn’t mine. The gold collar stick I wore with it was, though, a bar mitzvah gift that for 20 years I’d considered an enigmatic tie clasp. In fashion and other things, too, I tend to be one of those people who catch on to trends just at the tail end, after whatever it is isn’t trendy anymore, merely contemporary. I became a Springsteen fan, for instance, maybe a year and a half ago. Recently I’ve been enjoying Cajun food. Still, clothes that attain status, proclaiming either up-to-date taste or ostentation, fill me with curiosity. What would it be like to wear them? People noticed the shirt. A debate was catalyzed in the office. One guy, a few years younger than I am, said, sort of grudgingly, that it lo
