THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512070548
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
I have been a walking reproach to the dress-for-success concept since the days when I routinely wore a Davy Crockett hat with shorts. My notion of a power tie is a hangman's noose. Once I attended a designer's soiree at Norfolk's upscale Town Point Club in the company of fashion writer Cammy Sessa and was pointedly provided with a coat on the way in.
That coat was lemon yellow, the sleeves stopped halfway to my elbows and, so close was the L'il Abner look to my customary ensemble, nobody noticed.
So I am a fair candidate for the edifying influence of Paisley Goes With Nothing: A Man's Guide to Style (Doubleday, 226 pp., $26.95) by Hal Rubenstein and Jim Mullen.
Rubenstein is editor-at-large at Instyle magazine and was men's style editor for The New York Times Sunday magazine. Mullen writes a column for Entertainment Weekly. Their book purportedly contains all the information a modern male requires to excel in a world where his socks aren't supposed to be funnier than he is.
``Men,'' the authors insist, ``should know how to buy a suit, how to cook without a barbecue, how to make a bedroom not look like a dorm, what excuses a woman won't accept, how to show a client a good time, when it's time to say good night, how to pick out eyeglasses, and who goes first through a revolving door.''
The answers reside here.
A few maxims from Messrs. Rubenstein and Muller:
A high-waisted person should avoid high-waisted pants, unless it satisfies his Eddie Haskell fixation.
Always shop when it's raining.
Once it's on, you're not supposed to smell your own cologne.
``The sleeves on a jacket,'' they maintain, ``should reach only to the fleshy part of the thumb. Any longer does not look hip. It looks studied and dowdy or as if you were still waiting for the director of the last version of `Lost Horizon' to yell, `CUT!' ''
Some of their advice makes sense to an ordinary guy like me, such as the stuff about looking for shoes in the afternoon when one's feet are wider. Some of it frankly doesn't, like the imperative to regularly moisturize my kisser. I figure I'll get enough of that shopping in the rain.
The authors are at their best reminding me of the obvious:
If you're not going straight to the meeting, why are you wearing your suit on the plane?
If you're going through more than one roll of film a day, you may be on holiday but everyone with you is in hell.
If you want to get away from it all, don't take it all with you.
And one other thing:
Iron, John.
Which brings us to a suitable companion volume, A Brief History of Shorts: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Your Underwear (Chronicle Books, 92 pp., $14.95), by ``Joe Boxer,'' a k a Nicholas Graham, founder of the lifestyle-apparel and home-furnishings empire.
This is the fellow responsible for those flashy numbers with the happy faces on them, and the chili peppers and the glow-in-the-dark messages and so on. As you might expect, good taste is not a high priority here. But if you are interested in knowing the amount paid for a pair of silk shorts owned by Andy Warhol at a Sotheby's auction in 1989, the information is forthcoming.
$14,500.
``It is now time,'' Boxer notes, ``in this most analog of formats, to put the mythology of underwear, as it pertains to American culture, in its place.''
His slender volume is, as it were, the skinny on skivvies.
For example, did you know that photographs taken from the space shuttle during its orbit of Earth revealed that Africa, Europe and Asia are, in fact, shaped like a pair of men's briefs?
Al Capone wore bullet-proof shorts.
According to a recent national survey, 75 percent of men's underwear sales come from briefs, 15 percent from boxers (I suppose the remaining 10 percent comes from ``other,'' whatever that may be).
The vigilant Joe Boxer sees a strong if unflamboyant future for shorts.
``When it comes to underwear,'' he maintains, ``gradual change is good, but daily change is even better.'' MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. by CNB