I pick out suits, dress shirts, ties and dress shoes for him. On the very rare occasions we need to “dress up” I honestly do have to dress him down to the point of tying his tie. He wears polo shirts and khakis to work. It’s actually a uniform with a different color shirt with the company name on it for each day of the week. I do mean for each day of the week, as in Monday is red, Tuesday is green, Wednesday is brown, Thursday is yellow and Friday is blue. Seriously. Everybody there dresses that way.
Thus, his other shirts are shirts I drug him kicking and screaming to the mall to buy. So there all either polos or long sleeve button downs. At least he’s not wearing his work shirts in public which he would if not for me. All his pants are khakis.
I, on the other hand am a perfect, impeccable dresser. I mean my wardrobe consists mostly of either polos, long sleeve button downs and khakis.*
Way back in the olden days when I was married, one of the few pleasant memories I have was my ex’s willingness to accomodate my taste in hairstyles for women. I have a sort of fetish for certain types of hair on women and she was gutsy enough to indulge me on that particular issue.
Actually, I think she was inclined towards the same sort of thing but my encouragement inspired her to be bolder than was common in our circle.
Mrs. J. is a great dresser, terrific taste, excellent fashion sense. She knows she’s dealing with a spouse who hates clothes shopping and tends to wear things into the ground (shoes? why would you want more than one pair of shoes? When the toes start to come through or the sole is flapping you get another pair).
Occasionally she dresses in a very provocative fashion and I have to telephone her to utter dire threats and curses to get her to behave. Other than that, everything’s cool.
Oh, yeah. Most of the time, around home (unless it’s damned freakin’ cold out), my hubby is close to naked. He goes around in just his tighty-whities all the time! His whole family is that way. One time, when we’d just started dating, I went into his house. His ‘little brother’ (who was probably about 20 at the time) was in the TV room, wearing nothing but underpants. Li’l Bro saw me, got up and left. I thought “Well, he didn’t know I was coming in; he went to put some clothes on”. Nope. Li’l Bro came back a few minutes later, still in just his briefs, with a bowl of ice cream!
My husband and I have a ‘hair’ agreement, too: he gets to say how long I keep mine, I get to say how short he keeps his. Our reasoning is that we have to look at each other’s hair a lot more often than we have to look at our own!
Now, if his tastes lead to a point where I had to use bunches of crap on it, blow it out, straighten it, curl it, etc. every day, we might get into a disagreement. But he likes me to keep my hair long (shoulder-length at least) and ‘natural’ (save for the hair dye I use to cover my gray). In fact, on our wedding day, he called the hairdresser to tell her not to put ‘too much crap’ in my hair. The hairdresser promptly told him “Look, this hairstyle has to last for at least ten hours; I’ll put in as much crap as I need to!”
Turns out, she put nearly as much crap in his hair! We often joke that if we had bumped heads during our first slow dance of the reception, at least one of us would have wound up with a concussion!
If I have to dress up and my girlfriend is also going, I’ll sometimes let her dress me. She can pick out the suit, the shirt, and the tie. She has a nice rotation of pretty dresses to pick from if we’re dressing up. Everyday wear, though, we pick what we want. When we’re out shopping, it’s odd. I have an odd time sometimes making sense of womens’ clothes sometimes in my head. It’s got to be on a mannequin or on a person for me to tell if I like it or dislike it, but I think I’m getting better about it. She’s also the same, but she’s not better about it. There have been numerous times where I’ll point something out and say it might look cute on her, she dislikes it, so I press on and she tries it on and ends up not minding it/liking it.
She’s learned to trust my judgment a little more, now.
However, some people, like me, actually want the input. I’m not going to be seeing myself, so I dress for others, and thus their opinions are more valuable than mine.
I don’t have a significant other (kinda hard when you become housebound and weren’t already in a long-term relationship), but I do let my sister tell me stuff. And I honestly think that the clothes she finds actually do look better on me–or anyone else she gives it for.
Now, her opinion on hair is not as good, as looks are not the only important thing there. She thinks nothing of it taking an hour to make it look decent–with her doing all the work because I can’t figure out to do the complicated stuff she does.
Sorry, rambling again. My point was to ask whether you would think it was a bad thing if the other person wanted to be informed. I wouldn’t.
My husband works in IT- jeans and t-shirts (usually from Threadless) and a pair of Converse hightops are his daily wardrobe. While not colour blind, he has no sense of which colours go together and would wear eye-poppingly bad combos if left to his own devices, so I help him put together outfits when we go out or he has a meeting at work. Usually he’ll pick the shoes and trousers and I’ll help with which shirt and tie combo works with that.
I usually ask him what he thinks of an outfit before we go out- if he’s not keen, I’ll change. I have some items of clothing he hates. An old but much loved waterproof jacket which I only wear for long walks keeps being moved to the back of the coat closet for example. I point out that it is practical, warm, waterproof and very good quality. He says it is ugly. I still wear it. If he had his way I’d also wear 6" platform heels everytime we go out. I don’t.
After 22 years of marriage, my husband STILL asks if his shirt/pants match. sigh. I guess since he’s an accountant/IT type, he fits in with many of the people described above. When I met him, he wore khakis and white shirts every day. He still only wears button down shirts in very subdued colors. It’s that midwestern Methodistness oozing out.
I mean my wardrobe consists mostly of either polos, long sleeve button downs and khakis.*