“If I’m going out in the world, I should make everything look as good as it can by looking my best, it’s a show of respect. Maybe a lot of you are thinking ‘oh he’s so full of it’, but this is how I feel, is that it’s a show of respect to other people who have to look at you! You should try to look as good as you can look and help make the scenery look good.” ~ Tom Ford
Maybe the heat had finally gotten to me. When it’s a hot and humid 97 degrees outside, that can happen. Especially when we’re social distancing and trying to survive a world-wide pandemic. And so I woke on a sultry summer morning, feeling not quite perky enough to face the day, before remembering Tom Ford’s advice to get dressed up whenever you feel as if you’re in a funk. It’s actually good advice, even if the temperatures would argue against a suit and tie. Yet another example of leading with your physical self to condition your mental self into following suit. Despite years of practiced pessimism, it really does work. At least for me, and for the momentary lifting of a mental cloud. It realigns the perspective and thinking, and it tricks you into mentally re-inhabiting those moments when you were decked out and ready to take on the world.
I picked up this day-glo jacket the last time I was in New York, while on a ‘Swan Lake’ extravaganza with Suzie. In January, it looked like we had a whole spring of wardrobe opportunities. Somewhat needless to say, it stayed on its hanger, tags still attached, until I finally used it to brighten an otherwise mundane day when I needed its jolt of happy color. The lavender Brooks Brothers shirt peeking out was a pre-COVID purchase as well, back when I was still dressing decently for weekday office work. Suiting back up already felt foreign, and it struck me how much and how quickly our world has shifted. There was something terrifying in that, and so I pulled an orange bow tie around my neck, hoping to harness the fear, the unknown, the impulse to freak out. Grateful for the fact that bow-ties are supposed to be messy, I didn’t bother retying it, but embraced its wayward style. This was just for me, and this new version of me, forged in the past few months of all sorts of self-improvement endeavors, has come to appreciate the good-enough rather than insisting on the perfect.
That may be the greatest lesson of this year.
“Glamour is something more than what you put on your body. It has to do with the way you carry yourself and the impact you have on others.” ~ Tom Ford
