Marriage

I got married in1973. I had no money but somehow got enough of it to buy a black Brooks Brothers suit. I wanted to look as good in my own way as my bride-to-be, who wore a pretty off-white dress, looked in hers. Even then I had a theory about clothes, that they had to feel good on you and they had to be the right color for you; clothes married you to your own skin and to the rest of the world; clothes, if they were the right clothes, could show how you felt about yourself and others in a way that could make everyone you cared about feel good about themselves. Even though I knew this, I also knew that it was impossible for me to look as good in my black suit as my bride looked in her off-white wedding gown.

Ben Jackson is getting married in June, 2014. He's thinking of buying a Tom Ford suit in either black or blue for the wedding. He asked my opinion. I told him that he could wear one of Tom Ford's psychedelic smoking jackets and get away with it, that he's a handsome young man who looks good in just about anything. Then I asked him what Eda was wearing. He said a white dress, "kind of silvery." If it was me, I said to Ben, I'd get the black suit. You can't go wrong with black, a black suit will last you the rest of your life.