Man-Child Learns to Dress Like a Man

New York Times

15-02-2025

I changed my entire look shortly after turning 1, graduating from onesies to jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. No one at the time imagined it would be my final fashion evolution.
But I am now 53 years old, which is an age, historically speaking, when people are dead. And I still dress like a child.
I do not dress more immaturely than the other 53-year-old men I know. If anything, I dress better, by which I mean that my sweatshirts mostly lack hoods and my T-shirts mostly have no messages on them. But I have seen images of men in previous centuries, and their reaction to my daily outfits would be a pitying glance and a donation of spare change.
This look has served me well enough. So well that I never thought to question it until recently, when I saw Ted Danson in his new Netflix series, 'A Man on the Inside.'
For the first time in my adult life I thought, 'I need to dress like him.'
Mr. Danson, who plays a retired architecture professor named Charles on the show, was not suiting up for a corporate meeting or a wedding. I knew how to do that. He was dressed for anywhere. His outfits — deep-hued windowpane-pattern jackets worn with sweaters, collared shirts, pocket squares, ties — were five percent dandy and 100 percent classic. They radiated a breezy confidence that said, 'I'm a human who does not need a ride to the mall.'
My 15-year-old son, Laszlo, who also loved this show about retirees, agreed that I should dress like Ted Danson as Charles.
'I feel embarrassed when you pick me up from school. But also confused. Who would do this to himself?' Laszlo said when I made the mistake of asking him about my clothes.
I emailed Kirston Mann, the costume designer for 'A Man on the Inside,' and asked if she would take me shopping for a Ted Danson glow-up. She suggested, to my horror, that we meet at the mall.
The mall is where I spent my New Jersey middle school years, buying parachute pants and Capezio shoes. I thought we would be going to a tailor or a haberdasher or a suitor. I did not know all the adult clothing terms. But I knew that none of them were 'mall.'
Kirston admitted that the mall was not her first choice. But for expediency, options and the fact that her favorite men's vintage shop, Crowley, was 3,000 miles away in Dumbo, Brooklyn, we needed to compromise on Westfield Century City in Los Angeles.
As I walked through the mall to meet Kirston, I noticed that not one man looked like how I wanted to look, or even how he wanted to look.
We had all put on whatever was comfortable, nondescript and cheap. I wore a blue 'drinking hoodie,' equipped with a bottle-opener zipper and beer koozie pocket; socks that said 'I hate meetings' (a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law); and gray cotton chinos I had paid $25 for at H&M.
I instantly liked the bouncy, enthusiastic Kirston, although she is a liar. She said upon meeting me that I was 'nicely dressed.' When I asked her to defend this perjury, she said, 'You're comfortable in your look.'
While technically true, upon pressing, Kirston delivered a proper assessment, calling my look 'casual L.A. dad.' Each of those words is unsophisticated alone and devastating when strung together.
Kirston wore YMC jeans, loafers from The Row, a red shirt from Everlane and a tan jacket from Marni. This outfit, it turned out, was selected to get me to mimic her style. When she shops with actors, she not only invents a back story for each piece of clothing ('Your character's wife got you this for Christmas'), but also wears items that would work on their characters.
Our first stop was Buck Mason, where Kirston suggested a dark navy herdsman shawl cardigan ($298) and tan chinos ($158). 'You can just upgrade your look,' Kirston suggested, which I immediately rejected. She had me slip on a $498 black corduroy jacket, but it still was not Charles enough. 'You don't want to feel like you're in a costume,' she warned.
Yes, I assured her, I did. I wanted to wear the costume of a grown-up man.
We stopped next door at J. Crew, where she suggested I look at some less crucial items for a reasonable price, such as a blue button-down. But before we committed, she wanted to take me to Ralph Lauren. It's where, along with Ted Baker and Paul Smith, she and Ted Danson bought a lot of his character's clothes.
Immediately, the store felt right. It's less a store than an adulthood theme park, where, within a few steps, I could go from dining with Graydon Carter to horseback riding with Graydon Carter to teaching a literature class with Graydon Carter.
In the more formal, more expensive, Purple Label section of the store, Kirston picked up a gray-blue blazer and light gray flannel pants that she said she would buy for Ted Danson. But when I put them on, she said I looked like a 'P.E. teacher at graduation.'
I am four inches shorter than Ted Danson, my eyes not as blue, my skin not as pale, my hair not as Samuel Beckett-y, my face not as handsome. Ted Danson was a man who looked good even when hosting his podcast.
Perhaps a brown Kent hand-tailored herringbone jacket with elbow patches would be right? Kirston steered me away from that, too. 'I don't think you're elbow patch yet,' she said. Same with tweed: 'You need a few more gray hairs. Remember, you're more than 20 years younger than Ted.'
Looking like an adult, I was starting to fear, might mean becoming an adult. Still, I had spent decades working on this: assembling a wine cellar; reading all the Robert Caro books; amassing a traditional I.R.A., a Roth I.R.A. and a SEP I.R.A.
In my belly-of-the-beast moment, the one in which Ted Danson would lift a single index finger to summon his inner resources, the assistant manager Sean Lamping entered the changing room. Unlike at most stores, which kick you out for taking photos, at Ralph Lauren, they usher you into a two-room changing area with a desk, suitcases and other props. Mr. Lamping also brought a tray with glasses of sparkling water, which is exactly how I suspected adults shopped.
I spent more on half a Ralph Lauren outfit than I had collectively spent on clothing over the last five years: $1,458.53. I bought light gray flannel pants, which I've coveted for 20 years after seeing a photo of Jackson Pollock wearing them with a white T-shirt (on sale for $554 because they've been discontinued); a brown corduroy jacket ($698); and an $80 patterned burgundy tie. I would later add a white checkered shirt, a blue-and-red checked pocket square and brown Bass Weejun loafers. My pants, a bit too tight in the bum in that P.E. teacher way, were adjusted a week later on the set by the show's tailor.
I emailed my before-and-after photos to Ted Danson, who had not asked to see them. 'Nice choices!' he wrote. 'Maybe a gray sweater vest next time, or the ever-classic leather patches on the jacket elbows.'
Ted Danson is right. I should have gotten that herringbone jacket. But that would not have quite worked either. What I really wanted when I used the word 'adult' was what Ralph Lauren had always sold: nostalgia. At 53, I have stopped mourning my youth, instead mourning a younger world. I had frolicked in the last patches of midcentury Ivy, typing newsmagazine articles in the Time & Life Building in Rockefeller Center, expensing lunches with people who were not looking at their phones, arguing with Republicans about whether ketchup was a vegetable. I am a man on the outside.
I need to accept the world as it is. But at least I can look good doing it.