(Image: ByronMania)

Last evening, Mrs. E. and I attended a performance of “Guys and Dolls.” I was one of perhaps a half dozen men in a tie and the only one in a suit instead of a coat and odd trousers. Was I uncomfortable? It got a little warm during the second act, but certainly not unbearable (although a glass of chilled champagne would have helped immeasurably. Note to the Empire Theatre/Theatre IV staff: please lay on more than one bartender.)

The actors, in their authentic 1940’s double-breasted suits must have been far warmer under the lights…. And they were high energy performers, too. I don’t think it was too much to ask that we show a little enthusiasm at the prospect of a delightful evening out.

So, without further ado, a few thoughts I’ve run across on the art of dressing well.

Lord Byron is said to have declared that of the two men he admired most—Beau Brummell and Napoleon Bonaparte—he would rather have been the dandy than the emperor. As a young man, he scrupulously followed Brummell’s sartorial dicta, and was never seen without a white cravat. (Napoleon wore a black neckcloth, a habit condemned by the Beau.) Byron later abandoned his fastidiousness to the extent of having early portraits overpainted with an open-necked shirt, but for a time he embodied Brummell’s philosophy: the maximum of luxury in the service of minimal ostentation.

(From Cabinet Magazine, 2007)

And this from Richard Torregrossa of “Cary Grant Style” What to Wear to a Recession.

We’re off to the beach for a week, where I shall wear little else than a bathing suit or drawstring linen trousers and a shirt. Even I can’t pull off a sarong in North Carolina.

If the internet works, I will try and post a few thoughts along the way. Luck be a lady, tonight.

“I love it!” Said my Mother. “You look so Italian.”

But Mom, we’re Greek, remember?

“It’s very boy-ish,” said another friend.

“It’s a mane! You have wonderful hair,” says the exuberant Mrs. E. .

“You’re not wearing your glasses,” an actor friend noticed. “You really should, you know.”

I’m in the middle of a full-blown style conundrum. I’ve reached that age where people prefer me with glasses rather than without and with longer hair, rather than the classic “short-sides-and-back.” I suppose the glasses and hair distract from my rapidly expanding middle-aged waist.

So, I’m torn. Those of you who subscribe to the horoscopes will find it no shock that I am a Gemini and chalk it up to a split personality. And, to some extent, that’s true.

Certainly the longer hair is easier to deal with. Yes, it requires more work at first, but then it’s off to the races and don’t give it a second thought. Longer hair also seems to look better with the two-day beard. Perhaps the stubble (I refuse to succumb to the full-blown Barry Gibb) makes me look less feminine. It is a more “up-to-date” look for a guy who has never been concerned with fashion.

I don’t really have a public persona — no client meetings to attend, speeches to give, that sort of thing, so the hair/stubble isn’t a career killer. But I’ve always been clean-shaven and more neatly groomed. Well, since college anyway. Besides, I prefer the aesthetic of the “golden age of men’s wear,” the 1930’s. I even envy the man in the grey flannel suit as played by everyone from Fred Astaire to Cary Grant, Gary Cooper to … well John Hamm.

So I’m torn. There’s this kind of a look (And that is a very fair representation of the length of my hair at the moment…..) that people (women, really) find appealing on me.

(All photos of Mr. Dempsey via Greysanatomyinsider.com)

Which leads me to this side of me: our man in grey flannel.

Grant as Roger Thornhill via urbanite.com

The French would call my frustration “mal du siècle.” I think it’s more a “crise de cheveux.” And the fact that I’m even thinking this deeply about it is vaguely distasteful to me. Maybe there’s a middle ground…

(image via yarnstorm.blogs.com)

(Via Foxnews/AP/Chris Pizzello

What do you think? Is elegance always to be attached to a certain timelessness? Or is it possible to modernize? We have such a tenuous hold on adulthood as it is (an executive at Droga5 is quoted in The New York Times as saying his staff “dress like teenagers with money.” Like that’s a good thing?)

Where do we draw that thin line?

Now playing: “Pencil Thin Moustache” by Jimmy Buffet.

Although I will have a white linen sportcoat in the car, I may just opt not to wear it today.

New linen/cotton trousers, spectator loafers, cotton shirt, cotton tie. For today’s temperatures, consider this “smart” casual.