Let us praise the Hollywood waisted trouser. Derived from classic English brace-tops, improved with the addition of side adjusters or dropped belt loops, and made famous by American matinee idols on and off the screen through the 1950s, their distinguishing characteristic is having no waistband, relying instead on pleats, darts, and seams around the hips to define an elegant taper to the natural waist. When cut and fit properly, this construction is not only visually sleek, but extremely comfortable, with the weight of the garment distributed evenly across the hips rather than cinched at the waist -- rather like how well-cut shoulders render a coat weightless on the back. These are the trousers Astaire famously belted with a necktie, and which Sinatra never quite filled out onstage with the Dorseys.  

At its most basic level, taste in attire is often defined by its absence. Tastelessness is no more or less than a lack of respect or appreciation for context. It knows no material manifestation, only awkward occasions: T-shirts at the opera, oxfords at the beach. To have good taste in clothes is fundamentally to have sound, worldly, well-adjusted judgment -- happy, if not eager, to please. It signals belonging to something worth belonging to. (There is of course another definition of taste -- preference -- but that way lies relativism, “lifestyle,” and death; let’s presume that anyone reading this is already a stout advocate of tailored clothing, and focus on what really cuts the mustard in that department.)      

The phrase “dressing for the occasion” sounds a bit starchy these days, conjuring the sartorial arms race initiated by Victorian aristocrats to distinguish themselves from the merely wealthy. For all their fascinating and telegenic detail, those talcum-grained distinctions of appropriate dress are now, of course, totally ridiculous. While I’ve probably done a bit of “Half Mourning” myself, its formal sartorial distinction from “Ordinary Mourning” is well off the crazy cliff, and may it rest in peace. Nor should we embrace somewhat less hoary anachronisms like “no brown in town” and “no white before Memorial Day.” Such dictates are fun to know and observe within reason, but their real utility lies not in avoiding archaic faux paux, but in understanding the aesthetic principles behind them (e.g. earth tones are inherently less formal than the charcoals and navies which traditionally constitute business attire, and white looks less brazen on bright sunny days).

Virtually all Americans born since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (not to mention their Baby Boomer parents) have the daily ritual etched onto their first, best souls. A clean-cut, slightly stooped man -- never young but never quite old -- enters a modest living room and greets his Television Neighbors with a smile and a gentle song as he swaps out his workaday coat and hard-soled loafers for a friendly zippered cardigan and blue canvas sneakers. Despite having one of those iconic sweaters (hand-knit by his mother!) on permanent display in the Smithsonian, Fred Rogers would probably not have held himself up as a sartorial exemplar, but having now rewatched the entire series curled up with my four-year-old daughter, I realize that’s exactly what he is.

Clever company has always reviled nostalgia as sentimental at best, reactionary at worst -- the antithesis of the modern, the progressive, the original, the new. Of course, the whole notion of modernity is a bit outdated these days: for better and for worse, our Here and Now is a whole lot of This and That, Once Upon a Time. The internet has made the past an unprecedentedly vital part of the cultural present, a roiling synthesis of styles and traditions from which individuals are free to cull their identities not according to who they are, strictly speaking, but who they wish to be. “Authenticity” -- that Holy Grail of contemporary Arts & Leisure -- is now less an embodied quality than a principled intention: to live beyond irony.

If fine men’s clothes have a spiritual home, it’s England. It was there that coarse country cloth was first tamed by exquisite urban cut, giving birth to the modern suit and inspiring generations of dandies to study the rich lore of tweed and flannel. My own rather fuzzy wardrobe certainly testifies to a deep and abiding Anglophilia, enabled by New York City’s crisp autumns, frigid winters, and damp springs. The ubiquitous Stars and Stripes of Memorial Day, however, usher in a sartorial season as distinctly American as grilled hot dogs.

There’s something profoundly organic about the way proper care revives good clothes. Wrinkles fall out with steam. Cremes nourish dry old shoes, with wax burnishing their rough scars into smooth depth. Anyone who’s ever pressed his own shirts knows that very specific satisfaction of crisp, fresh renewal. I may not be entirely sure that brushing down a coat accomplishes much, but like brushing my teeth, I do it daily - a modest offering of time at the altar of longevity. Dandies have made high religion of perfecting these rituals with country washing and champagne glacage, but it’s perhaps a bit more balanced to regard them as the small virtues of a sartorial Tao, meditations on maintenance in the face of entropy.