At the opera the other day, I was suddenly struck by my conspicuousness: I was the only man there wearing a suit and tie. Or at least the only man in my row wearing a suit and tie. I checked out the other men during the interval and, yep, only me.
Just so there’s no confusion, this was an evening performance (not a rehearsal) at a major opera house (not the back of a pub) of a major opera – Mozart, for God’s sake! – in early autumn. So, no special pleading on the grounds of heat. The snooker player Alex Higgins won exemption from wearing bow ties on account of a skin condition. It’s possible there were men at the opera house with a skin condition, but not 1,128 of them, assuming a 50:50 audience split on gender lines. And even if they all did have a skin condition, that would have accounted only for the ties. What excuse did they have for not wearing suits?
I accept that I happen to like wearing suits – they become me, I believe, and perform a number of functions as to concealment and discretion that I won’t go into here – but this is about more than what a man happens to like himself in. This is about the efforts one should make to commemorate the specialness of an occasion, to ensure that every hour of the day is not like every other. Dressing up, we call it. Up. The preposition tells you all you need to know. We dress up not to succumb to down.
The curse that’s fallen on men’s tailoring is leisurewear. I won’t lie: I didn’t see a single man wearing a tracksuit, exactly, but I did see several wearing trainers. So here’s a question: why, where the men were companioned by women, hadn’t the women forbidden them to leave home until they’d changed into something more celebratory both of the occasion and of them? For the women hadn’t come to the opera looking as though they’d just rolled in from losing again at the Emirates. No, they strutted in their feather shrugs, glimmered in their silky maxi dresses, towered on their killer heels. They were perfumed. They were bejewelled. They quivered in every sequin to the music. The only bum fashion note they struck was the man on their arm.
They should learn from Lysistrata, and refuse their men sexual favours until they “up” their appearance to match the event. Or do women like to see a man wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt made of stretch cotton piqué with a polo player embroidered on the nipple? If so, I’m going to have to consider watching opera at home on television. But still in a suit.
