I groaned my appreciation. Heck, if no one was going to laugh at my jokes, why should I laugh at theirs? Of course, I filed her comment away for future use if the occasion should arise.
“Seriously though, Skeeve, your problem is that you dress like a kid. You’ve got some nice pieces in your wardrobe, but nobody’s bothered to show you how to wear them. Bright outfits are nice, but you’ve got to balance them. Wearing a pattern with a muted solid accents the pattern. Wearing a pattern with a pattern is trouble, unless you really know what you’re doing. More often than not, the patterns end up fighting each other . . . and if they’re in two different colors you’ve got an all-out war. Your clothes should call attention to you, not to themselves.”
Despite my indignation, I found myself being drawn into what she was saying. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my various adventures, it’s that you take information where you find it.
“Let’s see if I’m following you, Bunny. What you’re saying is that just buying nice items, especially ones that catch my eye, isn’t enough. I’ve got to watch how they go together … try to build a coordinated total. Right?”
“That’s part of it,” she nodded. “But I think we’d better go back to step one for a moment if we’re going to educate you right. First, you’ve got to decide on the image you want to project. Your clothes make a statement about you, but you’ve got to know what that statement should be. Now, bankers depend on people trusting them with their money, so they dress conservatively to give the impression of dependability. No one will give their money to a banker who looks like he spends his afternoons playing the ponies. At the other end of the scale, you have the professional entertainers. They make their money getting people to look at them, so their outfits are usually flashy and flamboyant.”