This year, old-fashioned is the height of fashion
Greg Bean

Like many men of my acquaintance, I have a simple philosophy when it comes to fashion: Pick a look you like and stay with it forever.

For me, that means my work wardrobe consists almost entirely of khaki or colored-denim trousers, oxford shirts with buttoned collars, Harris tweed sports coats and cowboy boots, since I've always worn boots and can't seem to walk in regular shoes. I sometimes experiment a little with ties, but I almost never wear paisley. See a guy wearing a paisley tie, and you can be nearly positive his wife bought it for him. In winter, I throw in solid-color crew-neck sweaters, trade the cotton shirts for heavier chambray, and top it all off with the same black wool overcoat I've worn for nearly 20 years.

I find this approach both frugal and comforting. Frugal because you never have to read The New York Times fashion magazine to see what you have to spend a fortune on this season. In fact, if you buy good, quality garments to begin with, many of them will last longer than you will. It's comforting because once you've got all the sizing washed out, your clothes become like soothing old friends, and you look forward to seeing them when the seasons change.

Naturally, this unchanging approach to haute couture means that once in a while, one of your male acquaintances who happens to be of that rare breed - a clothes horse - will poke a little fun in your direction for being so spectacularly out of date, sartorially speaking. But I generally let those jibes run off my back like raindrops. I find it impossible to take fashion criticism from a guy wearing many-pleated pants, shoes with tassels and a pink paisley tie.

And once in a while - usually during Republican administrations when there's a war going on and the economy is uncertain - the people who dictate male fashion get a little nostalgic and you find your reliable, uninspired wardrobe is back in style again.

There's an old philosophical theory that if you stand in one place long enough, everyone you know will eventually walk past you. That's how it is with my wardrobe. The wheel goes round and round, and if I just keep wearing the same thing, once every decade or so the wheel completes a rotation and I find my old duds are the height - at least temporarily - of masculine savoir-faire.

That's how it is this year. I can't tell you how pleased I was when this fall's men's fashion magazine came out in the Times, and it was chock full of Harris tweed sports jackets, khaki pants, oxford shirts with buttoned collars and boots. A couple of the models were even wearing solid-color crew-neck sweaters and black wool overcoats.

So for the next few months at least, people will think I dress the way I do because of a burning desire to dwell at the pinnacle of male fashion instead of the truth, which is that I wouldn't recognize male fashion if it jumped in my bathtub and started biting my toes.

As an added bonus, an article last week in the British newspaper The Independent reported that not only are my clothes in style this year, my scent (Old Spice) is back in style as well.

According to The Independent, sales of so-called "heritage scents" like Old Spice, Brut and - God help us all - Hai Karate are up among young people who "embrace all things retro in an effort to smell like their parents did three decades ago." No word on whether the latest incarnation of Hai Karate comes with the guide to self-defense to protect users from the hordes of women it promised to attract, or whether the Old Spice people are bundling their products with a complimentary bottle of Blue Nun or Mateuse.

Female readers will be happy to know that this trend toward "heritage scents" has crossed the gender barrier, and that retro perfumes like Maxi, Opium, L'Air du Temps and - I'm not making this up - Charlie are big sellers this season, according to The Independent.

I have negative psychic associations with women who wear Charlie (also with disco balls, the Bee Gees and tequila sunrises) but I've always been partial to Anais Anais, a very nice floral scent favored by my wife that is apparently making a "comeback." Whenever she wears it, I think of our first date.

So not only will my wife and I smell a u courant this year, at least I will be up to date in the wardrobe department (I assume she is also up to date, but I wouldn't know for certain, because the only thing I know less about than male fashion is female fashion, one of the great mysteries of the universe).

Tres chic!

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Speaking of the great mysteries of female fashion, a lady who sometimes gives me column tips called recently to tell me about a Web site she figured I might want to write about, http://frombagstoriches.com, a site where women can rent incredibly expensive handbags instead of buying them. On the site, for example, a woman who doesn't want to pay $1,095 for a Miu Miu Napa Spring Frame Bag by Prada can rent one for $79.95 a week.

The entire concept of renting a bag for $79.95 and sending it back after a week when you can buy a perfectly good one from L.L. Bean for $50 and keep it forever seemed as foreign to me as jellied ducks eggs, and I intended to have some fun with it.

Then, while doing research, I discussed women's handbags at some length with a young lady in the office, and she didn't find the concept weird or unusual in the least. To my great surprise, the notion of spending $1,725 for a Chanel or Coach bag did not give her heart palpitations, and the idea of renting one at Bags to Riches prices seemed as rational as physics. And not only did she find my attitude toward expensive women's handbags unfunny, she found it smug and "almost insulting" as well.

"Don't write about this and make fun of it," she said sternly. "Because you don't understand it."

She has a point. I don't understand it, so I won't make fun of it. I do, however, throw it out there as a scientific curiosity, sort of like a two-headed sheep. Make of it what you will.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.

Coda