Casual

...It's a shirt whose putatively short sleeves are so long as to make my arms while wearing it seem slightly thalidomidic...

...So much did I wear this jacket that friends came to refer to it as an Eppy jacket...

...I owned the jacket first in khaki, and when that wore out, I bought a second one in blue...

...Otherwise I am a perfect fop of respectability...

...In me, I have to report, vanity still prevails...

...A bit long in the sleeves, it was fixed by Mr...

...In high school I had an Air Force flight jacket, with epaulets and clip pockets, that I wore through three Muscovite-like Chicago winters, vanity in those days easily prevailing over the need for warmth...

...A perfect fop of respectability, as I say, except for a longstanding penchant I have for jackets...

...In grade school I acquired a light blue cotton jacket with dark blue knit collar, cuffs, and waistband...

...I'm with Jules Renard here, who in his Journal noted: "It's many a day since I've felt ashamed of my vanity, or tried to correct it...

...I also buy clothes at a local haberdashery called Huntley's, which has the world's best tailor, Mr...

...Expensive though it is, I justified buying it—penetrating economist that I am—by concluding that if I wore it a thousand times, which I hope to be able to do, it will cost only a little more than 40 cents each time I wear it...

...This, I do believe, might qualify as just a touch vulgar...

...I always owned a windbreaker...

...Too true...

...During my years there I wore the black and yellow jacket of the Iaetas, the red and black of the Ravens, and the green and white of Alpha...

...A bargain, clearly...

...Wind-cheater, the word the English use, seems to me better, as the English jumper feels a better choice than sweater...

...The first windbreaker I can recall feeling a strong attachment to was a little number put out by the firm of Aquascutum...

...Casual THE EPPY AND OTHER JACKETS My idol in matters sartorial is that great villain of American literature Gilbert Osmond, of Henry James's Portrait of A Lady, who, James tells us, "was dressed as a man dresses who takes little other trouble about it than to have no vulgar things...

...Walking the school halls one gazed out upon billows of variously colored rayon and wool...

...I wore it for a decade, until its cuffs began to unravel, and then, head turned away in sorrow, dropped it down the garbage chute...

...Searching my own wardrobe for vulgar things, I come up with a bright red shirt I sometimes sleep in, size XL, that reads "FUBU Sports, Since 1992, Varsity Athletic, Basketball," all in raised letters, with an orangeish chenille basketball in the center...

...Of all my faults, it's the one that amuses me most...

...I go about nowadays swathed— that's the verb that always comes to mind when I wear it—in a navy blue jacket of softest cashmere that I bought roughly six months ago...

...Sorry to be so poor on colors, but I not long ago read a poem called "Men Know Brown," the opening of which reads: "On the radio this morning: the average woman knows / 275 colors—and men know eight...

...The rich color of Godiva's dark chocolate, it was as softly flexible as an Italian glove, and an exact fit...

...Bab is a genius, and if he were a cosmetic surgeon instead of a tailor, you'd no longer recognize me, so good would I look...

...I first saw it on a boy three or so years older than I named Jerry Dash—excellent name for a guy who himself seemed dashing...

...I went to an intensely social high school where the students were organized into perhaps forty or so clubs, each with its own jacket in the club's colors...

...Bab, seamlessly...

...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...

...I buy most of my clothes at Brooks Brothers, a store that was practically a cult when I was young and has by now been so long on the slippery slope of mediocrity that it ought to require its salesmen to carry a set ofpiolets...

...My wardrobe is the fairly standard one, one blue suit, a couple of grey ones, a tuxedo, a blue blazer, a seersucker jacket, four tweedyish sports coats, the usual grey trousers and chi-no pants, no jeans whatsoever, white, blue, and blue-and-white striped shirts, and various neckties to lend a splash of color at an older gent's throat...

...These jackets were worn in class, and, if one was going steady, one's girl wore one's jacket as a public show of her affection...

...it had a rounded collar with a button flap and a plaid lining...

...Gilbert Osmond would marry a second rich American heiress to own this jacket, but, bad news Gil, no more are in stock...

...Bab, whose full Assyrian name is Babajon Badalapour...

...Ten or so years ago the owner of Huntley's offered me a costly leather jacket, the last he had in stock, for half price...

...I cannot remember being without a favorite jacket...

...Lightweight yet very warm, it has a zipper front and buttons, with a placard over both, with a nice collar, perfect detailing, and no label other than "100 percent Cashmere, Dry Clean Only...