How does a rabbi choose her shoes? Why does a psychoanalyst like slogan tees? And why does a doctor avoid wearing scrubs at work? Seven striking dressers share their surprising style stories<\/p>\n
Andrew Geldart, 65, retired engineer, Cornwall<\/p>\n
For 30 years as a civil engineer I wore conventional grey and navy, then I retired at 55, moved down to Bude in Cornwall with my wife, Lynn, and the sun came out. Bude is a positive place, where you can be yourself. Everyone is friendly; it\u2019s paradise.<\/p>\n
I first started down the yellow route 10 years ago when we moved to Bude with a camper van called Primrose. People gave me yellow accessories for it and the seed was sown \u2013 I thought I might wear yellow myself. Now it\u2019s a mainstay of my wardrobe. I wear it practically every day. I have everything from yellow caps to yellow shoes. I prefer sunflower yellow rather than mustard tones: it\u2019s bright and cheerful.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t always go \u201cfull banana\u201d! I dress according to the situation. I wouldn\u2019t wear yellow to a Remembrance Day parade, but I would to a funeral of a friend, as I\u2019m known for wearing it and I would be honouring them. If I want to go under the radar, I wear beige. I\u2019m a church leader and help run the food bank: usually people know me there and adjust their behaviour accordingly, but when they don\u2019t recognise me because I\u2019m not in yellow, I can blend into the background and hear what the community really want.<\/p>\n
There are practical benefits. My grandchildren can easily spot me in a crowd. In fact, they walk past me if I\u2019m not wearing yellow, and ask: \u201cWhere\u2019s Pops?\u201d But the main reason I choose to stand out is to connect with people, to show that I am friendly and approachable, even if I\u2019m not smiling.<\/p>\n
Someone says, \u201cI like your glasses\u201d, nearly every day (I have a jazzy, stripy, bright yellow summer pair and a more muted, translucent yellow winter pair), and that opens the door to a conversation. There are so many isolated people looking down at their phones, and if I can encourage someone to talk, I\u2019m happy. I want to spread a bit of love in the world and to show that it\u2019s safe to say how you really are, to get past just \u201cGood morning\u201d. A coffee and a chat can be a little glimpse of sunshine.<\/p>\n
I have toyed with changing to red or green, and that would be a new conversation \u2013 \u201cWhat happened? Why aren\u2019t you wearing yellow?\u201d It\u2019s a colour that works for me, but never say never: men\u2019s fashion is quite limited when it comes to yellow, so I may be forced to change to another bright colour one day.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the old conventional and staid engineer part of me thinks, \u201cCan I get away with this? Is this too much?\u201d But I saw a picture of the late David Hockney in his yellow glasses recently and thought, \u201cMaybe I\u2019m not ridiculous.\u201d I want to give people the courage to step outside the box \u2013 let\u2019s make life enjoyable.<\/p>\n
Anouchka Grose, 56, psychoanalyst, London<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to dress too conservatively as I don\u2019t want to look like an authority figure, or like someone who believes that \u201canalytic neutrality\u201d \u2013 the idea that the therapist is a blank slate \u2013 means some kind of John Lewis cosplay. \u201cNeutrality\u201d can\u2019t mean aligning with a dominant norm \u2013 psychotherapists need to be critical thinkers. But what I wear also can\u2019t be so unusual that the client is distracted. Overall, I\u2019m aiming for a kind of quiet surrealism \u2013 a balance between comfortable, pleasurable and characterful.<\/p>\n
So I have a vague uniform of a genderless jumper or jacket \u2013 a strict-looking black jacket with pointy shoulders, say \u2013 with a man\u2019s shirt or T-shirt, big trousers (I\u2019m currently loving a stripy pair from Maison Margiela I found on eBay) and ugly shoes, usually Uggs I buy secondhand. Most things are outsized, or loose.<\/p>\n
Very often my T-shirts will have a slogan \u2013 my favourite is \u201cDress for the male gays\u201d. It references Laura Mulvey\u2019s theory that there could be a male gaze that things are constructed around, which was one of the first ways into psychoanalysis for me. But it\u2019s also a funny wordplay referencing the post-Freudians, who thought of homosexuality as a kind of sickness to cure. I see that T-shirt as a sort of apology for the past homophobia of psychoanalysis. Plus it makes clients laugh, which is allowed. (Freud took jokes extremely seriously.)<\/p>\n
Subverting the expectations of how a shrink ought to dress has been a real theme for me. A patient once asked me: \u201cAre you allowed to wear those trousers to work?\u201d They were balloonish red and white checked ones. And sometimes when I\u2019ve given papers at analytic conferences, the other shrinks will be, like, \u201cYeah, but what do you wear for work?\u201d (It is no different from what I am wearing at the conference.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always loved clothes and the way they transmit meaning. I love the crazy semiotics of them \u2013 communicating social signals to other people who know those signals. That seems very psychoanalytic to me.<\/p>\n