Suit and tie
As a child, I hated getting dressed up and, in a world where my clothes reflected my mother and father’s ability to parent, I spent a lot of time miserable. It didn’t help that our limited funds afforded a lot of polyester which, as a material, to this day, no fashion designer has been able to master. Cheap polyester. The kind that Andy Warhol made movies about. The kind the Village People wouldn’t wear. The kind that creases like a folded cardboard box. The kind that, matched with a pleather overcoat and a box of Marlboro Reds, guaranteed a fistfight with the ten year-olds who wanted to look like they could afford cigarettes.
My preferred uniform is cotton cargo pants, a long sleeved t-shirt and hiking boots. When required to dress up for a date night, the cargo pants remain, but I change into a collared dress shirt. I never leave the house without a baseball cap. No jewelry, tattoos, watches, designer labels or logos. I am a fashion cliche of such epic proportions, for my age and ethnicity, that it even makes me laugh.
A suit and tie are reserved for weddings, funerals, job interviews and, if necessary, office visits. Life is too short to be uncomfortable. My wife gets frustrated with love. My friends and children accept me with love. I am immovable.
Strolling down Fifth Avenue for the first time
The only time I’ve walked into the vault that is Tiffany & Company was during my first visit to New York City. On an all-day bus tour, my girlfriend and I walked from 82nd and Fifth Avenue, down to Eighth Street, across Washington Square Park, then veering into bowels of the East Village. Six hours later, we turned and found our way back. Among the landmarks discovered on our way south was Tiffany’s. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was famous, from a movie I’d never seen.
Wearing the early Eighties version of the uniform described above, we walked inside and, from the looks of the sales associates, our tourism was Limberger. They could see the ten dollar bill in my wallet and the thousand bucks in my bank account. That said, I was as impressed with them as they were with me. Having browsed for ten minutes, we were off, never having paid attention to the little blue boxes.
A documentary about the little blue box
Two weeks ago, my wife introduced me to the story of Tiffany & Company — and the other world’s passion for the weird, powder blue box. A Netflix documentary described the history, the mystique and the joy associated with the color owned by the company. The hue is as much a jewel as any jewel held held by the box. The blue and the brand prompt dopamine. Interviews with women who had been gifted a blue box, holding whatever, intimated a not-so-sublime joy.
Emotions and attachment are funny things. Folded polyester.
The gift
By coincidence, during the week following the video, an associate showed me a ring she’d received. She couldn’t contain her joy.
I asked. It was from Tiffany & Company.
Perhaps it was the love. Perhaps it was the blue. Perhaps it was something I will never understand. Perhaps I will someday be rich enough to understand the mystique completely if, for no other reason, I can witness the joy on the face of the person to whom I give the gift.
It was, during the writing of the last paragraph that I realized, in fact, that the vast majority of the joy found inside the box isn’t about the color blue, it isn’t about the jewel and it isn’t about the wealth. It’s about the Zen of giving the gift.
Find Zen in the giving of a gift. Embrace the receiver. Embrace yourself. Frustrate your spouse with love. Accept your friends and family. Wear what you like. Avoid polyester.
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