As the typical man trudges deeper into the valley of adulthood, he notices that he is increasingly less likely to embrace novelty. So, when the Wall Street Journal reports that caftans for men are currently having “a moment,” the news can strike Mr. Typical with the force of a grand piano from the sky. He sputters and thinks, Have you mistaken me for nineteen-seventies Liz Taylor?
Nevertheless, intrigued by the prospect of wearing gender-neutral attire—caftan-curious, perhaps—one Mr. Typical recently visited the flagship Brooks Brothers store, on Madison Avenue, where a friendly older saleswoman told him that, no, dear, Brooks does not carry caftans for men. Mr. T. explained that, according to the Journal, Chris Pine wore one on vacation in Capri. Then he confessed to her, “I feel like, once I hit fifty, I stopped exploring.” The saleswoman nodded empathetically.
His next stop was Amazon.com, where $20.99 and one click purchased a lavender-gray cotton caftan from an outfitter called Jacansi. It looked like a buttonless Henley that was trying to colonize its wearer’s ankles. Wearing it made Mr. T. feel alternately floaty and as if a large butterfly had died on him. Pairing it with black lace-up boots and a veneer of bravado, he headed in the direction of Wall Street, to Harry’s steak house. Two Harry’s greeters gave him a look that he would become familiar with: an indulgent smile, followed by a quick glance footward. Mid-meal, Mr. T. pointed at the long black apron that his waiter was wearing and said, “I see that you have a low hemline, too.”
The waiter replied, “Well, I’m not a doctor like you. Is that what you are, a doctor?”
“No,” Mr. T. replied. “I’m just very fashionable.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” the waiter said.
Flushed with validation, Mr. T. wandered over to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he asked an assault-rifle-wielding police officer where he could get a ticket for a tour of the Fed. The officer said that tickets were sold only online. Mr. T. asked, “This isn’t about the caftan, is it?” Crushingly, the officer professed not to have noticed it.
Mr. T. was met more warmly at two other tourist destinations in the financial district. Near the “Charging Bull” sculpture, a Dutch man encouraged him to pose in front of the bull and hold out the skirt of his caftan like a matador’s muleta. At the Fraunces Tavern Museum, Mr. T. informed a ticket-taker that he intended to keep his caftan on in the Colonial-costume photo booth upstairs: “I’ll be half Colonial, half fabulous.”
The ticket-taker nodded calmly and said, “I think there are wigs up there.”
The next stop was the 21 Club, where Mr. T. wrongly assumed that the addition of one of the restaurant’s loaner jackets would put him in compliance with the establishment’s dress code. “I’m sorry, sir,” a maître d’ told him. “You’d need pants.”
Mr. T. muttered, “Or two X chromosomes.” As he left, he wished that he had remembered to tell the maître d’ that, in the Ottoman Empire, a caftan was a power look. He worried that his was reading a little too Eileen Fisher.
Waiting on the platform of the N/R train, he asked a man whose blue uniform was emblazoned with the New York Fire Department insignia if his getup was fireproof. “Nah, I’m a building inspector,” the man said. “If I went into a fire, I’d probably catch.”
A scruffy bystander who’d been eavesdropping looked at Mr. T. and commented, “You’re kind of a firetrap, yo.”
Hoping to thank the Brooks Brothers saleswoman for her early encouragement, Mr. T. returned to the store. She wasn’t there, so he conveyed his gratitude to a tall, white-haired salesman. “I’ve been a Brooks customer for more than forty years, and I never thought I’d get here,” Mr. T. said, pointing at his caftan. He elaborated, “These are great for us guys who are anxious about the middle third of our body: I feel like I’ve turned the lights off down there.”
The salesman said, “As long as you’re comfortable, sir.” ♦
