I hate my husband’s clothes and I’m throwing away half of his wardrobe
When my husband Cornel comes home with a shopping bag, he pulls out a beige sweater and pants and looks very happy with his purchases.
Do they cost around €60 each? – not cheap – and although I smile and make noises of approval, I’m already planning to get rid of both.
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That’s because I hate what Cornel, 44, wears these days.
This also applies to the plastic white ‘driving slides’ with ‘West’ and ‘Coast’ on the front, the baggy gray shorts and the purple striped shirt that fits way too tight.
And while there was once a time when I wanted to rip his clothes off, now I just want to RIP them!
Since his late thirties, his sartorial style has deteriorated sharply.
And it’s getting worse and worse every month.
It didn’t start like that. When we met in 2005, he was wearing a tuxedo – he was working as a pianist in Italy – and looked dapper and handsome.
When he wasn’t in his performance outfit, he wore jeans and shirt or a white T-shirt. He was 24 and I was 27.
He had a classic, understated style, think James Dean or Luke Perry in TV’s 90210.
Passion killer
I wanted to take off that soft, sexy suit more than once, along with the rest of the clothes he was wearing.
But a few years later we had children – our daughter Adriana is now 11 and our son Alex is 15 – and it all started going wrong.
Now that he still wears a nice suit for work, he no longer bothers with his wardrobe at home.
His go-to choice is a sad old polo shirt covered in bumps from too many washes and “safe” chinos that make him look like he came out of a mail-order catalog aimed at 80-year-olds.
What Cornel is wearing is a total passion killer, including a polo shirt that became so worn that he started wearing it inside out.
“Nobody sees it!” he argued.
He’s started putting together strange combos, with socks with slides being the worst
Julia
“I do!” I replied.
That’s not all – he’s also started putting together strange clothing combinations – socks with slides are the worst.
He claims he wears these hideous shoes on long car journeys for comfort, but they have slowly made their way into everyday life (pardon the pun) and he will often wear them when he goes to the shops too – much to the horror of the children.
Then there are the shirts that have shrunk over time and are simply too tight, making it look strange.
And don’t get me started on the Hot Wheels racing jacket that looked like something a toddler would wear.
I accidentally donated it to a charity shop.
Yet he doesn’t get the hint. If things ‘disappear’, he will only replace them with something equally wrong.
He hardly spends anything on clothes and will go to the ends of the earth to find a bargain, including scouring TK Maxx bins and ordering from bargain site Temu.
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As a result, I had to take matters into my own hands.
Some items are given to charity, others involve minor mishaps (like the time I cut a favorite sweater with scissors and the wool spilled out).
A few shrunk from an accidental wash at 90 degrees.
I’ve taken to buying him clothes because you can’t trust him to get his.
Over the years I’ve donated quite a few things without his permission:
A dingy old leather jacket, a sweater with holes in it and polo shirts with strange sayings on the front.
A jumper with the text “he likes radical on the waves” went to the tip.
Sometimes Cornel realizes things are missing and asks me where they are.
I’ve sabotaged hundreds of pounds worth of clothes in the fifteen years we’ve been married.
And when he asks for help locating an item I destroyed, my guilty response is always the same: “I’m not sure, keep looking!”
A few years ago, he dropped Adriana off at school and one of her friends saw him walking by.
They said, “Your father looks like a monk with an unusual fashion sense.”
She was terrified.
“Daddy, please dress normally,” she told him that evening.
When we go out together, I have to encourage him to wear decent clothes, not clothes with poorly written slogans and strange phrases.
I stuff them in the back of the wardrobe or even put them in the dryer at 90 degrees.
“Why don’t you put on that nice fitted shirt,” I suggest as we go outside, while I try to pull the awful polo shirt with the horrible pattern out of his hands.
Then there are the times when he impulsively goes grocery shopping alone on the way back from somewhere.
He often stops in a TK Maxx and sends me pictures of himself from the changing rooms to try things out.
Recently he sent me a photo of himself trying on a jacket he loved at the discount store.
It was white, too tight and had a fur collar, and had been reduced from £89 to £50.
He looked like a cross between the dodgy dealer Arthur Daley from the 1980s TV show Minder and a pimp.
“It gives. . . pimp,” I replied in Gen Z speak.
I’ll put my foot on that – and anything else he tries to buy.
Instead, I now try to buy clothes for him, because he seems to be drawn to the strangest, most bizarre pieces of clothing that don’t match.
As we were getting ready for our vacation this summer, I was picking out the clothes to pack when I saw him holding things up.
My heart skipped a beat and I said, “What the hell is that?”
He had bought THREE sets of matching cheesecloth shirts and shorts from Temu in baby blue, white and lemon. The whole lot came to £20.
“Bargain!” he said with a smile. “And comfortable.”
I told him, “They look like pajamas.” He replied, “They will be comfortable at the pool AND at the dinner buffet.”
He knows my tricks, so even though I took them out of the case, he put them back in.
So we had to endure the entire holiday with him alternating between wearing the same three matching coordinates.
At dinner there were better dressed toddlers, and the kids walked three steps ahead because they didn’t want to be associated with his terrible taste.
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I just don’t understand it.
Over the years I have done my best to look nice because I am aware that as our bodies age we have to make the most of clothes to compensate.
Midlife crisis
But he seems oblivious to the basics of fashion, such as trends, style or color combinations.
I hate to tar all men with the same brush when it comes to terrible taste in clothes, but I can’t help but wonder if their wardrobe is some kind of midlife crisis.
Most women I know my age still dress well, but more and more men are wearing the safe combination of chinos and sweater, preferring comfort over style.
Yet surprisingly, men in Britain spend an average of £67 on clothes, compared to £53 spent by women, according to research from Statista.
I always spend more on my wardrobe than Cornel and when I ask what he thinks of my clothes, he says: “You spend too much.”
Most women I know buy at least some of their men’s clothing.
Without my intervention, I wonder how much worse Cornel’s wardrobe could get.
I often point out well-dressed men on TV, like Sylvie’s handsome husband in the Netflix series Emily In Paris.
Even when I see a respectable man on the street, I nudge Cornel and say, “That would look good on you!”
But it just seems to go in one ear and out the other. He claims I married the man fifteen years ago, not the clothes.
I hope one day he’ll leave those miserable slides on the west coast. That would be a promising start.
I love my slides and I think they’re really cool. And I love baggy shorts and polo shirts
Cornel
Cornel, musician and interpreter, says: “I like how I dress. My work often requires me to wear a tuxedo or suit, so in my social life I like to be comfortable.
“I love my West Coast slides and think they are really cool.
“And I like baggy shorts and polo shirts.
“I know Julie isn’t mad about my style, but I know she loves me so it doesn’t matter.
“The clothes don’t make the man!”
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