Hubba, hubba!

by David Benjamin

“Whenas in silks my Julia goes,/ Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows/
That liquefaction of her clothes.”
—Robert Herrick

MADISON, Wis.—Is it chivalry, I wonder, or sly salacity?

How, without making the wrongimpression does a 21st-century guy compliment a woman on how she looks, particularly if she’s a total (but fetching) stranger?

Of course, he shouldn’t try. He shouldn’t even be looking at her.

Except, well … she’s gone to a lot of trouble.

I confess that now and then, without romantic intent, I’ve violated this taboo. I’ve survived these encounters mostly unscathed because I observe a more or less intuitive set of rules that help navigate the treacherous shallows of reflexive feminism. One of my failures serves to illustrate both the constraints of the casual compliment and its delicate delivery.

At a Starbucks in New York, I took note of a female patron whose dress, a garment not remotely suggestive, was nonetheless noteworthy. Covering the woman loosely from neckline to shoe-tops, it was a symphony of form, flow, fabric and color, intelligently chosen to complement the wearer’s face, her hair, her handbag, the way she moved. Impulsively, without reading the woman, I blurted out something about the dress enhancing every little thing about her.

Her response was a stricken look, followed by a chill that swept through Starbucks like a gale off a glacier. (Some women can do this. God knows how.) Realizing my blunder, I backed away, staring at my feet, bracing to be verbally drawn and quartered in the midst of a dozen New York tsk-tskers suffering caffeine withdrawal. However, having reduced me to cowering submission, the woman merely sniffed and turned her well-adorned back.

The reason I blew my cool was my lifelong appreciation for the All Put Together (APT) woman. You know what I mean. No matter how long it takes and whom she keeps waiting, she will not set foot in public until every aspect of her affect is groomed, brushed, coordinated, appraised in a mirror, reconsidered and corrected, then regroomed, rebrushed, recoordinated and appraised all over again.

The resulting impression is vivid, even breathtaking. I pause at the sight of her. I wonder how she does it. Call this the Audrey Hepburn Effect, of which there is no better example than Ms. Hepburn’s ensemble in Roman Holiday.

Remember? She wears a three-button white cotton blouse with a demure neckline and rollup sleeves, a wide belt and a flared calf-length skirt that swirls and flounces as she moves. Her shoes, if anyone notices, are black sandals—perfect for the summer swelter of Rome—so minimal that she’s almost barefoot. Her hair is bobbed and unruffled (even as she drives a scooter). Her face—wide, dark eyes and a tea-rose mouth—is suggestive of Louise Brooks but uniquely Audrey. This is as simple and casual as any outfit Hepburn ever wore in the movies but—all put together—it conveys a subtle elegance and a timelessness that renders it fashionable seventy years later.

It’s no coincidence that Audrey Hepburn retains even today a cultlike following in Japan and France. The world capital of all-put-together women is Japan, where every female with a job could easily double as a Bonwit Teller mannequin. Each OL (office lady) on the streets of Marunouchi is meticulously coifed, combed, sprayed, pressed, nyloned, pearled, matched, accessorized and dry as a bone—with nary a flake nor a mote nor a subtly colored hair out of place—come rain, sleet or 100-percent humidity.

In Paris, of course, APT has a different flavor. Perfection of appearance is not as doctrinaire as in Tokyo, because Frenchwomen—especially if they’re young and eligible—pull it off with a flair for unexpected color, along with a little sex, a frisson of éclat and a load of panache. The shimmering traffic of APTs along the city’s sidewalks is Paris’ best excuse for lounging on a café terrasse on a day in June … or October … or February. Well, any month.

There are, of course, millions of all-put-togethers in America. Indeed, in any male-female live-in relationship, the question most often asked by the woman in the pair is “How do I look?” (The male equivalent is “What’s for dinner, honey?”), a question that always poses for the male a sort of semantic crisis.

The irony here is that, in any nation, the gap between sexes is manifest in any parade of couples walking down any street. The woman, fashion-aware and attentive to her likely impression among a public who do not know her and will never see her again, is crisply clad, freshly showered and scented, clean and appealingly made up, with shoes (from a collection of roughly two-dozen pairs) that match her bag, belt and lip gloss. The guy, appreciates the reality that virtually no one on the street knows him or will ever see him again, is wearing his favorite pair of outsole-sprung sneakers without socks. His khaki bermudas haven’t been ironed since he bought them and his t-shirt (with one armpit rotted through) dates back to his heyday as the third-best scorer on his intramural basketball team at Panhandle A&M. He is, however, wearing his Sunday-best baseball cap.

This contrast, which begs the issue of whether there can ever be psychic equality between the sexes, is both evident and puzzling in most modern nations.

So, the question remains. How do you offer tribute to an APT woman without being accused of inappropriateness, predation or channeling Donald Trump? To get away with this sort of kindly intrusion, I follow the following rules:

1) Don’t! Just shut up. But, if you can’t resist,

2) Avoid comment on anything “center mass,” which covers the area from clavicles to kneecaps.

3) Focus on the basic fashion elements accessible in Vogue, Glamour and all those catalogs that pour into your mailbox before Christmas. For example: “I haven’t seen that color for years.” Or, “My God, is that taffeta? It can’t be taffeta.”

4) Ask! As illustrated in Rule 3, hitting an APT woman with a question about her fashion choices tends to break down her defenses.

5) Outflank with accessories. Rather than saying, “You look great!” or “Wow, terrific tits!”, try “I love your pearls,” or “Where did you buy those shoes? They’d be perfect for my wife.”

6) That’s right. Throw a wife, girlfriend, even a mother or sister into the dialog. Suddenly, instead of being accosted by a prurient male, the woman is a consultant to the dimwit male and a confederate to his fashion-deprived mate.

7) See Rule #1. If you pause before blurting, you might end up re-directing your sweet-talk to the girl in your life who needs it the most.

Of course, in a world where women persist in getting dolled up and still need affirmation but are ideologically offended by any effort at this affirmation, and where men have been conditioned to bite their tongues in the presence of grace and beauty, discouraged from even thinking that “all that’s best of dark and bright meets in her aspects and her eyes, thus mellowed to that tender light which Heaven the gaudy day denies,” are stuck with the dreary and furtive option that’s been our lot since that ancient sculptor slipped away from his wife and ran his fingers surreptitiously over his masterpiece, the voluptuous icon of feminine allure now known as the Venus of Willendorf.

Nowadays, like that Paleolithic sculptor forced to conceal his aesthetic sensibilities, we’re careful not to even whistle under our breath. But our eyes betray us. Silent and sneaky but still in thrall to the feminine mystique, we’re back where we’ve always been …

“… Standin’ on the corner, watchin’ all the girls go by … ”