'You Need a New Wardrobe'

When style stagnates and it’s you or your clothes, the get-ups must go.

- Hugo Rifkind

She says, “Don’t you think it’s time you bought some new clothes?”

He takes a moment to reply. Then she says, “And get a haircut.”

“It sort of changes everything that you said both of those things at once,” he says. “It’s like, if you’d only been complaining about my clothes then I could take that as a constructive suggestion. Only, throw in my hair as well and I feel like I’m under attack.”

She says, “Forget about the hair.”

“Were you planning this?” he says. “Or were you suddenly just struck by how terrible I look?”

She says, “A bit of both.”

He says it’s temporary. He knows he doesn’t look great. He just needs to lose a bit of weight.

He’s hardly fat, she says. He’s just fatter than he was the last time he went shopping. And she’s thinking it’s maybe time for him to accept that this is the size he is. And the age he is. And go shopping again.

“I don’t see where the hair fits in,” he says.

“I said forget about the hair.”