THE MOST

UH, STYLISH?

This morning, sipping coffee in my kitchen and avoiding reading the real news…because who wants to weep at 8AM?…I happened on an article in the NYT which promised to tell me about The 67 Most Stylish People of 2025. Stylishness is, in fact, not a topic that usually interests me. But as it happens, I had recently had an occasion to consider the topic, because after spending the past 12 winters in Florida, I find myself this winter in Maine instead, and I have had to give pretty serious thought to changing my clothing habits.

I did so by buying 8 cheap sweaters in 8 different colors, as well as 8 pairs of corduroy pants, also in 8 different colors. Okay, the 8 was overkill. 5 or 6…even 4!… would have been enough. What can I say? I have not worn sweaters or corduroy in many years and fell into a buying frenzy because I live very near to LL Bean.

Anyway: Here is my winter wardrobe.

(Today I am wearing a sort of brick-colored sweater taken from the top of the sweater collection and medium blue corduroy pants, not visible here)

Each day I have all of those possible choices and it reminds me, every morning, of Math D-1 at Brown University where combinations and permutations were something I had to think about, when I was 17 years old, on Monday, Wednesday ,and Friday, at 10 AM.

But when I saw the NYT headline, this morning, about Most Stylish people….it did not set me to wondering if I would be on the list. Clearly I am not. But I did wonder if I might know anyone on the list, and amazingly, it turned out that I do. (More on that in a moment.)

So I began to read.

I recognized very few names, incidentally. But one was Jennifer Lawrence. Here she is.

The accompanying article, incidentally, points out that Jennifer Lawrence is wearing dark glasses…a stylish thing to do, I guess…so that she won’t be noticed. It occurs to me that if one really doesn’t want to be noticed, then one would not wear a very large leopard coat. One would instead wear corduroy pants and a cheap brick-colored sweater.

Here is a one-named person … and the name, which I have not before heard of because I am 88 years old and live in Maine…is Doechii.

If I were wearing her, ah, outfit, I think I would not choose men’s loafers as an accessory. But who am I to say? I am not one of the year’s 67 most stylish people.

The next stylish person I am going to bring to your attention is named Walker Goggins, a name I nave never heard but that is because I did not watch The White Lotus. More about him in a moment, but I want to mention here that I like the color yellow. Recently, on discovering that I would be wintering in Maine, I did something profoundly self-indulgent because I wanted January and February to feel more Florida-like so that I wouldn’t fall into a depression when those months come. I called a woman who arrived at my house with large books of fabric samples and I took her into my bedroom, which is not at all stylish and in fact could be described as dull and chilly-looking, and I pointed to my bed and my windows and told her to re-do them so that I will think I am in Naples, Florida. Yellow, I told her, would do it.

But she sighed. As if it were a dirty secret, she said in a low voice: Yellow is out. No one wants yellow.

If only I had seen this article before I met the lady with the fabric samples! I could have told her that Walker Goggins…stylish person, according to the NYT… likes yellow. A LOT.

Moving on. I mentioned that I actually KNEW one of the 67 most stylish people. When I saw his name on the list, I thought: Oh, I had lunch with him once! And that was true. It wasn’t an intimate little lunch, just Alexander Skaarsgard and me….actually there were probably 6 people at the table. It was in Capetown, South Africa, in .. probably 2014.

But it was an interesting lunch and I am trying to sort out how best to describe why. Alexander Skaarsgard is Swedish, for one thing. I mention that only because during that lunch, for reasons that have completely escaped me now, he used the word penis very casually. I think we were talking about Scandinavian midsummer celebrations and their symbolism. I remember thinking that his casual mention of an, ah, body part was such a Scandinavian thing. And that I too, in fact, was of Scandinavian heritage My immigrant grandmother’s name was Sena Elafson Hammersberg, as it happens…should I mention that to him over dessert? I wondered at the time, and decided against it.

But I felt a warm kinship when I saw his name listed as one of the STYLISH people of 2025. Good for you, Alex, old pal, I thought.

Then I saw the photograph.

Oh shit, I thought.

Well: Happy Holidays anyway. To all of you.