Cut From the Same Cloth
“If you want to do things by yourself, why get married?”
–Nancy Featherstone
In response to my post about the partner look in East Germany, astute 60 Pages reader Jane Fränzel, a globetrotting Mandarin whiz and a blur on the dance floor, pointed me to an intriguing Guardian article: “I’ve Worn the Same Outfit as My Husband for the Last 35 Years.” This tabloid-style headline is usually reserved for shocking stories like, “I’m in Love With My Own Twin Brother” or “I’ve Been Sleeping With My Wife’s Corpse Since I Killed Her,” and initially, I had the same horrified response to the notion of a woman who’s dressed identically to her husband for over a quarter of a century – and hand sews each of their outfits. But there is something disarmingly – dare I say it – relatable in Nancy Featherstone’s voice. My sense, at the essay’s end, was that Nancy and her husband, in their matching attire, are seeking what every couple I know is also after: a way to find the right proximity to one another; how to establish an orbit that doesn’t involve planets colliding or one planet being catapulted into another solar system (I’m guessing planets leaping from one solar system to the next doesn’t actually have precedent, but let’s just pretend it’s possible for the sake of the metaphor).
The entire article is a fascinating portrait of marriage, eccentricity, and what happens when someone with control issues gets carried away. For the purposes of this post, however, I’m only extracting a particularly intriguing passage below, of Nancy describing the couple’s daily ritual.
Whoever gets [to the closet] first gets to choose what we’re wearing. It’s not a stampede, though; we’re both amenable to the other’s choice. If we’re going to a party, we’ll discuss what to wear like any other couple, except the difference is we want to look the same. Someone once told me that if she and her husband came down wearing the same colour top, they’d change. What a shame to be so insecure. We both have very strong identities as individuals and wearing the same clothes doesn’t affect this; clothes don’t make your personality. Instead, dressing the same gives me a lovely feeling of closeness to Donald.
I suppose you could argue Nancy is in denial, but something in her tone struck me as defiant and wise. Of course it’s bonkers to dress the same as your partner all the time, but like any other “abnormal” couple – regardless of whether they are polyamorous or devoted to bondage or spend their summers at Renaissance Festivals to the next, referring to each other as Sir Gawain and Lady Gwyneth – Nancy sounded liberated from modern expectations of how couples should behave. I also wondered about that “lovely feeling of closeness” she describes. Does such a radical act of commitment – looking like the same sheet of wallpaper – free you from the smaller shows of reassurance that more “individualistic” couples require? In this sense, are wedding rings anything more than a much-reduced partner look? Arguably, everyone is after that “lovely feeling of closeness” in a relationship without that less-than-lovely feeling of claustrophobia. When Nancy is at a party and glances across the room, and spies Ronald deep in conversation with a ravishing member of the opposite sex, does her throat tighten? Does she sidle up to him until she and Donald are one continuous expanse of plaid wool? Or does having the same outfit on allow her to give Donald a little wave and go on talking to the woman across from her, asking how she manages those tiny stitches?
And when Nancy dreams, are she and Donald wearing the same outfits? If not, is that dream a nightmare or does it feel like flying?