A tip for blokes: Look in the mirror - and please pull up your pants.
In other countries, clothes maketh the man. In New Zealand, clothes expose the poor chump as an unco-ordinated Antipodean Forrest Gump.
Lest any Kiwi bloke is under any misapprehension, let me spell it out: life is not like a box of chocolates and Gump didn't know what he was going
to get because he was too stupid to look at the damn chart.
Men risk looking cretinous when they sail out the door without first looking in the mirror to assess and correct their fashion failings.
Even when my fellow man does wear decent clothes, he still manages to screw it up. Take that ubiquitous item of business apparel; the two-piece suit.
A well-made suit is a marvellous thing, the male equivalent of the little black dress. When you're stuck for something to wear, a LBD for women and a WMS for men will see both genders sorted.
Except that many men seem to think suit trousers are jeans. They are not. Jeans are made to wear around the hips. Suit trousers are tailored to wear above the hips, sometimes high on the waist depending on the cut.
Walk through the CBD of any New Zealand city during lunch hour and you will see the cream of Kiwi masculinity - well, at least a representative sample of the modern working man.
They're mostly dressed in the uniform of business shirt and suit trousers, but with acres of cloth hanging like a goitre around their crotches and behinds.
They wear their trousers like jeans.
Somebody needs to tell these young men - and I know Kiwi women are with me on this one - that their bums aren't getting any firmer and they should show them off while they still can.
Some blame our culture; others say it's all about gender.
The herd instinct is certainly strong in men and women, for good and for ill. If most men dress like retards, chances are their fellow men will follow suit.
Media and other organisations, such as suit-maker Working Style, have tried to break the vicious cycle by promoting competitions for the best-dressed businessman.
These are usually won by Fletcher Building's Jonathan Ling, who really does know his clothes. Ling is always turned out immaculately and it's appreciated.
Sometimes Rob Fyfe, Air New Zealand chief executive, wins but he's not in Ling's league. I think he gets by on those puppy-dog eyes of his.
Somebody should rework that Donny Osmond hit and dedicate it to Fyfe.
Besides, some high-profile executives are the worst sartorial offenders - men who manage to take a silk purse and deftly transform it into a pig's ear.
How hard is it to dress well when you've got enough dosh to walk into any store and buy your heart's desire? Hard, apparently.
It's certainly disheartening to see the comeback of the white cuff, white collar and candy- or blue-striped shirt. It was cat's vomit in the 1980s and now it's two-decades-old cat's vomit, and smelling every year of its execrable history.
I remember one bloke who had served on a zillion boards turning up on the telly wearing one of those candy-striped shirts, a blue pin-striped double-breasted suit and a striped multi-coloured tie.
The barbarian.
Good taste is subjective but some simple errors are avoided easily.
Don't wear stripes on stripes. Don't wear stripes on dots. And a word to my Rubenesque-shaped fellas: avoid the double-breasted suit.
It seems to accentuate the heft.
As for the rest of you; pull your trousers up and make an effort, will you?
