I can’t comment on your relationship with your father, nor on how he decided to tell you that you should have made better preparations to meet his tailor.

What I can do is help you out by telling you things that it sounds like you may not have known. If you didn’t know this, then it would have been helpful for you if you had known this before hand.

Pants are tailored to the shoes you plan on wearing with the pants. If you plan on wearing shoes with laces, then you’ll end up with a different tailoring than if you wear shoes that are slip on. Even different styles of shoes require different tailorings. Therefore, you should always get your shoes first, and bring them to the tailor.

Next, you’re going to go back when you pick up the clothing. If they are a good tailor (which I assume they are), they’ll want you to check the fit before they send you out the door. There is *nothing* wrong with a fit being close, but not perfect and them taking it back to make changes.

This time, bring the nice shoes you plan on using for the pants. Wear nice clothing, dress nice, etc. and get an alarm clock, man!
Getting started with dressing nice when you prefer casual stuff (like shorts and t-shirts) is hard. I know a few of the “rules”, but I don’t know all that much. I’m certainly not comfortable with the whole “scene”. I pproached the various purveyors of nice clothing with the attitude: I don’t know, but I want to learn.

There are some books along the lines of “everything a gentleman should know” that talk about this stuff. Some of it should be taken with a grain of salt; I mean, who get’s invited to a fancy dress dinner where top hat and tails are expected? But it helps you understand some of the reasoning behind this stuff.

The book I got from the library was this one:
A Gentleman Gets Dressed Up : What to Wear, When to Wear it, How to Wear it
by Bryan Curtis, John Bridge

I liked it, it was fairly straight forward and said what I needed. As I said, some of the information is overkill, but it’s a good book anyway. It’s also fairly recent, from 2003, so it points out stuff that isn’t common anymore.

Everything is in the form of (quoted from the book):
A gentleman knows that clothes do not make the man. But he knows that, when making a first impression, his wardrobe may speak louder than his actions — perhaps even louder than his words.

Ciao!

He’s being unrealistic. You’ve been his son an awfully long time; by now he should know who you are. Clearly, your idea of ‘cleaning up’ and his are very different.

When you’re feeling calm enough, could you say, “Dad, I appreciate that you want to help. But your criticism doesn’t improve the situation any.” You might also want to remind him that A) You work in a completely different environment than he does - and one where jeans and bike t-shirts are completely ok; and B) that being a git is endearing to nobody.

As Becca would say, we love you and your show. (It means hey, you rock.)

Sounds like your dad is trying to find a way to pass on what he knows (namely, dressing to impress) and probably feels guilty/ashamed that he didn’t get this little knowledge dump taken care of when you were 7 and impressionable.

Next time it happens, call tihsllub on him and say something along the lines of: “Look. If you want to give me some advice then try just giving some general guidelines instead of waiting for me to make a move and then nitpicking it. We’re both too busy to keep playing the trial’n'error game.”

You don’t have to adopt his fashion philisophy all the time, but knowing what to do and how to dress for those high-society, raise-your-pinky-as-you-sip-the-earl-grey times isn’t a bad thing. Never know when you might need it.

If I recall correctly, you and your dad have had a rather complex relationship for a long time. Still, I hope that you told him his comments were out of line. (I was probably 30, though, by the time I told my dad that “You look like a homeless person” and “Wow, you’ve gained/lost weight!” were not appropriate greetings when I arrived home for a visit–after months away, of course.)

Remember: just as you deserve better than that printed shirt :-), you deserve better that that treatment from your father. Neither is worthy of you.

Hugs!!

Could it partly be that your father recognized you’re making an effort to change your appearance and didn’t know how to react? That he’s gotten used to you looking a certain way and doesn’t know how to adjust his idea of you to the new things you’re trying out? Did you have product in your hair? Maybe that was new to him, hence the “greasy” hair comment. Shoes too big for your pants probably just meant they were more interesting than loafers or whatever it is folks put on their feet out there in Texas.

You know I hate the print shirts, but I do applaud your efforts. Hang in there.

You could also take it to an extreme… if my mother complains about my appearance, or anything else for that matter, I tend to reply with, “gosh, Mom, nice to see you, too,” because we only see each other once a month or so, and the focus should be on our relationship, not what I’m wearing. Of course, not everyone can get away with being that snarky to their parents, so do what works for you. Just don’t let the nitpicking get under your skin too much.