Sumptuous Single Hue Salads 🍇 🍏

One deep purple with plums and grapes, one entirely apple-focused, both rebels.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CONFUSED by harsh warnings and restrictive “rules” regarding how one should and should not dress. The world has evolved in this regard, of course. But when I was a kid, it felt Byzantine.

Especially in the South, where I grew up. You would hear such bizarre dicta as No White Shoes after Labor Day, Straw Bags Are for Summer Only, Navy and Black Is Not Allowed, No Mixing Patterns, and on and on—not to mention rules about which color combinations were “O.K.” As a very young kid, I wondered: Says who? Who wrote these rules?

It turned out that it was Tammy Peavey (not her real name). At a birthday party, the minute I took off my coat, Tammy, the older sister of the birthday girl, snorted: “You’re not allowed to wear pink with red.”

As a result of early childhood trauma, she dressed like a spy.

I looked smashing in my stretchy pink stirrup pants, pink short-sleeve turtleneck, and red socks—obviously. But I had broken two apparent rules—I was simultaneously matchy-matchy and clashy—and I quickly found out what happens when you do. All the partygoers surround you in a circle and point and laugh, while you stand there, frozen in horror. (That’s how I remember it, at least.)

I eventually got over this trauma, but not before spending several decades of my life dressing as nondescriptly as a spy trying to avoid suspicion or detection. Luckily, much of this time overlapped with my years in New York.

Apples before and after the mandoline.

This period of my life could have been a disaster for my delicate psyche. I worked at the New Yorker, and our offices were in a midtown high-rise with all the other publications Condé Nast owned, including the fashion magazines. Their employees often looked like they were headed to a runway (some of them probably were), and stepping into an elevator full of them could be formidable. I once had the longest ride of my life with a famous editor: She faced the crowd rather than the doors, and scanned our outfits like a quality control inspector.

Since we were Condé Nast’s lone literary magazine, whose workforce was made up of hyper-intellectuals, brilliant eccentrics, and studious goobers, it was apparently okay if New Yorker editors and writers looked like we’d spent the night in the library. There were more than a few extremely attractive, terrific dressers—especially in the art and photography departments—but plenty of us just needed a lint brush and a good hair stylist. And rumor had it that we were referred to (affectionately, I’m sure) as “the Beverly Hillbillies” of the building.

You don’t have to serve this plum, grape and fig salad as a pristine platter. You can also serve it in a bowl, as a gorgeous mess

But what unified us all was the very thing that had cursed me at that birthday party so many years earlier: matchy-matchiness. Great dressers and mediocre ones alike defaulted to a kind of uniform: black boots, black skirt or pants, black sweater, black hat, black scarf, black gloves, black bag. Not only was it not frowned upon, it was preferred. My friends and I always looked like we were on our way to burgle a house.

But it was not a rule. It was just sleek and easy and reduced laundry loads. If you rubbed up against anything on the street—a parked car, say, or a lamppost—you didn’t have to worry about walking around the city wearing visible smudges of soot the way you might if you dressed in white or pink or most other colors.

It was a habit that had a purpose. Most bossy imperatives people throw around about “clashing” or “matching” or “good taste” (whatever that is) do not. They really serve no purpose at all, from what I can tell, except to make other people feel bad.