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t the office, Sharon and I had been flirting vigorously for several weeks when I decided to take the plunge and ask her to dinner. I chose a lively French bistro close to my apartment where the owner lets you linger for hours over that last drop of burgundy. She arrived at 7:30 on the dot, smiling and swinging an obviously fake Burberry handbag from the crook in her arm.

She sat down, brandishing the faux accessory with the pride usually reserved for newborns. It was perched on the empty seat for the remainder of the meal like the figurative third wheel or the younger brother you have to babysit over March break or the snowstorm after Christmas: it was uninvited. I could see the loose threads baring the marks of the sweatshop-factory stitching. Was that pleather? The pattern featured a smudged orange pink where the red stripe should have been.

I toyed with my food as the conversation turned to clothing and she made personal references as if fishing for compliments. I'm a nice guy, but I couldn't compliment combat trousers and curled, moussed hair! (What was she thinking?) Her effort was flattering, but the outfit and the handbag (oh, the handbag!) said she was trying too hard to be someone that she wasn't. My attraction was waning. I am looking for someone who is a little more self-aware. And who dresses better. I stayed for dinner, passed on the tarte aux pommes, then bolted amid a cloud of dust.

Am I shallow? Feeling slightly ashamed, I confessed to a friend about the breakup. To my relief, he wasn't surprised, and he recounted his own story of dissatisfaction with a girlfriend who didn't like his Ben Sherman shirts. They were his trademark and she wasn't. She had to go.

For me, becoming sensitized to bad female dressers began in 1986. It was Grade 10 and I was going out with the most gorgeous girl at school. We wore uniforms, so I had never seen her in her civvies. For our first date, I had saved up to buy a blue Ralph Lauren Polo button-down shirt that I would wear with my dark-blue jeans and Bass Weejun loafers. When we met at the theatre, she turned up in a Boca sweatsuit. I was mortified. It was a painful lesson to learn as a teenager, but one that would continue into my university years, when I would be confronted with a new fashion insult: Birkenstocks. I vowed to steer clear of women who wore these atrocities of footwear, as well as women who wore beads in their hair.

It seems that there are straight men out there who expect a certain standard of style, not only from themselves, but also from the women in their lives. "I was very critical of my ex-wife's clothes, not necessarily because they were too sexy or unfashionable, they just didn't suit her," says my friend Eric, a corporate consultant in San Francisco. "It would really embarrass me because it was inappropriate to wear tight jeans and short tops when she was 20 pounds overweight. And she never learned to walk in those pointy stilettos." Eric attempted to rectify the situation without vocalizing his complaints. "I would buy her things I thought she'd look good in: a Marc Jacobs raincoat, Prada loafers, looser-fitting things that were still sexy." Ultimately, though, she didn't take his hint.

Today, men have reached a level of enthusiasm and awareness in fashion that rivals that of women. In her








book The Substance of Style, Virginia Postrel puts the rise in male aesthetics down to a cultural shift in which men are being motivated by our image-obsessed society to raise the style bar for themselves and their significant others. Call it pride persuading prejudice, but if success in their work lives is related to their choice of an Hermes tie, then success in their social lives is contingent on the fashion choices of their partners. With men having all these images thrust at them, they are poignantly aware of how their girlfriends look. While my friends and I don't expect perfection from ourselves or from the women in our lives, we do expect our female companions to show a certain savvy about their appearance. How can two people be equal if he wears Dolce & Gabbana and she favours Le Chateau?

I once did find the girl of my dreams. She looked exquisitely elegant in everything she wore, and we were blissfully happy until our careers took us in different directions. Maybe we modern style aficionados are shooting ourselves in our Italian footwear. The well-dressed man wants to impress the opposite sex by dressing well and does not want the sort of Woman who doesn't appreciate the effort. The hope is that they'll find their match: men and women who enjoy dressing up in clothes that say they know what they're wearing. Until I find mine, I'll always have Gucci.

Jon Scott Blanthorn