Summary

"Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?" details the author's less than sartorial splendor when it came to dressing throughout his life. He reveals how his favorite Halloween costume as a child was to dress as a hobo, because he felt that image best summarized his approach to clothing. He chronicles a $400 sweater he owned that was deliberately distressed by designers to look old and ripped up, as well as a pair of flat shoes he called his clown shoes. He wished that he had purchased an entire closet full of the so-called clown shoes, as he liked the way they fit his flat feet.

Continuing a reflection on his fashion sensibility, Sedaris laments the poor choices he'd made in glasses, in particular an oversized pair in the 1970s and a rectangular pair in the 1990s that...