My style guru?

An acquaintance once suggested that, with my keen sense of casual coordination, I should adopt ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man as my signature tune. A kind thought but one that I had to pass on as I already have someone to whom I owe fashion inspiration.

And that person is Robert Herrick, whose poem 'A sweet disorder in the dress' has been my sartorial compass ever since I read it in my first year in grammar school. Fashions come and fashions go but he has always pointed me in the right direction.

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly:
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.  

And never in his wildest dreams could Herrick have had in mind the fashions recently unveiled by Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto. Extravagantly praised in Vogue magazine (how else do you think I keep at the cutting edge of fashion?) under the heading 'A sweet disorder in the dress', they described Yamamoto's latest collection as 'frank, fearless and free'. Vacuous publicity-seeking tosh for the rest of us, I would guess? More of a sour disorder of the dress, methinks.