The clothes never made the man

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Now I look back on my father's life during the time I've been in the world (from ages 33 to 79), I realise I've never known a man with so little vanity. He was a bit of a classic iconoclastic Aussie bloke who probably would have gone everywhere in thongs and shorts if he could.

There's a photo of he and Mum in the lounge room of Gabo Place when we were all on our way out to the Fountain Inn. If I remember it correctly he's wearing these slacks with slightly flared legs and a tiny brown check pattern and a shirt that used to be his going out uniform, a snugly fitting, long sleeve cotton shirt made of soft cotton that was a delectable dark brown colour with muted orange buttons. David used to call it his 'body shirt'.

When we were teenagers and used to wear the same thing over and over and he'd say 'when's the operation?' every time the opportunity called for it – like all his jokes. It meant we were wearing something so often it was like it was attached and we'd have to get it surgically removed. Whenever he did, I wish I'd remembered the body shirt.

Anyway this photo of unmistakably 70s fashion was taken well into my teens, so it was the 80s. He just didn't care. Many was the occasion we'd all be getting ready to go somewhere, Dad would have got dressed in the front bedroom, and when Mum went in to put jewellery or something on a stream of invective and instructions to change clothes would ring forth.

At one stage Mum got sick of it, throwing all the 70s clothes out and going to buy stuff that was much more of the era (and his size). That meant bright pastel trousers and white shirts with aggressive areas stripes of colour like careless brushstrokes of paint. Overnight the Fountain Inn started looking like Miami Vice... except we pulled up in a two-tone brown 323 Mazda instead of a Ferrari Testarossa.

And true to Dad's form, he wore those going-out outfits... and wore them... and wore them... and wore them... I'm sure no matter how much the pastels started to fade he'd still have been wearing them if he could.

And I started this story about him to share the humour in it, how quintessentially Frank it was. But here's the funny thing. I don't exactly hate clothes shopping, but my wife loves it. She's also very aware of what's in fashion and knows how to hunt down good clothes that have been marked way down (which I'm completely not), so we find ourselves in the situation where I don't own a single stitch of clothing that she hasn't bought. The last time I bought something for myself was about 25 years ago and it was a shirt everybody used to laugh at.

I also hate throwing things out that aren't falling apart at the seams, and although I understand the confidence being well dressed gives you when you go out, I slop around my house in whatever's closest to me when I get out of bed.

So as I sit here smiling, remembering my Dad's taste in clothes, I realise it wasn't terrible, he just didn't have any. He wasn't interested. His taste in clothes was my mother's. Maybe we lose vanity when we get to a certain age, and I was just too young to realise that my Dad had reached that stage. But maybe he never had any.

I only wish that, when I'd gone to see him in his flat in Kirrawee and he was sitting there in the same polo shirt, worn shorts and sandals that looked like biohazards, I'd thought to say; 'when's the operation?'

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