Wolfe adopted the white suit as a trademark in 1962. He bought his first white suit planning to wear it in the summer in the style of Southern gentlemen. The suit he purchased, however, was too heavy in the summer for his tastes and so he wore it in winter instead. He found wearing the suit in the winter created a sensation and adopted it as his trademark.[18] Wolfe has maintained the uniform ever since, sometimes worn with a matching white tie, white homburg hat, and two-tone shoes. Wolfe has said that the outfit disarms the people he observes, making him, in their eyes, “a man from Mars, the man who didn’t know anything and was eager to know.”[19]
via Tom Wolfe – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Wolfe began wearing the white suit in 1962 and continued because it provided a helpful barrier between himself and his subjects. “It made me a man from Mars,” Wolfe says, “the man who didn’t know anything and was eager to know. Incidentally, all during these trips to colleges I didn’t wear the suit. I’d wear navy blazers, white flannels, shoes like this.” Wolfe points at his two-tone shoes as if they magically appeared on his feet. “They had no idea who I was … they’d tend to look at me and think, ‘Well, he’s too old to be Drug Enforcement Administration.’ So they figured I was harmless. People just can’t stay wary so long.”
I don’t consider Tom Wolfe the expert in Christian ministry, but he did go and hear “confessions” of a sort from young people on college campuses. I have to wonder if this may have some bearing on how pastor’s minister in the world. We are “in the world, not of it,” but the popular consensus today seems to be that pastors need to show how far they are in it in order to gain a hearing. Wolfe might give us reason to question this inference. Perhaps we might be more useful if we didn’t look the same as everyone else.
Just a thought.
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