Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don't have.
For all the attention Bourdain gave to what was on the plate, there was something admirable about what he wore, which was often nothing notable. Well-worn denim, familiar shirts and leather that looked better for having been somewhere.
In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain wrote, “Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don't have.” It feels like a premise that applies neatly to his wardrobe, too. There is a particular kind of charm required to make a shirt and some denim look interesting, Bourdain had it.
Enjoy the ride.
Another whopper you’ve likely heard before from Tony is“Your body is not a temple. It’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” Perhaps that goes some way towards explaining why his clothes earned their character. He didn't appear overly precious about any of it. He wore things. He travelled in them. He cooked in them. He sweated in them. He spilt things on them.
For leather and denim, this is less a problem than a long-term investment. Earning a badge of honour labeled patina or character.
Most of us remember Bourdain as a gifted storyteller, his clothes posessed that talent too. They looked well travelled because they were. Far from the dapper refinement of Mr Tucci, Bourdain's wardrobe was rich in experience, likely more so than monetary value. Perhaps that helped create the disarming quality that allowed people to let him into their worlds, to sit down, talk honestly and eventually serve him a piece of themselves, quite literally, on a plate.
He had an instinct for the unpretentious. He found pleasure in the things that didn't need explaining, whether that was a bowl of noodles in a backstreet restaurant or a perfectly good shirt that had been worn within an inch of its life.
There is something useful in that.
The snobbery found in food exists in clothing too. We can spend an extraordinary amount of time deciding what is important, what is rare, what is worth knowing about. Bourdain cut through the fat, more interested in the thing itself and the truth of the experience.
Bourdain romanticised the pleasure of not knowing. Curiosity was more important to him than accomplishment. “Travel is not a reward for working,” he wrote. “It’s an education for living.”
There is a lesson in that for getting dressed, too.
Saving your best shirt for the right occasion is, perhaps, missing the point. Clothes become interesting when they have somewhere to go. The denim picks up a crease. The leather softens. The shirt gets a little closer to being yours. You don't just own the thing, you give it a history. Get the foundations right and the rest tends to follow.
Bourdain understood that with food and travel.
Perhaps he understood it with clothes, too.
