He tended toward long, colorful sarongs topped by Oxford shirts knotted at the waist, and today, preparing to leave, he’d wrapped a capacious loose-weave brown shawl over the ensemble, leaving nothing showing but his lean brown calves and his red suede clogs. The first few class meetings he’d annoyed me, but today I’d found myself admiring his extravagant sense of style, and now, walking behind him, I realized that he reminded me of a model on a catwalk, the way he strode along on his long legs and held the shawl close, the angles of his body revealed with every move.At the exit he held the door open an extra moment so I could pass through, then stopped outside to wait for me. “Lime green,” he said. “I want women to wear lime-green dresses with white embroidery this summer. But drapey, not all stiff. Sort of Lilly Pulitzer meets Badgely Mischka. With very thick-soled white sandals.”I smiled, wondering if I could have come up with such a sweeping idea.“I do,” he said. “Don’t you just look at all these wretched black coats and want to scream?”It was lunchtime, and masses of people in black hurried by with their heads down, walking fast through the cold.“Women should wear hats again,”
