I stopped dressing like a slob and saw the sartorial light: better clothes make for a brighter day | Andrew Martin

My wife once pointed out that my white shirts were grey. Now, the way I dress brings joy - to me and to other people

A year or so ago, I was about to go out to a drinks party with my wife, when she said: You do realise that shirt's dead, don't you?" I was wearing a clean, ironed number, I pointed out. But my wife explained that death was a syndrome particularly likely to affect white shirts, as she took me to my wardrobe and showed me that all but one of my four white shirts had irreversibly lost their snowy glow. Look at them," she urged. They're grey. You might as well chuck them out."

I was, at the time, approaching 60, and my wife's shirt critique felt particularly pertinent in that context. Mindful of the looming milestone, she had been proposing a series of prescriptions for me, including not drinking four glasses of wine every day, doing pilates and resuming learning French (which I had given up in protest against reflexive verbs). While I acknowledged that all those things might benefit me, I pointed out that they would also make me miserable. When it came to the shirts, though, and clothes generally, I saw her point.

Andrew Martin's latest book is Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro