It’s been brought to my attention that my dear friend Matt Hranek was not allowed into the bar at a certain Parisian Hotel the other day. Quel scandale! The reason, or La Raison, was that he was wearing shorts. Shorts! It was Matt himself who shared his sartorial imbroglio on Instagram, so confident was he in his position. After all, Matt was in the presence of two well-dressed women and was wearing what might be called an “elevated seaside” ensemble (loafers, short-sleeve button-up shirt, cotton shorts).

So, should Matt have been admitted? In a word, yes. If you’re the bar manager you massage the rules and let him in—you’ve made a friend, he gives you a tip, a signed copy of his magazine and he dresses up the next time. We can all laugh about it later, hell he’ll probably have his birthday party there (if he gets a good deal). Maybe other people see an intriguing man at the bar, shorts and all, and ask who he is. In any case, it’s an empty bar in the middle of the day in the summer. It’s not a club where members are dying to enforce the rules. But once you turn him away then you’ve lost Matt, a potentially valued client, forever. Not to mention one who drinks an endless stream of a certain Italian cocktail—I forget which one, he’s so discreet about these things.

That’s not to say Matt has the sartorial high ground. I don’t think a man should wear shorts any place he can’t see the water. And the Seine doesn’t count. Trousers are for town, for many reasons, including the fact that you might be taken with the urge to step into an upscale bar. But Matt is not other men, he’s the exception that proves the sartorial rule. He could wear a Safari jacket to a black tie event and look great. He inhabits his own universe, so don’t try to wear what he wears (and don’t try to eat all the steak he eats!), it won’t work. But when you show up at 21 in jeans then you’re making a leap of faith that the host will overlook what you’ve chosen to overlook. That will leave you on 52nd Street looking for a new place to lunch.

It’s funny, while looking for an image for this story I came across an old piece I wrote for A Continuous Lean, one of the sites that invented the internet. It was from, gasp, 2013, when 21 abandoned its stricter dress code at lunch, something I had wistful feelings about then and still do now. Getting revved up about a tie-less lunch is quaint, but it’s still a sign of the downward march to the casual universe we inhabit now. I personally like a dress code, I wish there was one on airplanes. Don’t see it as something to merely meet, see it as something to plow through on your own terms. Imagine what Glenn O’Brien would wear, or Richard Merkin, or Alan Flusser, or Bobby Short (not the caftan phase). Break out your velvet jacket or your best suit (I hope you have one!). You never know, you might run into somebody you like or even somebody you don’t like. They’ll both be intrigued why you look so dapper.

That’s not to say I’ve never suffered Matt’s fate. There was an incident about fifteen years ago at the East India Club in London, perhaps the most backward looking establishment in a city of full of them. It was summer and I was wearing a dark suit and tie and, crucially, espadrilles. I thought it was a pretty nice combination, to be honest. The doorman at the East India Club did not. I naively tried to bend rules that would not bend. I expected a sense of imagination where there was none to be found. It was a reminder that sometimes we have to do what society expects of us, whether we like it or not. It’s hard to navigate the fine line between the world as it is and the world as we want to it be. We aren’t always the ones who dictate the terms of engagement. And then, when the dress code is finally enforced it stings even more to be on the outside looking in.