OK, my eldest son found out that I visit a fashion forum (with much rolling of his eyes, I'll admit), but he did pose a question that I had difficulty answering, so I'm turning to you ladies to help me formulate a snappy response.

First, a bit of background. He is a writer for a major magazine in Canada and lives in Toronto. The building where he works also houses the offices of a major Canadian fashion magazine. Both he and his wife are urban professionals and spend a fair bit of their budget on clothes, with frequent excursions to New York and Paris for shopping trips. His wife is quite style conscious so he is not completely ignorant of women's fashion. OK, with that out of the way, here is the question that he posed to me:

"Why do all the women I see in ____ office, and on the street, for that matter, dress the same? Last year it was long hair and too-small jackets (his words, not mine) worn with super-tight pants tucked into knee-high, brown boots. This year it is droopy, rolled up jeans with animal print belts and shoes that look like Tom Sawyer went on a safari. And every one of them is hauling around a handbag big enough to use as luggage on an extended vacation. Does someone send out a memo on this stuff every year? Isn't fashion supposed to be about wearing makes you look good, not just what makes you look like everyone else?"

After his rant, I started looking around and began cringing... I couldn't deny the uniformity of most of the outfits I saw in the downtown area. Are we deluding ourselves that we are stylish, when in fact, we are cloning ourselves in the name of avoiding frumpiness?

What can I say to put him in his place (and not wince this fall if I tuck my jeans into my COGNAC-- not brown!-- boots).