Fidelity is not the only benefit of being with a man who is loyal to navy T-shirts. According to our fashion fixer, he can use the time saved to bring you tea in bed

My partner only wears navy T-shirts and jeans on weekdays. Is his fashion monogamy a good sign for us, or is he going to have a midlife crisis and buy a pair of cerise jorts?

Helen, London

I’ll be honest, Helen, I hadn’t previously considered the correlation between fashion and fidelity, but I do think you have a point here. After all, in my experience, contrary to all those women’s magazine/Daily Mail headlines of the “What every woman should know to keep their man!!!” variety, most males are deeply monogamous in nature. Buckle up, everyone, while we enter the galaxy of … Sweeping Gender Generalisations!

From my vantage point, at the coalface of gender observations, the majority of men, once they’re in a relationship for the long haul, just want to bed in. By which I mean they don’t want to have to make the kinds of efforts they once made when they were single. They get a bit fat, they go a bit bald, and that’s just fine with them because they’ve had enough of the hassle that they think goes into impressing prospective paramours. They’ve got their partner so can they just get some takeaway, watch Netflix and let their bellies flop over their jeans with secret elasticated waist, please? This explains why, over the age of 35, men tend to settle into a daily uniform, whether that’s a suit or (bad) jeans, (worse) khakis and neutral – meaning blue, white or tartan – shirts (men, for some reason, consider tartan to be a neutral on a button-down shirt, similar to the way women think of leopard print as a neutral when it’s on anything).

This also explains why often the most untrustworthy men are the ones with the most inconsistent dress sense. I mean, look at Gavin Rossdale: one day a sexually ambiguous goth, the next a grunge rocker, the next a trendy Silverlake dad. Anyone could see which way this was going and, allegedly, it was going straight to shagging the nanny. Or Ben Affleck, who for years couldn’t figure out if he was a hunky leading man or an edgy indie director, and his oscillating clothing choices reflected that. He is now nicely settled into a T-shirt-wearing, fortysomething-dad groove but, alas, it allegedly took dating the nanny to find it. True, Donald Trump has been wearing suits since he was three years old and has probably grabbed the pussy of every pussy-possessing person who crossed his path. But then, there’s a consistency to that, as much as there is in his wardrobe.

So what I’m saying, Helen, is I see nothing but promise in a partner who settles into a work uniform pretty much two minutes after getting married. He has found his thing and he’s sticking with it; and I’m afraid that by “thing”, in this instance, I mean both the navy T-shirts and you. But, as we’ve already discussed, blue T-shirts are pretty much man’s greatest invention in many men’s eyes, so take it as a compliment.

I think there are a lot of advantages to being with a man who wears the same thing every day, beyond the reassurance of fidelity. The primary one is with the time he saves in the morning by not having to decide what to wear, he can bring you tea in bed. But I would suggest he reassure his colleagues he’s not wearing the actual same clothes every day. Perhaps you could get some cards printed up for him to hand round the office.

As for your fear of cerise jorts, I understand the concern, but I think it is misplaced. For a start, I strongly suspect a man who wears navy every day doesn’t even know what cerise is, let alone jorts, so this would be like worrying about him running off with Dua Lipa. He would need to Google just to get started here, so let’s not waste time worrying about the non-existent.

At most, he might dally with what I call “man ‘fashion’”. These are fashion twists that conservative men allow themselves to indulge in because they think they are fun and they convince themselves they don’t threaten their masculinity. Absurd shoes are very much man fashion, as are watches, oddly patterned button-down shirts and waistcoats. Do not worry: this is just the sartorial equivalent of your partner getting a harmless little hobby, like fly fishing, or Dungeons & Dragons. At heart, he’s still your navy T-shirted guy.