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"  I&amp;#039;ve never been particularly proud of my ankles. I&amp;#039;ve never been much ashamed of them, either. Honestly, until a few days ago, I never gave my ankles much thought at all. Now I can&amp;#039;t stop thinking about them. And it doesn&amp;#039;t help that three young women recently paused in front of me on the street in Venice, California, noticed the three-inch gap between my shoes and my pant cuffs, and burst out laughing. Obviously they don&amp;#039;t understand fashion. Of course, until last week, I wasn&amp;#039;t so fashion-forward myself. I wasn&amp;#039;t a total slob. I knew to match my socks to my pants, to avoid square-toed shoes, to never, ever wear one of those tuxedo-print T-shirts. In the course of my life, a few women had even complimented me on my fashion sense, though I always suspected that what they meant was that I dressed in a way that didn&amp;#039;t embarrass them. Avoiding embarrassment -- that was perhaps my guiding sartorial principle. But that was because I didn&amp;#039;t really understand fashion. Thom Browne was going to change that. Thom Browne is one of the most influential men&amp;#039;s clothing designers. His suits start out at about $4,000 (although he will be launching a more conventional and affordable line through Brooks Brothers this fall), and what you&amp;#039;re not paying for is a whole lot of fabric. Because Thom Browne&amp;#039;s suits are small. Like real small. Like take-your-prom-suit-and-throw-it-in-the-dryer-on-high-for-a-couple-hours small. You might even be tempted to say that his suits are so small, they don&amp;#039;t actually fit. But you would be tempted to say this only if, like me, you didn&amp;#039;t understand fashion. A few weeks ago, I met Browne at his Tribeca store, where he fit me with a few of his suits. The idea was to see what happens when an average dresser of average proportions suddenly inhabits a fashion-forward getup. How would I feel? How would my life change? How would I avoid having my ass handed to me on the subway? Browne greeted me in the store&amp;#039;s back room wearing one of his own snug jackets, a long skinny black tie, and dress shorts cut just above the knee. I thought it was kind of a miracle that he didn&amp;#039;t look absurd, but he managed to pull the look off. Still, Thom Browne is a tiny guy -- maybe five six and very thin -- and he is sometimes criticized for making clothes that look good only on him. As Browne instructed his assistant on which samples to pull, I wondered aloud if his suits were really going to work on a guy my size: six feet, 185 pounds. In the course of his answer, he walked me through the history of his designs. Browne, who until 2001 worked as fashion director of Ralph Lauren&amp;#039;s Club Monaco line, had always been a devotee of 1950s and &amp;#039;60s tailoring. When he debuted his own collection in 2003, the concept behind his now-famous suit was to bring those conventions -- the narrow jacket, the hand stitching, the fitted pants -- to a generation rapidly abandoning the suit altogether. He wanted to save the suit from itself, and to do this, he knew he had to make it look radical. So he shrunk it. The Thom Browne suit is actually based on your father&amp;#039;s old Brooks Brothers, but unless your father is Frodo Baggins, there&amp;#039;s no confusing the two.  Browne assured me his suits could be tailored to any size (within reason), as long as the proportions were maintained. And I was somewhat encouraged by the fact that there was another guy of average size in the store trying on a seersucker number, though I was less encouraged by the fact that he kind of looked like an ass. I sucked in my gut and tried on jackets, and I somehow managed to squeeze into the second one. Still, I felt like Chris Farley in David Spade&amp;#039;s blazer, and it seemed as if the thing was one quick exhale from becoming a $4,000 rag. I emerged from behind the dressing panel expecting a chuckle and a new, roomier blazer. Instead I got, &amp;quot;Oh, that one&amp;#039;s perfect. Now let&amp;#039;s do the pants.&amp;quot; Browne&amp;#039;s assistant pinned the legs where he wanted to hem them. But Browne corrected him: &amp;quot;If he&amp;#039;s gonna do this, we might as well go for it,&amp;quot; he said, as he rolled up my trousers another two inches. Meanwhile, Browne carefully outlined the proper way to wear his suit: tie tucked in and clipped, button-down collar left unbuttoned, no belt, and no socks. The rules of nonconformity, it seemed, were more fascistic than I had imagined. &amp;quot;Of course, the most important thing is that you&amp;#039;re comfortable,&amp;quot; he said, unbuttoning my jacket and allowing me to exhale for the first time in fifteen minutes.  The following week, I received my suits -- one a three-button charcoal gray sharkskin, the other a two-button navy jacket with light gray pants. Enclosed was also a letter detailing Browne&amp;#039;s guidelines for proper usage, in case I had forgotten, and a few digital snapshots of jacket-tie-trouser combinations. The thing was idiot-proof -- which unfortunately did not mean I wouldn&amp;#039;t look like an idiot.   The following Monday, I pulled out the gray suit, nudging myself into the jacket, clipping and tucking in my tie, and neglecting to put on socks. I needed to see this thing in the mirror.  The jacket was actually kind of flattering. Snug as hell, yes, but in a formfitting way. The jacket, I reasoned, would be no problem. And the pants? I realized I didn&amp;#039;t own a full-length mirror, which hadn&amp;#039;t ever been an issue, since I could pretty much always envision what my pants looked like. But I had never worn capris before. So I stood on my toilet to get a view of my ankles in the bathroom mirror. I had my doubts. For some reason, the short pants reminded me of Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Fallon reminded me of lame.  The first civilians to see me in my new suit were, regrettably, a group of New York construction workers doing repairs outside my building. I&amp;#039;ll never be sure whether one stopped jackhammering so he could laugh at me or whether he was laughing so hard that he had to stop jackhammering, but I do know he turned to one of his colleagues and muttered something. And I&amp;#039;m 95 percent sure it wasn&amp;#039;t, &amp;quot;Man, I gotta get me one of those Thom Browne suits.&amp;quot; Still, as I made my way to the office, I found that any stares and jeers had the opposite effect than I would have assumed. They emboldened me. My attire was suddenly doing something it had never done before: announcing me. I&amp;#039;m not sure I liked what it was saying, but the fact that my clothing had a voice at all was kind of thrilling. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ll see,&amp;quot; Browne had warned me. &amp;quot;Strangers will get really angry at you. I don&amp;#039;t know why, but they will.&amp;quot; But I know why. There&amp;#039;s a certain smug superiority to any contrived fashion, an inherent fuck you to those who aren&amp;#039;t in the know, and now I was wearing that signpost. It&amp;#039;s the reason that -- had I not been the dude in the short pants -- I likely would have wanted to punch myself in the face. But I was that dude, so I embraced it. As Thom Browne said, if I was gonna do this, I had to go for it.  Friends and colleagues got a kick out of the new look, though few seemed to think it was one I should adopt permanently. It was toughest when I encountered people who casually knew me, people I had seen for years in the office elevators or cafeteria and to whom it must have seemed that I had undergone some kind of quick and desperate high-fashion makeover. Around strangers, it was easier, even fun, since they had no knowledge of how I ordinarily dressed. I had dreaded the subway, but it turned out my fears were unfounded: New Yorkers see a lot of weirder fashion. Sure, I got some eye rolls. Businessmen in boxy suits would occasionally motion and stare, but then again, so would women. And when women see a guy in short pants, they don&amp;#039;t exactly assume he&amp;#039;s straight, which means you can stare back at them with impunity. Another upside: At the airport, I had very little trouble in the security line; it seems very few terrorists wear Thom Browne.  My comfort level pretty much came to depend on where I was and whom I was with, which renewed my respect and sympathy for those who rock their look regardless of their environment. A guy in black eyeliner at a Marilyn Manson concert? That&amp;#039;s easy. A guy in black eyeliner at a rodeo? Now that takes balls. Likewise, when I wore my supersnug blue blazer with the high gray pants to Michael&amp;#039;s, a popular power-lunch spot where a radical sartorial statement is an open collar, it took me a few martinis to stop worrying about the fact that seated, my pants were riding up to my knees. As I left, Cleo Glyde, the outspoken style director at Marie Claire, called me over to her table. &amp;quot;Oh, my God, I love the suit!&amp;quot; she said, putting me at ease for a moment. &amp;quot;Though if I love it, you might want to be a bit worried.&amp;quot; I wasn&amp;#039;t sure what that meant, but I wanted to hustle out of there. On the other hand, at lunch at the Ivy in Los Angeles, where even the &amp;quot;suits&amp;quot; weren&amp;#039;t wearing suits, I felt at ease. But that was probably because I didn&amp;#039;t look half as victimized as most of the people around me, munching their twenty-five-dollar salads in silly designer T-shirts and tilted army caps. At least my expensive affectation had class. I still needed to see how my new look performed at night. My plan was to take it to a few of New York&amp;#039;s trendier bars and restaurants, places where the patrons might recognize a Thom Browne suit. My buddy and I started at the Waverly Inn, Graydon Carter&amp;#039;s celebrity den. I ran into a female friend, an editor at Harper&amp;#039;s Bazaar, who was chatting with the lovely Anne Hathaway. &amp;quot;You looked smashing,&amp;quot; my friend told me the next day, though she copped to not seeing the ankles. And what did Anne think, I wondered? &amp;quot;Uh, I don&amp;#039;t think she noticed.&amp;quot; Okay, fair enough, but there were two women who did. Ten minutes after my friend and I took a seat at the bar, I heard someone shout, &amp;quot;No socks!&amp;quot; I looked up. The accuser, it turned out, was a twenty-something Chilean woman who worked in finance. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s fun,&amp;quot; she said, &amp;quot;and it looks good on you,&amp;quot; though before she could finish the compliment, her blond friend angrily jumped in: &amp;quot;Are you kidding?&amp;quot; Soon I had two women fighting over me. True, they were arguing over whether I looked like an imbecile, but still, I don&amp;#039;t recall that ever happening over Armani or Calvin Klein.  I finished my night at the Box, the cabaret bar with a vaudevillian-style floor show and notoriously hard door. I had walked past the place many nights, but, seeing the hipster throngs pleading for entry, had never even tried. Now I stood among them, armed with the confidence of drink and, of course, my suit. Maybe fifteen people waited out front, all of them vying for the doorman&amp;#039;s attention, but he motioned for us to step closer. Was it the suit? Was he actually going to let us pass simply because I was showing some leg?  Alas, no, he still demanded a name at the door. Luckily, we came prepared with one, and as we entered the dark room where the shirtless, tattooed emcee serenaded the crowd, some wearing T-shirts, some wearing suits, and at least one wearing very short pants, I knew this: A Thom Browne suit won&amp;#039;t change your life, but it just might get you noticed. And getting noticed might get you in the door. And once you&amp;#039;re in the door? Well, then it&amp;#039;s up to you. Hey, it&amp;#039;s just a suit, but it&amp;#039;s certainly something to keep in mind the next time you&amp;#039;re in the market for a new one. Or a nice pair of socks. 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