In a new Los Angeles Times article, Neil discusses HIMYM, suits and his own personal style.
“I’m a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy,” he said in a recent interview. “I was intimidated by high-end fashion growing up, and I never really bought into all the expensive things they were hawking in the fashion magazines.
“I didn’t know what to make of it. . . . I’d go into Fred Segal and panic at all the $6,000 shirts. I’d just as soon go to H&M and buy a similar shirt for $70.”
Even so, as a result of playing the show’s well-clad cad, Harris has had the luxury of engaging in some sartorial soul-searching. “Because the wardrobe department adds four or five new suits to Barney’s wardrobe each season, I’ve had the chance to try on just about every brand of suit on the market,” he said.
“That’s how I found that certain brands just fit my body type well. Dolce & Gabbana uses thinner fabrics and that makes them more comfortable for me — that’s another thing I’ve learned from” the show.
Harris, who doesn’t rely on a personal stylist to dress him for talk show appearances and red carpets, has even borrowed from the show’s wardrobe on occasion. “That’s one of the great things about being a guy,” he said. “You can just throw on a suit.”
And when pressed, he’ll admit he can see the wisdom of spending good money on denim (he favors Levi’s and Hudson) and underwear — “the stuff you wear all the time,” he said. He shops for clothes at Barneys CO-OP (“the one at the Grove is pretty good, but I’m usually in New York”). He’s partial to shades of blue and gray, shuns bold patterns and confesses a peculiar addiction to V-neck T-shirts.
“Slate gray is my favorite color,” he said. “I probably have 15 gray short-sleeve V-neck T-shirts in my house. Every time I go to buy clothes, I seem to end up with two more. I’ve got dark gray, darker gray, light gray, lighter gray, [and] darker blue-gray.”
You can read the rest of the interview at the LA Times website, and we’ve added the photoshoot pictures to the gallery, along with some pictures of Neil on the phones at the Hope for Haiti Now telethon on Friday night. The two-hour telethon raised $57m. You can continue to donate by phone, text, or via the Hope for Haiti website for the next six months.
Neil also attended the new Pee Wee Herman show at LA’s Club Nokia last week, and talked to TheStar.com about the show, and the chances of Dr Horrible 2.
The night I attended, I happened to spot How I Met Your Mother‘s Neil Patrick Harris in the audience, and was able to ask him what he thought of the show during an HIMYM set visit the next day.
He essentially agreed with me, having been both mildly entertained and somewhat disappointed with how much of it was recycled. It needs, we concur, more new gags and characters, along the lines of the featured floating puppet “Sham-Wow,” later accidentally deep-fried and resurrected as a ghost.
Harris, a song-and-dance stage star himself, hinted at an upcoming guest appearance on Glee, likely to be directed by Joss Whedon, for whom he also starred in the musical web hit Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog.
Harris is as much in the dark as anyone about the likelihood of a Horrible sequel. “I keep sort of asking (Whedon) if it’s gonna happen, if there’s gonna be any kind of Dr. Horrible-ness,” he says. “They’re anxious to do it, but scheduling becomes the tricky issue.”
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