The Tempering of Rufus Humphrey

Part One of Two

I don’t know how to write a newsletter the week after a coup attempt, and I’m not sure if I figured it out. I only hope this issue offers some needed comfort, and Rufus Humphrey is the best character to provide it: a flannel-lined hug and a plate of waffles.

After all, Rufus is the only somewhat decent parent on Gossip Girl: a nineties rock star turned Brooklyn art gallery owner, father to Dan and Jenny, husband to Alison. He plays the occasional show with his band, Lincoln Hawk (one of the “Top Ten Forgotten Bands of the Nineties,” according to Rolling Stone), but he dedicates most of his time to running his gallery and supporting his children as they navigate their Upper East Side prep schools. He acts as their moral compass, the hand that guides them back when they’ve strayed from his values.

Unlike the show’s wealthy, trendy female characters, Rufus has neither the pressure to wear new outfits every day nor the means to buy them, and so he often repeats pieces—the same jewelry, the same shirts. (He even cooks the same foods, over and over: Bolognese, chili, caprese salad, and yes, waffles.) Rufus favors grunge and rock staples: plaid or Western shirts, V-neck T-shirts, leather jackets, cord necklaces and beaded bracelets, jeans. Like Nate Archibald, Rufus wears his shirts rumpled, buttons undone, but while Nate doesn’t care about his clothes, Rufus really does: they’re his identity, his status as a cool Brooklyn dad, a musician, an artist. Still, even in the early days, Rufus knows how to adapt his wardrobe to Upper East Side events, throwing on a polo shirt or blazer.

In season three, Rufus marries his longtime love, Lily, and moves to the Upper East Side, and everything shifts. The father who once reprimanded his children for emulating their wealthy classmates now fits himself into that same world: His messy hair and scruffy face are neatened and shaven. His jewelry, save for an expensive watch, disappears. His rumpled plaid shirts smooth to crisp neutral or checked button-downs. His Henleys soften to luxurious sweaters. As his wardrobe adapts, his moral code does, too, loosening to survive on the Upper East Side, to maintain his marriage to Lily. 

And yet, he still keeps one too many buttons undone, forgoes ties except for the most important of occasions. Inside, there’s a cord necklace screaming to get out.

Season One

In the pilot, Rufus meets Dan and Jenny at Grand Central; they’ve just come back from Hudson, where their mother, Alison, is “taking a time-out from [her] marriage” and working on her art. His children are both wearing touches of brown, but Rufus is fully embracing the Humphrey color: shirt, leather jacket, pants, even his cord necklace.

Dan invites his crush, Serena van der Woodsen, to a Lincoln Hawk concert; her mother, Lily, isn’t happy about it. She and Rufus dated in the nineties, before she upgraded to more famous rock stars and more affluent businessmen. When she drops by the gallery, Rufus is wearing a denim cargo shirt open over a gray V-neck T-shirt, all the better to display his cord necklace and simple chain. His sleeves are cuffed, his beaded bracelets alongside a brown-banded watch: he’s a musician, but he’s also a dad, a small-business owner, his rock-star sensibility mixed with the practicality of a watch and slouchy khaki pants. 

Lily accuses Rufus of using his son to get to her, but her behavior says the opposite: in the next episode, she asks Rufus to meet her for coffee, telling him, again, that she doesn’t want Serena dating Dan. This time, Rufus is prepared for the meeting, even a little dressed up; he’s thrown a brown pinstriped blazer over his plaid shirt and necklaces. He probes Lily about her current boyfriend but doesn’t learn the man’s identity until a few episodes later, when he’s wearing the same jacket.

In episode six, Rufus attends a party with Lily, his brown blazer paired with a brown button-down, pants, and tie. The outfit is his most formal yet, but he won’t give up his Humphrey earth tones. And Lily, for that matter, won’t give up on billionaires: she’s on a break from Bart Bass, a Manhattan real estate developer who can’t quite commit to an exclusive relationship. Once Lily and Rufus kiss, Bart wants her back, his jealousy a motivator for monogamy.    

Rufus has his own relationship ghosts to contend with: in episode eight, Jenny brings her mother, Alison, back home to Brooklyn. Rufus is angry at his wife for cheating on him in Hudson, but Alison has her own grievances: “I was there for you,” she says, “when you were all about your music, when you were on the road for months at a time. . . . My whole adult life has been about you.”

Throughout the episode, Rufus wears a blue plaid button-down over a white undershirt, a necklace half hidden. His plaid shirt is pure Humphrey, but his cord necklace is gone, never to appear again. He’s putting aside the relics of his rock-and-roll lifestyle, just as Alison once put aside her art to support him.  

Rufus and Alison spend the next few episodes trying to revive their dying marriage. They run into Lily and Bart at the prep school’s holiday bazaar (1.11), Rufus and Alison both bundled in brown jackets and scarves; Rufus will repeat his orange plaid scarf through the rest of the winter. Despite this outer display of unity, the Humphrey marriage is dead by Christmastime, and Rufus soon comes to terms with his feelings for Lily.

In episode twelve, he confesses his love, and Lily agrees to run away with him. For their phone call, he wears a green zip-up sweater and a Henley, one lone bracelet joining his watch. The sweater is a style he’ll come to favor during his marriage to Lily but one he rarely wears in the earlier seasons. He’s already making concessions for Lily, and yet she’s unable to make them for him: Serena doesn’t want Lily dating Dan’s father, and so Lily becomes engaged to Bart instead.

As the season continues, Rufus’s attention shifts to Jenny, who is trying to keep up with her wealthy classmates. Rufus thinks Jenny is ashamed of her background, and so he invites her friends to a birthday party at the Humphrey loft (1.14)—a blazer thrown over his striped band-collar shirt. He’s conforming a little, for the sake of his daughter, but he isn’t quite letting go of his roots: The band collar and its close cousin, the Nehru collar, are embedded in working-class and rock-and-roll history, the Nehru collar popularized among white westerners by the Beatles, who appropriated the styles they saw in India. Remember the band collar—while Rufus wears it a few times in early seasons, it becomes more significant in season three.

By episode seventeen, another Rufus piece emerges: this time, a black Western shirt, red roses embroidered below the collar—not quite lilies but flowers all the same. Rufus is taping a concert special for VH1 Classics, his fellow performers including Lisa Loeb. When Lily drops Serena at the concert, her eyes just happen to meet Rufus’s as he sings what is seemingly the song’s only lyric: “Every time you walk away or run away you take a piece of me with you there.” Bam! Rufus and Lily sleep together the night before her wedding to Bart.

The next day, Rufus appears in her dressing room, ready to help her call off the wedding. He’s done his best to blend with the guests, another pinstriped blazer thrown over his brown button-down. But Lily isn’t willing to take the leap, and they go their separate ways: Lily down the aisle and Rufus on a summer tour with his band.  

We last see him on the tour bus, chatting on the phone with Jenny. Again, he’s wearing a black Western shirt, but the yoke is blue plaid this time, the bloom off the rose. His focus is on supporting his children, even from across the country: Jenny has received an internship with Eleanor Waldorf.

Season Two

Rufus returns from his tour at the end of the summer (2.2); he’s wearing a blue plaid shirt and a new necklace, perhaps a souvenir from his trip. The first tour was a success, and he’s offered a second; he forgoes it for more time with his children. By the end of the episode, he’s still wearing plaid, but his necklace, like in season one, is gone.

Lily, too, is back from a trip: a vacation with her new husband, Bart (2.4). She stops by the gallery, and she and Rufus see a showing of Repo Man—Rufus is a big Harry Dean Stanton fan. Later, she shows up again, this time at the loft with a DVD of Pretty in Pink, and Rufus gently turns down her attempts at friendship.

Her movie choice is fitting, considering that Pretty in Pink inspired Jenny’s wardrobe. If Jenny is Andie, Rufus is Jack, Stanton’s single dad with a penchant for plaid shirts and a deep love for his daughter, even if he can’t quite provide everything she wants.

Jenny wants to pursue a career in fashion, even skipping class so she can spend more time at her internship, away from her school’s mean girls. Rufus wants her to stay in school, though he once put aside his studies to focus on music. “I don’t want my children repeating my mistakes,” he tells Jenny (2.5), even as he wears the same rose shirt from his concert taping, a marker of his continued music career. The roses echo the cherry blossoms on Jenny’s dress—like father, like daughter—and foreshadow Lily’s own appearance in this story line.

In the next episode, Lily convinces Rufus to let Jenny pursue her talents: “You’re so lucky,” she says, “to have a daughter that’s this good at what she wants to do so early in her life. It’s a gift. You had one, too, if I remember correctly.” The following morning, Rufus, clad in a brown plaid shirt, tells Jenny that she can begin homeschooling, and perhaps eventually enroll in the Professional Children’s School.

Under the influence of a new friend, Agnes, Jenny pushes her father’s boundaries further and further, even staging a guerilla fashion show, much to Rufus’s anger. After she moves in with Agnes, Dan convinces Rufus to bring Jenny home, “even if it means letting her win” (2.10). For their conversation, Rufus wears the same plaid blocked shirt that he wore at the end of season one, when he first learned of Jenny’s internship, their story coming full circle.

Rufus’s war with Jenny only brings him closer to Lily, who is pulling away from Bart. At the Snowflake Ball (2.12), they admit their feelings for each other, Rufus dressed in a simple black suit and tie, a white shirt; groom-like alongside Lily’s bridal white gown.

After Bart dies, they decide to run away again; this time Rufus chooses a gray zip-up sweater and jeans (2.13). His turtleneck is even more Lily than the pullover sweater he wore in season one, but when he meets her at Grand Central, he’s thrown a Humphrey-brown coat on top. He’s not really coming with her, not after finding out that she secretly gave up their child for adoption almost twenty years before.

He and Lily look for their son in Boston, only to be told that he passed away (2.15). They receive the news in matching black, already mourning the loss of the child they never knew. At this point in the season, Rufus wears no necklaces, just a few bracelets and a watch. It’s almost as if every time Lily has walked away or run away she’s taken a piece of his jewelry with her there.

United by mutual loss, Rufus and Lily begin dating again, Rufus accompanying Lily to various Upper East Side functions. At home, he sticks to his plaid shirts and bracelets, but in Lily’s world, he adapts, throwing blazers over neutral, solid button-downs, selling his Brooklyn gallery once he realizes his heart is no longer in it. He even plans to propose to Lily in a black blazer and taupe shirt but forgoes his plan once he uncovers one of her schemes (2.23).

By the season finale, they decide to jump in anyway; Rufus proposes in a rumpled striped shirt, his bracelets intact. He’s a little in his world, a little in her world, still wearing a plaid shirt and jewelry when the Humphreys move into Lily’s penthouse. Not for long, sweet Rufus. Not for long.

Season Three

At the beginning of season three, Rufus is embracing the Hamptons lifestyle, vacationing at the Rhodes’ summerhouse. Lily is away, supporting her mother, CeCe Rhodes, during medical treatments.

For his first appearance, Rufus wears a loose blue linen top and brown pants—still rumpled but more Hamptons appropriate than his usual heavy plaid. His bracelets are gone, a new watch on his wrist. In another scene, he wears a pale blue button-down to tell his children that Lily has gotten them a “special treat”: a table at a polo match. Money really does change people.

At the match, Rufus meets Scott—unbeknownst to Rufus, his son with Lily. Turns out he never died; his adoptive parents lied to Rufus and Lily, and now Scott is infiltrating the Humphrey world to become closer to his birth parents. He doesn’t reveal his identity in this scene, but by god, you’d think Rufus would suspect: they’re practically twins in their khakis and striped blue shirts.

Scott claims to be a Lincoln Hawk fan, and Rufus offers him guitar lessons—again, in matching stripes (3.3). Plaid, Rufus saves for his known children and stepchildren—when he’s counseling Serena, for example, on deferring Brown for a year. On those occasions, his plaid is more preppy than grunge; think Brooks Brothers or J. Crew. Lily must be shipping presents home. 

By episode five, Lily returns, and she and Rufus are finally getting married. For their wedding, Rufus chooses a black suit and shirt, a strangely mournful look against Lily’s brilliant fuchsia gown. The outfit calls back to the black outfits Lily and Rufus wore when they were told their son was dead—but this time, they discover that Scott has been alive all along.

After reuniting with their long-lost son, Lily and Rufus settle into married life, their happiness undisturbed until Rufus learns what Lily really did last summer: she spent time with her ex-husband, William van der Woodsen, and even shared a kiss with him (3.12).

Angry, Rufus leaves on a solo skiing trip and returns to the loft (3.13) dressed in a sheepskin vest, darker plaid shirt, striped sweater, and jeans: not quite the Rufus of seasons one and two, but certainly closer than the man we’ve seen this season.

Rufus ignores Lily’s calls, only drawn back to the penthouse to deal with another rebellion from Jenny. “I need time to figure [our relationship] out,” he tells Lily, “away from you.” He’s wearing a blue sweater, a gray coat on top, but the most important part of his outfit is the gray scarf, a faint plaid running through it. It’s this scarf that he carries down to the apartment of their neighbor, Holland, and accidentally leaves there. Holland returns the scarf to the building’s doorman, Vanya, and Vanya returns it to Lily, the implication clear: Rufus must’ve slept with Holland.

Lily visits Rufus at the loft and leaves the scarf for him to find, a symbol of not only the infidelity that hangs between them but also the change that Rufus has undergone. This scarf is so different from the orange one that he wore in winters past—the color subdued, not bright; the texture soft, not nubby. Lily would never let him wear that orange scarf—it’s too colorful, too cheap, too vulgar.

After finding the scarf, Rufus tells Lily that he never slept with Holland—he wanted to “even the score,” but his love for his wife prevented him from doing so (3.15). And yet, over the next few episodes, Rufus continues to wear the scarf—a sign of both his thriftiness and an unresolved story line with Holland.

In episode nineteen, William appears: As it turns out, Lily was the one receiving medical treatments, William serving as her doctor. When Lily finally tells Rufus, they wear complementary grays—Rufus in a pullover sweater and black polo, supportive of his wife’s health care but wary of William’s role in it. 

Rufus is right to be suspicious: William fakes a recurrence of Lily’s illness, hoping that she will fall in love with him. He often dresses like Rufus—not because he admires him but because he wants to become him. To a family breakfast (3.20), for example, William shows up in a white band-collar shirt, not unlike the one Rufus wore in the first season. Rufus himself is in a navy pullover sweater and striped button-down, as far removed from his rock-and-roll roots as he’s ever looked.

William even pulls Holland into his scheme; she tells Lily that she and Rufus did sleep together (3.21). In this scene, William and Rufus are dressed in similar striped shirts and black coats, William ready to assume his place at Lily’s side. Later, after his deceptions are uncovered, William flees in a tan button-down and brown coat—the false husband revealed. Lily and Rufus resume their marriage, but their greatest tests are yet to come.

[Look out for part two, covering season four onward, coming this evening.]