The Tempering of Rufus Humphrey
Part Two of Two
Season Four
In the season four premiere, Rufus and Lily return from vacation, Rufus in a blue polo shirt, the collar almost popped. His plaid shirts are reserved mainly for his heart-to-hearts with his children, a reminder of the old Humphrey life. Otherwise, he stays loyal to his Upper East Side wardrobe: plain button-downs and cozy sweaters for home; dress shirts, blazers, even ties for events.
To Blair Waldorf’s birthday party (4.7), for instance, he wears a dark suit and burgundy tie and shirt. “This is all just very Upper East Side,” he says of the party.
“I know you think you’re rock and roll,” Lily replies, “but you are wearing a two thousand dollar jacket.” Eleanor soon compliments the jacket, only proving Lily’s point: Rufus may think he’s above the Upper East Side, but he’s practically wearing it.
The Humphrey marriage is soon tested again: A few years before, Lily forged Serena’s signature on an affidavit that convicted her boarding school teacher of statutory rape. Once Lily learns that she sent an innocent man to prison, she arranges for his early parole. Rufus stands by her, his loyalty only shaken once he learns that Lily attempted to bribe the teacher into staying far away from her family (4.13).
When he discovers the bribe, Rufus is wearing a navy zip-up sweater, a plaid shirt peeping out: a brief glimmer of the moral code he once lived by, the one he tried to instill in his children. He offers the teacher a place to live at the loft, a penance for Lily’s wrongdoing. By the next episode, however, he is back to his solid pieces. When Lily finally turns herself in, Rufus is at her side, clad in a simple dark suit and white button-down.
Lily receives house arrest, and Rufus pursues fulfillment outside their penthouse: his label has asked him to produce the debut album of a new indie band, Panic (4.20). He receives the news in a blue button-down but changes into a dark plaid shirt and brown jacket for dinner with the band. After two years on the Upper East Side, Rufus is coming back into his own, reconnecting with his first love, music.
Season Five
Bubble Episode
Season five brings us to this profile’s bubble episode, 5.4: “Memoirs of an Invisible Dan.”
Rufus has just received the final mix of Panic’s debut album. He’s excited to be back in the music business, but he doesn’t regret the sacrifices he made along the way: “I wouldn’t give up raising my kids for anything. I mean, I love music, but Dan and Jenny are my life.”
Rufus’s first listen is interrupted by an announcement from Dan: his first novel is about to be published, its characters inspired by his friends and family. Rufus is thrilled for his son: “I’m going to cancel my whole day with Panic just so I can savor your book,” he says. His support is reflected in his wardrobe, his blue shirt echoing Dan’s blue flannel.
For the book party, too, he remains loyal to Dan: his gray blazer and striped shirt tying him to Dan’s own gray button-down. Underneath their common colors, though, he’s hurt. As he tells Dan the next day, “[The book] broke my heart. I gave up my career to raise you, and I never regretted it once, until yesterday when I read what you wrote about me. A has-been turned trophy husband who married for money.”
Rufus’s outfit mirrors his words: a navy polo shirt lined with plaid. He may look like a preppy trophy husband on the outside, but inside, he’s still Rufus Humphrey, a father who tried to impart good values and lessons to his children, who can’t believe that his own son would judge him so harshly.
Dan attempts to apologize, but Rufus declines his phone call while wearing a plaid shirt (5.5). He’s finding his moral center again, or at least his moral superiority. Father and son eventually make up, and Rufus turns to more and more plaid, even as he continues to benefit from Lily’s wealth and privilege.
On Valentine’s Day (5.15), Rufus invites a Cartier salesman to the penthouse so he can pick out a present for Lily. It’s strange seeing Rufus, who once bought an engagement ring from a vintage store, shopping for fine jewelry from the comfort of his own home. His plaid shirt peeks out from under his pullover sweater, a diamond-and-pearl necklace, much like the kind Bart Bass used to gift Lily, strung through his fingers. Rufus has learned what it takes to be Lily’s husband, and used rings aren’t it.
In fact, anything too old, too gauche, seems to be banished from his life. In episode sixteen, Rufus retrieves a parka from the loft: “It’s so cold I came to get my green down puffy jacket . . . Lily hates it and she’d throw it out if she got her hands on it.” Again, he wears a pullover sweater with a plaid shirt underneath: a little stab at individuality, obscured by a luxurious knit.
The green parka signals a turn, the beginning of the end for Lily and Rufus. Lily’s mother, CeCe, soon passes away and leaves most of her assets to Ivy Dickens, a young woman who, for a good part of seasons four and five, was pretending to be her granddaughter.
Lily is desperate to recover what she believes to be rightfully hers: her mother’s money and her Upper East Side penthouse. Rufus is less concerned; after all, they already have plenty of money and the Brooklyn loft.
By episode nineteen, Rufus has a plan: Lily will unfreeze Ivy’s assets and, in exchange, Ivy will move out of the penthouse. In this scene, he wears a brown coat over a plaid shirt; later, the coat comes off, and with it, any desire to give Lily what she wants. Lily never unfroze the assets and instead tricked Ivy into leaving the penthouse. Rufus is furious, not only because Lily left Ivy on the street but also because she lied to him about it.
Lily moves back into the penthouse, but Rufus stays at the loft (5.20). Dan, too, is facing trouble in his relationship with an Upper East Side woman—Blair. When Rufus notes Dan putting on a tie, Dan replies, “It’s a Blair thing.” For Rufus, the tie is a Lily thing, too, a yoke he once wore for her fancy events. He’s still dressed in her crisp plaid shirts but no longer softening them with sweaters, masking who he is.
“When Lily and I got married,” he tells Dan, “I threw myself into her world. I became a plus one for her galas and in life. But in the process, I lost myself and what’s important to me. We never managed to build a life together that included both of us. And I’m tired of it. . . . Maybe in time you’ll learn to love wearing this tie. But don’t lose sight of yourself.”
Rufus and Lily almost reconcile when she agrees to sell her penthouse and buy an apartment that suits both of them. However, she soon discovers that Rufus is paying for Ivy’s hotel, and they separate again. Lily sees Rufus just as he feared, as a husband that she’s “taking care of” (5.21); her money as hers, never theirs.
Then Bart Bass returns from the dead, and Lily must choose which marriage to annul: Bass or Humphrey. Rufus doesn’t want to lose Lily to Bart—after all, Bart is a symbol of everything Rufus hates about the Upper East Side, everything Lily has become: mercenary and scheming.
He goes to Bart, telling him that Lily wants to annul her Bass marriage (5.24). For the meeting, he’s back in his Upper East Side wardrobe: a tan sweater over a blue plaid shirt, a trench-like coat on top. “I see the transition from Brooklyn to the big time has done you wonders,” Bart remarks.
When Lily learns that Rufus has gone behind her back, she decides to stay married to Bart. Rufus, she says, was only interested in saving their marriage once he saw her decision as a “competition.” More specifically, I think, Rufus saw it as a battle, a moral imperative, this time for Lily’s soul.
At the end of the finale, he picks up annulment papers at the penthouse, dressed in a gray cowl-neck sweater and dark red plaid shirt, one last gasp at being Lily’s husband. Lily, however, is in a completely different color palette: all bright blues, just like Bart’s. Rufus has no chance at saving his marriage, even if he does still wear its costume.
Season Six
By the final season, Rufus is opening a new art gallery and Ivy is staying at the loft. At first, Ivy is only helping Rufus with the gallery, but then, she reveals feelings for him: “I see the real you,” she says, “and I don’t think [Lily] deserves you.” As the show later lets on, Ivy’s interest in Rufus is another of her schemes, a long game to take down Lily, and so she uses the exact words that she knows will pull Rufus’s heartstrings. Over the past three years, he’s gotten so far away from the “real” him that the idea that someone else sees and cares for that person is irresistible. His wardrobe, too, is going back to season one: a rumpled plaid shirt, more grunge than prep.
As the season moves along, so does their relationship and Ivy’s schemes against Lily, Rufus only recognizing Ivy’s manipulations once he sees her cheating on him (6.7). They break up, and he and Lily forge a lasting peace, Rufus with a brown sweater over his plaid shirt—a concession to the life they once shared.
The next episode, Rufus is back to his season-one self, playing a benefit concert with Lisa Loeb. He’s pulled his old rose shirt out of the closet, the piece he once wore the night he and Lily slept together. Now, the roses have wilted, and Rufus tries to convince Dan that he’ll never have a future with Serena: “We Humphrey men,” Rufus says, “don’t stand a real chance when it comes to van der Woodsen women. . . . [They’re] never going to respect guys like us. All the love songs I wrote Lily made no difference. Poetry isn’t what she wants.” Every time she walks away or runs away she’ll take a piece of you with her, Dan.
Still, perhaps Rufus really does find his rose at the concert: In the season finale, the show flashes forward five years, to Dan and Serena’s wedding. Rufus is in attendance, wearing a brown blazer and navy shirt, a pair of reading glasses so you know he’s gotten older. No plaid, but you get the feeling that this outfit is only an indulgence for the wedding and he has plenty more flannels at the loft. After all, his date is not Lily but Lisa Loeb, a fellow nineties musician; maybe, finally, someone is seeing the “real” him.
[We’re almost halfway through the character profiles, so for the next few weeks, I’ll be publishing mini issues on Gossip Girl fashion, from the Sex and the City connection to the Go Piss, Girl meme. Look out for the first one next Thursday, 1/21.]
DP on GG
My partner, Daniel, spent 2020 overhearing episodes of Gossip Girl from various rooms of our apartment. He still doesn’t understand the show and he doesn’t care.
DP: Maybe it’s just the hair but all the guys on this show look like real dipshits.