Academic chap uniform

How do they all know about it? The number of academic chaps who wear beige-ish trousers, blue-checked shirt and navy sweater is quite absurd. Is there a secret sartorial briefing session for blokes after all the rest of the postgrad introductory stuff? (Someone here began a how-to-be-a-postgrad session with: 'The most marked feature of my postgraduate life was loneliness. Intellectual loneliness, social loneliness, lots of different sorts of loneliness..' Um, thanks...)

Now, if someone could tell the rest of us how to look sensible without being either over-dressed or slatternly, that would be nice. Or maybe putting an end to women's judging each other on appearance would be a better first step: 'Nice seminar, shame about the shirt' sort of thing... (And is that better or worse than, 'The paper was a bit dubious, but she had these really great shoes'? Which I seem to find myself thinking more and more often. Sigh.)