The Tempering of Rufus Humphrey

Originally published on Substack 1/14/2021

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 turtleneck sweater and jeans (2.13). His turtleneck is even more Lily than the zip-up 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 is faking 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.

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.