Dressing Down'

Pre-fame, Matchbox Twenty's Rob Thomas was partial to fancy threads. "I love nice clothes, I always have," says the green-eyed singer, who grew up in a Florida caravan park. "I just could never afford them." But now that he has cash to spare (a chart-topping new album, Mad Season, helps), Thomas, 26, opts for low-key garb. In public, anyway. "Baggy jeans and a beanie on my head" are necessary "so I don't stick out!" he explains. And look-at-me colours are never the choice of "a basic black-and-dark-blue kind of guy. A serious, brooding, angst-ridden and misunderstood musican. Dark colours fit the profile." Hence Thomas's shoe collection: eight pairs of black boots that are all different, he says "because they have different zips." Certain free garments come him way too, although the donors - besotted teenage fans - don't intend them to be worn. "They'll throw training bras on stage" he says. "Then we'll get a couple of huge ones and figure the women throwing those should probably have kept theirs on."