Symmetry - First baste

The following post forms the basis of what to me constitutes a coherent order of dress. It is a 'living document', and I will add to it in due course. It deals first with my thoughts on formal clothes - 'business' or 'lounge' suits and evening dress. I have avoided any forays into the more complex questions of cloth, cut, fit or details: I am content here to outline the shape of my thoughts but leave them at first baste.

As the second post illustrated, I favour very conservative styles. These days, it is not difficult to find even in high street ‘fashion’ retailers suits that are very much more adventurous than the standard two-piece offerings on the high street of my youth. However, as someone once pointed out, fashion is that which goes out of fashion, whereas style, although it contains its own internal cycles, is more enduring. Dressing conservatively need not be synonymous with dressing boringly; it is all a question of detail.


"This post lacks theology and geometry."

Without wanting to sound like Ignatius J Reilly, there has to be some kind of symmetry, coherence and logic. To that end, my thoughts run thusly:

General principles
- There should be a coherence between the degree of formality in the constituent garments of your outfit
- Avoid excessive mixing of textures and materials. The shine of calf leather shoes look strange with the softer pile of corduroy and moleskin. Suede looks unusual worn with harder, shinier cloths
- Be discreet: let the quality of the clothes speak for themselves
- Avoid overt gimmicks

Picking up that last point, I really dislike the crassness of showing off 'bespoke' features - leaving functional cuff buttons open, having a contrast lining or button-holes, or turning up their collar to show a contrast felt. For a start, all of these features are now pretty standard on ready-to-wear, and is no intrinsic indication of craftsmanship: you can probably find such features on garments at George at Asda. Multi-coloured embellishments will look bloody stupid in five years' time when everyone's forgotten that purplewas very fashion-forward in A/W2009. More importantly, why broadcast the fact that you're wearing bespoke? Who are you trying to impress? And why? Those who care about such things can tell and don't need it shouted at them; those who can't tell probably don't care.


"Shit. That must have been a long lunch."

Suits
I like single-breasted suits, and have a mix of two- and three-piece, mostly in plain or discretely patterned dark blue or dark grey. The only 'rules' I observe are:

- My coats have two or three button fastenings
- Four cuff buttons is the standard. The two closest to the cuff are functional, but should not be opened. Three looks a bit Hepworths; two looks provincial charity shop; one is OK on hacking jackets
- Two in-breast pockets (wallet and notebook)
- Single welted out-breast pocket
- Skirt and ticket pockets should be flapped and jetted
- Black or otherwise plain lining: contrast linings are immature
- I have turn-back cuffs on my two-piece suits; these look better with lighter-weight plain cloths
- Waistcoats should be single-breasted, and have six buttons; for reasons of comfort when seated, the bottom button remains unfastened. My waistcoats have lapels: those without lapels look strangely unfinished...
- The trousers have four forward pleats on the trousers
- The depth of turn-ups should be proportionate to the length of your leg; and if you are a stump-legged capering dwarf, I'd avoid them altogether
- Button fly (zip flies create the 'pants tent' when seated)
- Fishtail back if cut for braces; buttoned side adjusters ('Daks tops') if not
- No belt loops (if the trousers are made properly, they don't need them)

A rule of odds and evens
The number of buttons, vents and 'pieces' are proportionate: odd numbers work with other odds (ones and threes); evens with evens

Single-breasted coats can be three-, two- or single-button fastening

A two button fastening really limits you to a two-piece. The two-button suit originated as a less formal alternative to the three-button suit. As a result, it looks odd with a waistcoat.


Three piece, three buttons - and a peak to the rear would reveal a single centre vent

If you must wear one, a double-breasted coat should be in the classic button two-show four arrangement. Anything else is a pointless deviation. (The boating jackets of some Foot Guards regiments are excepted, as they obey laws determined by military tradition rather than any internal logic or coherence.)

A centre vent is appropriate on a three-button coat; side vents on a two-button or double-breasted suit coat; I favour a single vent on my odd jackets. A single fastening button looks a bit too wilfully ‘different’, and, especially with a peaked lapel, is strongly redolent of the sort of silvery, rayon-rich sub-morning coat offering seen for hire on the premises of Moss Bros and the Savoy Tailors Guild. If you're going to wear one, at least make it as unobtrusive as possible. Or get it made by Huntsman, where it's part of the house style.

Cloth
This is a bewildering subject. I will confine myself to a couple of very basic points:(As an aside, Thomas Mahon’s English Cut blog has an excellent guide to spotting true bespoke at a glance. In fact, Mr Mahon – once head cutter at Anderson and Sheppard - is an altogether more knowledgeable guide to bespoke tailoring and in effect renders much of this blog superfluous.)

- Don't buy cheap cloth: it'll go shiny, bag at the knee and elbow and round the arse and won't survive contact with your dry cleaner
- Always consider what you're likely to be doing in your suit and pick a weight accordingly.
- Beware expensive 'luxury' cloths like cashmere blends or anything silk-heavy: you'll put the arse out of them in no time.

Colour
For 'lounge' suits, there are really only two colours: dark blues and simple greys. Patterns are OK, but I'm not a big fan. My favourite suit is a lightweight light grey Glen Urquhart (Prince of Wales) check - frankly that's as racy as I would ever entertain. Blues can be a bit of a minefield, and in general the darker the better. Pete Campbell in Mad men and Nick Clegg in government illustrate the pitfalls. Perhaps it's a pushy WASP thing.


The Deputy Prime MInister

There's nothing wrong with the overt colourfulness of, say, Ozwald Boateng's suits - nothing wrong, that is, if you're starring in a rock opera or are part of the look-at-me-piglet world of media, fashion and the other 'creative' 'industries'. He's a craftsman and in his bespoke work I'm sure almost as good as the likes of Huntsman. It's just you'll look like a twat if you wear them to the office, in the street, to meet your banker, in front of friends, or before your God.


My bank manager couldn't wear that.

Blazers
A short word about blazers: 'No.'

A longer word about blazers: Suitable attire for watching company rugby at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, but otherwise best avoided. Increasingly the term is used interchangeably with a 'sports jacket' (or to Etonians 'half-change'); that is, a single-breasted coat. In which case, fair enough: but stick to sensible colours and patterns.


Half-change.

Evening dress

The above guidance applies for evening dress. It is a shame that the collapse in public manners has rendered white tie to all practical effect extinct; and to acquire it is cripplingly expensive. It is now worn only by royalty, diplomats, magicians, cinematic vampires, pretentious undergraduate debates convenors, toast-masters at provincial municipal events and corpulent tenors. (And if The Twilight saga is an accurate portrayal of their life, it is clear that standards among vampires have deteriorated substantially in recent years, further winnowing the ranks of professional white tie wearers.) In the unlikely event that you are required to wear i, the appropriate guidance is available from the royal household. I'm sure the Magic Circle can furnish similar advice if you are admitted to membership. I will not expound at any length.


"Laydeez and gennelmen, please charge your glasses and be upstanding..."

I have, however, always wanted an opera cloak, lined in midnight blue.

Dinner jackets should be of a black cloth, such as barathea. If single-breasted, they should have a single button fastening coat with peaked lapels - or possibly a shawl (rounded) collar. Double-breasted coats will typically have a button-one, show-three arrangement, that is two buttons fewer than on a business suit. It is usual for dinner jackets to omit flaps on the skirt pockets. Thomas Mahon suggests omitting pockets entirely, to ensure a cleaner look. In the contemporary era, when so few people smoke and have no need to carry the necessary accoutrements on their person, this is practical advice. And you really shouldn't need to answer your iPhone at such a time.

Avoid notched lapels. Such garments have a mass-produced look, and they almost invariably prove to be so: the notched lapel is almost certainly the result of the manufacturer’s use of his standard suit pattern in an effort to cut production costs. For evening dress shirts, pique (waffle) or pleated bib fronts are standard; a heavy-weight silk shirt is a distinctive but low-key alternative. It would be highly eccentric to wear a dress shirt that did not require cuff-links. This conforms to the relationship noted above between double cuffs and the peaked lapel.

A stiff shirt with detachable wing collar is perfectly acceptable, but should be worn with a waistcoat. The cuffs of these shirts require cuff-links but are typically not full French cuffs i.e. they do not have a turn-back.

A fused wing collar with a dinner jacket is very King's College June Event 1992. As, it must be said, are cummerbunds - at least if worn in a temperate climate.

Bow ties should be black silk or, possibly, satin. Try to avoid anything too narrow - the sort of thing the lead singer of Modern Romance might have worn to the 1981 WEA Christmas party - too fat - think Lennie Bennett in The comedians - or too velvet - a bit 'extra in an early Scorsese film'. It need hardly be said that they should not be pre-tied.


A golden age - of racist comedy if not of evening dress

Velvet is appropriate when at home. As there has already been a substantial and regrettable relaxation of the rules of evening dress to permit lazy and impudent young men to wear dinner jackets where white tie was once the rule, we must draw the line at wearing smoking jackets in public. They are an admirable item of clothing, but are not suitable public attire for a serious-minded gentleman. (See 'The public and the private'.) Dressing gowns are fine if you're Hugh Hefner, but even he wears them only at home.

So-called 'Hollywood black tie' - perhaps more accurately termed 'Hollyoaks black tie' - performs a useful social function in as much as it is an excellent indicator of the impressionable and easily led, but the habit should be eschewed unless you wish to resemble a runner-up in the Northern Ireland regional finals of Grazia's 'Eligible bachelor of the year', or are attending a regional Round Table dinner in aid of Esther Rantzen's Hearts of Gold. I am perfectly prepared to accept that some young men might think such an effect is desirable, but they are not serious individuals, and it is fortunate that they announce their presence so clearly so that evasive action may be taken.


Grazia: North Antrim's Eligible bachelor of the year 2004 (nominated)

Some early influences

I have no idea whether or not people model their own dress and bearing consciously upon existing archetypes. The omnipresence of ‘lifestyle’ media, and its reported multi-billion pound turnover, suggest that this must be the case for a commercially-significant number of people in the North Atlantic region, even if their 'role models' are simply those anonymous, slack-jawed and dead-eyed skeletons gazing sullenly from the pages of Love, Vogue, Heat or the Sunday Mirror colour supplement every week. I flatter myself to believe that I am above such advertising-driven tat, but nonetheless have drawn inspiration from various sources in my time.

So, before getting into the didactic whys, wherefores and whethers of the random prejudices I alluded to in the first post, I thought it might be appropriate to give a short summary of the public figures whose style I have at some point in my life admired or attempted to copy.

1977-83           Han Solo.

Style signifiers: DL-44 blaster pistol; low-slung leather holster; blue or brown breeches with faux-cavalry stripe on out-seam; dark tan or black riding boots; black cotton or canvas gilet or blouson; cream, high-collared cotton jersey tunic shirt; saucer-shaped smuggling vessel with numerous modifications.

As a boy I achieved the Han Solo look by wearing black Adidas 3-stripe tracksuit trousers, black Dunlop wellies and a white St Michael polyester school shirt, topped by a quilted body-warmer or, for the Empire look, a black Harrington jacket. The latter had a bright red tartan lining (Royal Stewart, I believe), which somewhat undermined what little intergalactic revolutionary chic that had not been eroded already by the tracksuit trousers. Pistol by Palitoy (later Kenner).

1981-84           Indiana Jones. Style signifiers: leather flying jacket; Herbert Johnson poet's crown fedora (do not be fooled by the rude imitations advertised widely on the internet); bullwhip; satchel; khaki slacks; brown boots

The Indiana Bumwad effect was created by the acquisition from Bumwad senior of a battered green felt trilby by Christie’s, and wearing my hiking boots bought for a school holiday in Wales with a leather bomber jacket passed on from a friend of my mother. This jacket was in a lamentable light tan, and attempts to darken it with Kiwi dark brown shoe polish were only partially successful. I bought myself a bullwhip in Bahrain when as a family we visited my dad who was working there, and practiced trying to 'crack' it on the roof of his apartment in Manama, and seeing if I could wrap it round the TV aeriel. Sadly that sort of laissez faire parenting is now rare.

('The Indy' was in early-eighties Norfolk marginally less conspicuous than ‘the Solo’. Indeed I might at times have passed for a slightly simple farm-hand, albeit that the carriage of a bull-whip would to the casual observer suggest that I entertained eccentric views on animal husbandry.)

1979-81           Roger Moore’s James Bond (Moonraker, For your eyes only). Style signifiers: chalk stripe three-piece suit; dark blue trousers and bomber jacket; evening shirt; dinner jacket trousers; Walther PPK; various gadgets.

School uniform proved an important resource in recreating the gay, debonair je ne sais de vivre of the Moore Bond. Black or charcoal Sta-prest slacks teamed with the afore-mentioned St Michael white polyester easy-care shirt was the basis of the look. Black Clark’s Commandos completed the emulation of Moore Bond’s morning-after ‘walk-of-shame’ outfit worn in the early morning beach-buggy chase in which Countess Lisl is murdered by Kristatos’ men (including a young Charles Dance) and Bond is rescued by Columbo. The outfit worn for the raid on the docks in later scenes was again school trousers with the versatile Han Solo Harrington jacket doing service for the blue blouson.

My brother had a die-cast Walther PPK cap gun, packaged (by Lonestar?) to tie in with FYEO; I could occasionally borrow this, but had more often to rely on my own (The professionals) Beretta. (I consoled myself that this was Bond’s personal preference, despite Q’s objection to it as ‘a lady’s gun’.) It was possible to fashion a rudimentary silencer for the PPK from the compacted blue cardboard inner tube around which my grandmother wound her kitchen string. This fitted tightly on the end of the barrel; complete silence was ensured by removing the paper caps.

My other weapon was a small Sheffield steel pen knife with a badly-reproduced picture of a Broadland Wherry on the plastic handle. It was chiefly a stabbing weapon as it was not well balanced and therefore not suitable for throwing any further than from waist height into turf. Gadgets within reach included a Nintendo Game And Watch, a ballpoint pen that had a digital clock built into the barrel and a Yard-O-Led propelling pencil.

1987-1994       Stephen Fry. Tweed coat; pink shirt; pinstripe suit; smoking jacket

1987-2002       Beau Bumwad senior. Style signifiers: tweed suit (two or three piece); hound’s tooth or puppy’s tooth sports coat; Tattersall check brushed cotton shirt; plain wool or silk tie; plain brown lace-ups; cavalry twill trousers.

Both the Fry and the Bumwad senior looks depended upon access to a London tailor or at least the Dunn & Co in Norwich, and were beyond practical reach until I could achieve an earned income beyond that paid by the stock-room of WH Smiths. It was not until I had a decent wage that I could start emulating seriously these early style 'icons', and, from the base they provided, to develop my own ideas about how to dress.

Later influences will become apparent - assuming I sustain my interest in this endeavour long enough - but I will say a brief word here about the figures whose dress sense I admire generally or from whom I continue to draw inspiration even as a grown-up.

I have always admired the extremely conservative and formal figure that Evelyn Waugh grew into in the post-war years; the three-piece tweed suits in which he is typically depicted from the early 1950s onwards have been an enduring influence, and the first bespoke suit I bought was an unsuccessful attempt to imitate one of his. 

His diaries and letters demonstrate an unapologetic interest in clothing which persisted well into his dotage. His clothing was utterly coherent with the face he wished to present to the world, and, with his relatively humble origins and conspicuous emulation - and modification - of the style of his much grander friends, my adolescent self saw something of a similarity. My adoption of Waugh as an 'icon' might be due in part to his mild physical as well as sartorial resemblence to my grandfather.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has a similarly formal, conservative air, although he tends to wear dark two-piece suits. Here he is in what looks like a keeper's tweed, which is what any serious-minded man of taste would wear for a highly public discharge from a London hospital:

He avoids the solecisms committed by his eldest son – the strangely shapeless and peculiarly-ironed double-breasted coats (sometimes worn without a tie), the flashy cufflinks and the second-hand car salesman overcoats. His other children have no discernible interest in clothing and need not detain us.

Ian Fleming is another conservative dresser with singular tastes. I particularly like the turned-back (or French) cuffs on his suits, although I have never seen the attraction of bow ties, whether knotted "with Churchillian looseness" or Blairite image adviser tightness.


Here we see him relaxing at home in his jim-jams:

Like his creator, the literary James Bond has a practical and coherent – if somewhat repetitive - dress sense, which is to say, like Kingsley Amis, that he is in effect a silhouette. He wears the same outfit of a dark blue tropical-weight two-piece suit, cream silk or Sea Island cotton shirt, black knitted silk tie and black mocassins throughout the series. He makes the odd peculiar choice, such as wearing leather sandals with a suit in (I think) The man with the golden gun, but otherwise his taste is pretty irreproachable. The interest lies in the details (or more particularly their absence) of his clothes - indeed we know only from Fleming's own directions to the art department at a US publisher that Bond favours two-button suits, which would have been unusual in 1950s England - and in what he does not wear (lace-up shoes, tie clip or bar).

The literary Bond is very far from the tailor’s dummy of the Moore and Brosnan years, and still further from the sullen adolescent thug of the Craig films, in which product placement has given way to product inundation, with the brand of every item, no matter how mundane, visible and available for purchase over the internet.

Nonetheless some cinematographic James Bonds are worthy of inclusion: Sean Connery is a predictable but solid example of style, particularly in the earlier, Terence Young-directed films. Indeed, I should probably nominate Terence Young himself, as there is plenty of evidence that Connery's Bond was modelled almost entirely on Young's own dress and bearing. And yes - I know this still was taking during production for Goldfinger which Young did not direct, but it's a cracking look for motoring in Europe: one that says "I am in control of my vehicle".

George Lazenby gets a bit of stick for his occasionally wooden acting, but he is usually pretty well-turned out; indeed I think he is the only film Bond to adopt literary Bond's preference for a black knitted silk tie. As for Craig, all his clothes look like they have just been taken from the wrapping; the suits wear him. His style is effortless in the worst possible sense of the word.

That's enough for now.

First post

For almost as long as I can remember, I have been interested in clothes. This was inspired by my grandfather, a retired civil servant, who was typically shod in stout brown lace-ups and elegant tweeds. He showed the apparent disregard for appearance that is often said to be the mark of the truly well-dressed, and probably gave little actual thought to his appearance: it seemed instinctive. I can no more imagine him discussing 'a philosophy of style' than I can imagine the Pope playing Star Wars Top Trumps. I don't recall him ever advising me on how to dress - except once when he said that blazers were a barbaric item of clothing suitable only for school-boys and saloon bar bores; and later when, upon noticing my suede brogues, he asked if I were planning a trip to a brothel in Venezuela.

(These were eccentric opinions coming from (a) a former naval officer, who had presumably at some point been required to wear such a garment; and (b) one who was no stranger to the saloon bar, and whose views on matters as diverse as the malign influence on England of the Roman Catholic Church and the malign influence on England of sub-continental immigration, were outlined with a charm that bore an inverse relationship to the volume of his voice, and were, if not boring, then certainly close at times to boorish.)

In spite of these contradictions, he set the standard for my earliest thoughts on what it was to be well-dressed, and it is a source of continuing regret that he was only 5’4” and consequently far too short for me to wear his clothes with any degree of dignity. When he died, my share of the bereavement dividend extended only to his bowler (the “pot ‘at”), collar studs, dress studs and a few handkerchiefs. His suits and shirts hung forlornly in the closet for years because my grandmother could not bring herself to chuck them, and were consigned to the charity shop when she bought the farm last year. Somewhere in rural Norfolk there is a gnarled old farm-hand with eye-brows on his cheeks whipping a pig while wearing one of his tweed suits.

The adoption of an aging ex-naval officer as a style icon was, as might be imagined,  an interesting one for a fifteen year old boy in suburban Norfolk. Fortunately, my adoption of amber corduroy trousers and tweeds in loud checks of autumnal hue meant that I spent a frankly negligible portion of my time consumed by talking with girls, which left me plenty of time for musings about the philosophy of dress. And where, to my female peers, my appearance rendered me invisible or risible, if not actively repellent, my clothes were unfortunately conspicuous to the local neddies, particularly on my rare excursions to local ale houses. The consequently relatively long times spent in A&E gave me yet further opportunity to consider the relationship between outward appearance, inner substance, grace, bearing and conduct.

To these embarrassing and occasionally painful miss-steps of youth we can add many more that are the product not of ancestor-worship, an ignorant antiquarianism verging on gerontophilia, adolscent gaucheness or the limited circle of friends that would be expected of one displaying these tendencies, but of lower middle class aspiration and the form of group-think associated with closed societies – in my case university and the armed forces.

And to these we might further add errors of judgement that were in effect the sartorial equivalents of mal-investments occasioned by the credit bubble of the last ten years. Soldiering in Germany, I had too much ‘money’, and too little time to spend it wisely, and on my rare forays to London I would too often return with some truly lamentable effects that were the product of an untutored and unreflective eye.

After these errors, some minor successes, and of course the expenditure of a great deal of time and money, I think I am now close to having derived a sense of style appropriate to my age and bearing, as well as to having assembled a collection of theories, beliefs and prejudices that constitute in some small way a philosophy of dress. The purpose of this blog therefore is to capture for wider examination some of those thoughts.

These will form no grand theory capable of universal application, nor are they intended to do so; but I hope that at least they are coherent, defensible and, on whatever level, entertaining. As I currently plan it, the first few posts will form a brief personal sartorial history, as well as an attempt to outline the building blocks of my own sense of dress. Other posts will be random thoughts on particular items of dress, a tailor, a shirt maker and so on. I will illustrate it from time to time. I might even go rogue and venture beyond the sartorial into politics. Or culture. Or vehicle maintenance.

I welcome comments, not just because of my pathetic, but typically twenty-first century, need for ‘validation’ by my peers, but because challenge forces clarity, and, after all, style is broad church. For every devotee of the returnee cuff, there will be a fellow who will deride such details as a meretricious embellishment. The fact that it would be perfectly possible to hypothesise a fellow who would do so while sporting a three-piece suit, the waistcoat of which is adorned with a natty lapel, and a double cuffed shirt – and to furthermore be utterly irreproachable in doing so – only reinforces the delight of exploring style.