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.
