Checked Shirts and What They Say

“Immediately.” That is the answer to Barima’s question which he proffered upon reading my piece on stripe stereotypes. I hadn’t planned to write something on the subject he was suggesting so soon, but I am a firm believer that things are better and far more satisfying in pairs; no one would wish to be the owner of a sadly single and yet singularly splendid patent shoe.  And of course if there will be discussion of shirt patterning, there must be discussion of checks. For it is the case that checks have as much if not more relevance than stripes for the gentleman of today. Why is this? Well, it is simply that checked shirts are far more prevalent than they used to be and dare I say, far more popular.

The irony of a checked shirt is that the wearer might purchase for superficial individuality whereas in reality, the heritage of a check lies with a man’s identification with a group and a purpose. Tartan became a popular fabric with Sir Walter Scott’s clever diplomacy; a fabric forever identified with all Scots, of both High and Lowlands, despite the fact that the peoples of the latter had little to do with the pattern at all. Further Anglicisation of the Celtic fabric led to large numbers of Victorians wearing check trousers with morning coats - something even the Beau cannot have envisaged.

However, to check a trouser is one thing, but to check a shirt is another. Until quite recently, plain white was the monopoly tone in terms of smart clothing. Checked shirts were worn in the country with tweeds, or they were worn by labourers who wore mixed colour shirts to conceal the sweat, dirt and grease. Gentlemen of the metropolis would certainly not choose any checked fabric. The breakaway from this stiff formality of perpetual ivory was to wear white collars with coloured shirts. At first the shirts were modestly coloured - calm blues and subtle stripes - but the licence had been given; experimentation was inevitable. There are now thousands of checked shirts acceptable for wear in a smart and even formal situation. Checked shirts have, in recent years, taken over as the ’trend’ for the City; a banker in 1912 would have worn a bowler, a dark morning coat, spongebag trousers a sober tie and, importantly, a white shirt. In 2008 he is far more likely to wear, though a dark suit and sober tie, a natty checked shirt. And like the stripes, the check he enjoys to wear will say a lot about him.

The Partner

The Partner has been at his Magic Circle firm for 13 years. He was one of the more colourful and interesting of the graduate trainees he joined with and his love of theatrical patterns has not altered over the years. He wears checked shirts almost exclusively; even at the firm’s Christmas function he could be spotted, charming the young female associates in a subtle black and white check evening shirt. Though generally genial, his bad temper, caused by a rivalry with his Gonville & Caius room mate who now works at Goldman Sachs, is down to the fact that said room mate frequently gloats via monthly email on his astronomical financial success. The Partner, though he works equally long hours, gets a mere fraction of the remuneration. On the more gloomy days when such clouds of despair and envy hang over him, he stays away from his characteristically playful colours and wallows conservatively in a blue gingham check.

The Oxford Don

The Oxford Don is a rare beast these days. The faculty has been ‘freshening up’; younger staff, American staff, are all the rage at this venerable seat of learning. The wizened and pale Don stumbles through Radcliffe Square as a point of comfort; the grand buildings are the only faithful companions he has left, the only friends of youth still standing. His checks are conservative and sensible, reflecting his fireside-reading-knowledge of town and country-town standards; tweeds and checks in Oxford are a traditional uniform. Often called into London to lecture, the Don prefers to decline such visits on the basis that London is too far removed from the metropolis he once knew. He prefers Oxford’s beauty and memories and even favours purchasing from the local shirt retailers on High and Turl Streets.

The Architect

The Architect is tremendously busy and far too important to wear a tie. He likes checked shirts for the mathematics and the colour variation; plain shirts are a blank sheet of paper, the result of a designer without a brain. He wears them simply, top button undone with a moleskin jacket and a pair of cords. While hardly considered chic, his mighty range of shirts are certainly well made and economically sensible - rather like his buildings. The majority are buttoned down - “It’s more practical” - and when meeting clients he ‘smartens’ himself up by, curiously, buttoning the top button. A rival architect in Japan had done precisely the same thing and secured the contract - he has never taken such a risk since.

Enjoy Your Fashion Cycle

Everyone knows fashion is cyclical. But the key to understanding its enduring appeal is that people don’t live through that many cycles.

Slim trousers have been in the ascendancy in men’s fashion for almost a decade now. From their first daring suggestion on the catwalk, through gradual acceptance as the norm in high-end tailoring, to the point now where it is hard to find anything other than straight or skinny jeans in high-street stores.

This is the end point: as soon as your mate Dave (who knows as much about fashion as he does about French literature – Beckham and the three musketeers is about it) is wearing narrow jeans, the trend is finished. The high street is saturated and the designers are searching for something new.

That was the cycle. The next cycle will see a different shape dominate – bootcut is the current favourite. But because the cycle is so long, it could last the whole of your twenties. You will identify slim trousers with your youth, and bootcut will seem like a breath of fresh air – a more mature, flattering shape. It will seem like an original trend since, even though it was popular in the past, you weren’t around to wear it.

The same would be true of baggy jeans or flairs. They may not be original, but that hardly matters. You didn’t get to wear them before.

You really only get two of these cycles, possibly three. By the time you are into your thirties, you may stop noticing anything about trends or fashion. And even if you end up wearing the dominant shape of the times (by default, like Dave), you will hardly notice. You may even keep the same pair of jeans for decades – many men do.

In my teenage years, bootcut jeans were probably the most fashionable. Hip-hop baggy jeans also had a slightly embarrassing following among white, middle-class kids. For me, therefore, the past decade and its narrow trouser aesthetic has seemed like a maturing time – one where straight, slim trousers with suits seemed like the obvious choice. The seemed timeless. Surely they are simply a realisation every man comes to after the follies of youth?

In another five years I will probably be proved wrong. But by then I won’t care. Because baby carriers and combination boilers will be taking up much of my retail time; but also because I will have formed this attachment to slim, straight trousers at a formative age – one where I had a certain amount of time and disposal income to spend on clothes. It will probably be ingrained in me forever by then.

So don’t criticise fashion cycles for being unoriginal. You only get two or three – enjoy them while they last.

One Thing: The Blue Blazer

Over the past year or so I have occasionally highlighted essential pieces of a man’s wardrobe. The “One Thing” columns have covered a variety of items, but today I want to get back to basics with the blue blazer.

A blue blazer is the backbone of any serious wardrobe. The ever popular Preppy Handbook even dubbed it the male exoskeleton. Preppy or not, a blue blazer is the one article of dress clothing all men should have hanging in the closet. It is universally useful and chameleon-like when it comes to meeting your needs in a sartorial pinch.

When they hear “blue blazer” people tend to think of the classic brass button type found on the bridge of a yacht in a Ralph Lauren advertisement. Of course that version is the most traditional, but blue blazers come in a range of fabrics and styles; from lightweight linens to beefy flannels. As the king of odd jackets, a blue blazer can fill the gap when you need to dress somewhere between a suit and a sweater, regardless of the season.

Styles vary as much as materials. Some blazers have horn or resin buttons instead of shipshape brass ones. They can come with single, double or no vents; notched or peaked lapels. Other design variations can change the overall feel of the garment. A double breasted blazer, with its nipped waist and dramatic massing of buttons can impart formality. A single breasted sack jacket with no darting can give you a more casual “drinks at the club” New England persona.

When it comes to shoulders, there are some cultural variations as well. American blazers often have a soft natural shoulder, while English tailors tend to prefer them padded and more structured. This is particularly true with double breasted jackets. American makers like Brooks Bothers and J. Press are arbiters of the natural shoulder; a style I tend prefer.

When shopping for a blue blazer, approach it as a major investment. This should be a jacket that can carry you for years to come and something that you are happy to reach for in the morning. A well constructed blazer made from good fabric will be as comfortable as your favorite sweatshirt and its classic styling will conquer the vagaries of many fashion cycles.

The core benefit of the blue blazer is its inherent versatility. It can make jeans, Chuck Taylors and an old polo shirt look city cool or give khakis, boat shoes and an oxford some un-stuffy dressiness. The blue blazer works because of its balance between formal and comfortable. It’s one of those rare garments that has both stood the test of time and evolved to meet the needs of each generation.

Banana Republic, Monogram and the Compromise of “Affordable Luxury”

Banana Republic has always filled me with a mix of hope, despair and dread.

Hope because the cool, crisp, modern, and attractive people in their ads work as intended: they attract. Whether engaged in happy plans in sunlit meeting rooms or harmonizing with contemporary artworks in white box museums, they suggest a happy world of productive teamwork in creative professions and culturally sophisticated socializing.

Despair because the clothing itself makes the ads look like more of a Potemkin village than most clothing ads. Plus sized fits are the second thing that bring me down to earth; BR’s mind may be in Soho, but its body is in Omaha. An American ‘medium’ is sized for the largest group of men who may dream that they fit into it, and the BR standard is no different. The ‘slim fit’ is little better. (Disclaimer: a well fitting garment is, of course, one that well-fits me. I’m about a 39R.) Despair, however, begins even before I try anything on because very often, especially with stripes and patterns, patterns are a little too small, colors a little too muted, and stripes signal “don’t look at me too long, or too much.”

Dread comes in when I take all these signals to mean that BR is not about wanting to dress well as much as the fear of dressing badly. “Please, just don’t make me look like an idiot,” says the modern man to BR, which tailors a Soho dream to order. The BR man’s life is not his own. He is not in charge, like the Brioni man confidently striding out of a limousine or private jet, solo. The BR man’s liberty is severely curtailed, a fate he shares with the sad citizens of the fruit-company controlled Central American nations from which the brand drew its name. In other words, Banana Republic is for me, the Republic of Fear. Once men escape from the work situation that requires BR, they cast it off like a shackle, which is why thrift stores are always full of excellent condition pieces from past seasons.

And yet BR has better taste than almost any other large chain in the United States, so when I learned that they had a more expensive line, “Monogram,” that had just been given its own store, I took a visit. The results were mixed but hopeful enough to give the brand a second look.

The store itself is on a triangular lot where Minetta hits Bleecker and Sixth, in New York’s West Village. While the standard BR interior design mixes white walls with dark wood, Monogram has gray walls with banks of floor to ceiling taupe drapes, which hide among other things, the in-house tailor (a first for BR) and the cash registers. In one alcove bordered by folding screens of mirrors, one can browse coffee table books of Richard Serra sculptures or Capri views while one waits for a fitting room. The staff was beaming: just happy to be there, but also genuinely attentive. They knew this was a plum position, and this was the first day.

The clothes themselves go some way to bring the BR dream of “affordable luxury” into focus. Take the shirts for instance: For half again as much as BR 98 USD, compared to 68, one gets a shirt with a textured stripe of red or blue, with white collar and cuffs. The fabric is genuinely superior, but the fit was perplexing: a chest of over 47 inches and a neck of 16.5, for a medium. A blue blazer (325 USD) had smart, almost eccentric touches like hacking pockets and a flapped breast pocket, a shorter length and a more fitted body than any BR coat I had ever encountered. But the would-be 3/2 lapel roll was still akward, my arms swam in the sleeves, and the lightweight worsted twill magically attracted of stray bits of fluff. The cuff buttons were sewn through but not cut through. If you’re going to do the sewing and make the alterations that more difficult in the currently fashionable style, why not just go all the way. This compromise is the BR mantra of ‘affordable luxury’ in a nutshell.

Other signs were more positive. The small and well edited collection had clear and strong colors – lightweight cashmere-silk sweaters of red and blue, for example. Patterned as well as striped shirtings were clear and focused, showing the Zara-like confidence that mainline BR so often lacks. Ties were the same.

Why can’t all of BR be this way? I wish I had asked Simon Kneen, when I saw him in the store and buttonholed him. If the name is familiar, it’s because he was, until BR’s parent company The Gap hired him in January, one of the people responsible for turning around the style of Brooks Brothers. For Monogram, he was wearing a white and black Monogram nailhead coat, a white shirt and gray trousers. Can Monogram shirts be monogrammed in store, was all I thought to say. He said they were working on it. This collection is not his work, of course (collections are designed about a year in advance, and presented half a year after that), but BR’s interest in the one year old Monogram is one reason they took him on. Kneen’s own work will debut in the Spring 09 line that BR debuts in the fall. Can he turn this great ship in a more confident and stylish direction? I’m sure he knows how. But will they let him?

The Italian Background

The generalisation that the English experiment with their shirts and the Italians with their jackets broadly holds, particularly in business wear. While the English tradition of checked and plaid wools is a fine one, it was always largely restricted to the country (or at least the weekend) and has died out slowly as fewer English men wore suits casually.

The Italians are more willing to experiment with suit cloth at every occasion. This necessitates a shirt and tie combination that makes no attempt to compete with that cloth – the Italian Background.

The Italian Background is simple: a plain blue or black tie on a plain blue shirt. (Occasionally the shirt will be white, but this can look a little funereal.)

The combination works well because a blue shirt suits most people more than white, and it fades more into the background; because a dark tie fades more into the background than a pale tie; and because the dark blue tie is the most similar in tone and harmonious combination with a blue shirt – without being too similar and evoking tone on tone.

But this is analysing the obvious. It works as the plainest and yet most sophisticated of supports to an otherwise daring suit pattern – or indeed odd jacket. It equally supports an adventurous pocket-handkerchief, gloves, hat or jacket. When trying to balance an outfit, the Italian would much rather tone down a tie than go without one.

Four examples are displayed here, all courtesy of The Sartorialist. The first is possibly the most extreme. The high contrast, double-breasted jacket stands out, but is supported effectively by an Italian Background and dark trousers. It even makes it possible to add a pointed handkerchief without appearing over the top.

The second example marries an Italian Background with a hat and bright coat, while number three includes a faintly ridiculous coat that needs all the help it can get. Notice the uniformity of dress in this second combination as well – with odd double-breasted jacket and spread collar. While this may be because they are both associated with the same clothing outlet, it shows the versatility of the Background.

Example number four brings out a particular aspect of the Background – its fruitful combination with beige or tan (yellow, essentially). It is no coincidence that every one of these pictures involves a jacket in some shade of tan. And the gentleman on the left in this example shows that the Background is the best choice for what could otherwise be a very hard suit to find combinations for.

If in doubt, go for the Italian Background. (Oh, and buy yourself a nice, plain blue tie.)