Whether You Suit Pink, Blue or White

Tradition has it that when British men came back from the war they only had two ties they felt they could legitimately wear – that of the military regiment they belonged to and that of the club they were a member of. Both were relatively plain, either a series of crests on a dark ground or a club stripe in two colours.

Eager to partake in the new openness in men’s clothing, these men wanted to dress up their ties. So they turned to more colourful shirts. Jermyn Street sprang up to service them.

This is the reason that, to this day, a pink shirt and most forms of stripe are perfectly acceptable as business attire in London. Even lawyers who rarely stray from a navy suit, black shoes and black socks (sad but true) will happily wear a pink or striped shirt and not consider themselves any less formal.

Not so the Americans, for whom the white shirt is the business staple, blue or stripes a little casual, and pink ever so slightly effeminate. Loosened from the formalities of London’s business regime, Americans are more likely to wear patterned suits or brown shoes (particularly in Boston). But not pink shirts.

Which is a shame, as pink shirts suit many people. Smarter and cleaner than blue or a stripe, they add a little frisson of colour while remaining very formal.

I was reminded of this the other day by a colleague who was wearing a pink shirt for the first time. In fact, he admitted it was probably the first time in his life he had ever worn anything pink.

Which was a particular shame, because pink suited him. Anyone with slightly ruddier features or more than average pink in their skin will suit a pink shirt, perhaps more than any other colour.

The great Alan Flusser tells us that a blue shirt goes with more people’s skin tones than white. And he’s right. While white may be cleaner and smarter, it tends to wash out people with paler skin, leaving them looking even whiter than they are. It looks best on high-contrast complexions – broadly speaking, those with darker skin.

Blue, on the other hand, is more forgiving on all types of skin tone. That is one of the reasons it is universally the most popular colour for casual shirts.

Pink, logically, tends to suit those with a little red or pink in their skin. Contrary to what you might expect, it will look more manly the paler the colour, as Hardy Amies informs us. Nothing will look worse than a strong, deep pink.

Know Your Trouser Width

I like narrow trousers. I’m pretty sure this isn’t a fashion thing – they are trendy and have been for a good year or two, but I think it has influenced my choice in tailoring for longer than that.

(Side note on very narrow trousers: They only ever look good on thin people. Do not wear them if you have any softness around the middle. They will make you look immeasurably fatter. Like a blancmange on matchsticks in fact. I’m consistently amazed at exactly how fat they can make men look that I would otherwise have considered slim.)

I like narrow trousers because they suit, to my eye, my other clothing choices – slim shoes and tailored jackets. Having a rather large number of shoes I would like to display, it also helps having slimmer trousers that will rest on to of the shoe and not envelop it.

I know it was considered stylish for a long time to pair fuller, wider trousers with short, nipped jackets (Cary Grant, Oxford Bags) but I prefer to put together items that balance rather than contrast. As Coco Chanel said: “Fashion is architecture; it’s a matter of proportions.”

However, I have a problem: perhaps due to several years of cycling, I have larger than average thighs and bottom. So trousers that are too narrow or too low-waisted get as far as my thighs and stop. This is particularly a problem with contemporary jeans, though less so with formal trousers.

For jeans, I end up going for more traditional cuts – Levi’s 501s are pretty good, as are the Kilgour range of jeans, which are purposefully cut higher and use a clean, dark indigo in order to be smarter.

As a result of this, it is always worth me keeping in mind how narrow I like trousers to be, in precise measurements, when trying trousers on. Without a ready comparison, it can be surprisingly hard to try on a new pair of trousers and get an idea of how narrow they are compared to your optimum width. You can, of course, compare them to the trousers you were wearing that day, but if these are very different in style or material they won’t help much.

It also helps to get an assistant to pin the trousers at the length you would have them hemmed to – width can vary surprisingly along the trouser leg, and it is easier to see the width when the ends are not crumpled up on top of your shoe.

All of which is a long way of saying that I now make a point of knowing the widths I prefer, in inches. I recommend doing something similar.

My preferences are (measured as the circumference of the leg at the bottom – just measure the width when flat and double it):

Suit trousers – 16 inches. (Anything less than this I would class as very narrow).

Jeans or more casual trousers – 17 inches.

I’d be interested to hear other people’s preferences.

A Loss to (Sartorial) Language

Recently the UK Advertising Standards Authority took a rather ignorant decision to declare that there is no difference between bespoke and made-to-measure. It is a loss to menswear and to language.

Sartoriani, a suit maker that recently set up on Bond Street with all manner of promotional offers and advertising, proclaimed that it made bespoke suits. It does not. It makes made-to-measure suits, with customers being measured on site and their details used to amend a standard block in a factory.

The advertising claim was challenged by the Savile Row Bespoke Association, an industry group of Savile Row tailors headed by Mark Henderson of Anderson & Sheppard.

Bespoke tailoring requires an individual, specific cut of cloth, by hand. In the eyes of many on Savile Row, it also requires a one-on-one interview with the person who will make your suit for you. So your suit can be (be)spoken for in person. It should also be entirely sewn by hand.

These latter elements are arguable, and have been eroded over the years – the cut-price tailoring offered by Kilgour, for example, which features measurements and fittings in London but sewing in China. But fundamental to bespoke is that the cut of the cloth, the particular pattern, should be yours and yours alone. It should not be an amended block, stitched blindly by a machine.

But the Association lost. Apparently Sartoriani considers bespoke and made-to-measure to be synonymous, and the ASA agrees. This is a loss to menswear everywhere. Once one company can get away with it, everyone will advertise their made-to-measure service as bespoke, and a refined section of tailoring will lose a crucial communication skill.

Consumers already have an increasingly large problem telling the difference between quality and branding (see post on Berluti shoelaces). This decision will only make the situation worse. Even more education will need to be done by an industry that is already pretty poor at it (see post on the BBC Savile Row series).

Almost as importantly, this is a loss to language. The phrases bespoke and made-to-measure are clearly not synonymous. It could be argued that they mean different things to my definitions above. But they are obviously not the same if a whole industry purposefully uses them to separate two processes and products.

Envy and jealousy are not the same thing. One is a desire for somebody else’s possession, the other is a fear of losing your own. The fact that people use them interchangeably is a loss to language – there is now no easy way to express the latter. This ruling deals a similar blow to the language of style.

A Fresher Take on Summer: Paul Stuart

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a Ralph Lauren summer. The current run of ads featuring bright ties, bright trousers and pops of handkerchief colour were some of the most inspiring of the season. At one point they almost convinced me I would wear bright orange, big-print, flower-patterned tie more than once.

Particularly iconic was the pairing of a summer suit with a canary-yellow Ferrari outside an ivy-covered mansion. A more explicit call to aspirational fashion is hard to imagine.

But Ralph’s bright colours and contrasts can be a little extreme for some days of the year – particularly in England where days, no matter how sunny, rarely escape some cloud cover. A more muted, subtle summer wardrobe is called for.

I found what I was looking for at Paul Stuart in New York. Or, more precisely, in the store’s catalogue.

The cover features a man in white chinos, desert boots, a pale yellow jumper and mint green jacket. Finished off with a lilac handkerchief. It is a sophisticated, individual yet muted combination of colours that says summer just as strongly as the Ralph Lauren ads, but from an entirely different viewpoint. It melts rather than punches.

This model is propping up a picture of the Paul Stuart logo – man sitting on fence with book – in a similarly impressive colour combination. Olive chinos, checked tan jacket, pink-check shirt, orange tie and pale blue cap. Plus chestnut loafers and bright blue socks. I particularly like the socks.

By this point I’m sure you’d love to see the images I’m talking about – the catalogue is available here as a flip-through PDF. Very useful. If you can’t get there through this link, go to www.paulstuart.com and click on Catalog.

Once you’ve got beyond the cover, I recommend going to page five, for the best way to pair summer checks with pink and yellow. Page 21 picks up the same subtle theme with blue and pink checks. And page 30 shows the full range of those socks from the cover. (Page 17 also demonstrates that fascinating effect I mentioned in my posting on window dressing – enhancing the appeal of shoes through rolled-up socks.)

There are some fairly hideous sweaters in there (page 9, page 27) but overall the catalogue achieves that rare thing – inspiring you to try different clothes and colours, while still successfully creating a brand image. Few brands do that well. I believe Ralph Lauren and Etro are two, and Paul Stuart is obviously another. Hackett often does well, but it’s range of casualwear means only a few pages feature jackets and suits. (If anyone knows any others I’d be glad to hear them.)

In fact, the most successful aspect of a recent shopping trip was picking up the autumn/winter 08 Etro catalogue. Few brands publish all their catwalk photos in a catalogue, for free, or have such inspiring catalogues as that produced by Paul Stuart. More should. Perhaps then we would identify something definite and particular with the brand behemoths that Armani, Ferragamo, Zegna etc have become.

Don’t Become a Snob

Badly dressed people sometimes make me angry. I wish they just made me frustrated, or feel sympathy. But all too often they make me annoyed and shout silent commands in my head (“button that jacket up”, “your tie makes you look like a teenager”, “what’s the point in buying a nice suit if you’re not going to hem the trousers?”).

I wish it wasn’t like this. I always admire friends with strong faith that don’t bang on about it. They believe absolutely that there is a God. They believe that I will go to hell. And they care for me. Yet they will not badger me, hassle me, ask leading questions or in any way shuffle me towards confronting my agnosticism.

Most impressively, they will not take offence at me comparing menswear to religion.

They do this because they believe I will only come to God through my own curiosity. They will provide the example, answer any questions and make it known what they believe. Then they will stop.

So I endeavour to make people aware of how much joy there is to get out of an interest in how you dress, without shouting about it. I emphasise the fact that seeing well-dressed people makes me happy, just like being surrounded by beautiful countryside, or well-designed buildings can make me happy.

It’s not an arrogance about only liking beautiful clothes or beautiful people. It is appreciating beauty where you find it. Without that there wouldn’t be much point in anything aesthetic.

I consciously strive for this because I believe passionate interests split people into two types: the snobbish and the tolerant.

When someone becomes very involved in a particular activity, it is usually because they take great joy in its pursuit. I take great joy in considering what I wear everyday and discussing it with others.

Such enthusiasm can easily become obsessive, and with that obsession comes a danger of arrogance. You end up judging people because they do not share your interest – in this case, because they dress badly.

It is a constant battle to keep your interest a positive one, to communicate your passion to other people because you want to introduce joy into their lives – not because you think they are wrong.

Losing this battle leads to the greatest self-involvement, the biggest geeks, nerds and haughty snobs. One should evangelise, but not preach.

In fact, that sounded like preaching. I apologise. I should evangelise, not preach. I wish I was better at it; I recommend it to you as something to strive for.