On Button Flies

Button flies on trousers. I don’t like them. I mean, I’ll accept them if I otherwise like the trousers but I don’t really see the point. There’s always one at the top that’s all but impossible to get to when you do up your trousers, meaning you’re technically walking around with your flies undone. And then there’s the temptation to not bother doing the next one down. It’s a slippery slope.

I suppose there are some benefits; you can open your flies just by pulling your trousers apart and letting them pop open but as time saving measures go it’s hardly a great one. Then again, I once had a pair of trousers on which the zip fly would seemingly work itself undone of its own accord, occasionally providing social embarrassment. I suppose button flies don’t do that. Maybe that’s why they were invented.

Some Surprising Spottings of Dungarees

A few years back a friend and I idled away some time in the pub trying to come up with ideas for strange or offbeat television shows that, whilst made up, had to be just about plausible enough to have actually existed. In the same way that you might have trouble convincing a young person today that the Black and White Minstrel Show was a genuine piece of Saturday night entertainment or that there was once a time in which Jim Davidson not only appeared on television but was apparently given money to do so, we attempted to come up with the most boundary-and-decency-pushing idea for a TV show that we reckoned we could convince people had actually existed.

I forget what the eventually winner was, but my favourite remains Adventures With Lesbians, an ultra-PC Channel 4-type show from the 1980s in which a group of inner city schoolchildren went around solving mysteries with the assistance of a group of lesbians. Whilst the pub conversation that led to this has now led me largely incapable of discerning which programmes of yesterday really did exist and which we made up, I think it was vaguely inspired by a programme in which children went around solving crimes with the help of some old people, and in the same way that that programme (if it existed) was meant to encourage children to see old people in a new light, Adventures With Lesbians was meant to do the same with members of the Sapphic community and show children just how much fun they could be. We even went as far as to come up with a theme song for the series, of which the only lines I can still remember are:

‘When you are a lesbian

You can wear what you please

But you may well choose Doc Martens

And a pair of dungarees’

Now, I couldn’t help but recall that catchy ditty last week when, within the space of a few days, I saw two young women wearing dungarees with no apparent sense of irony or self-consciousness (or, indeed, style). And they weren’t even the hotpant/dungaree hybrid that shows a decent amount of leg; they were full on dungarees, of the sort I had previous thought were only ever worn by those in the aforementioned song, or toddlers. (And I should probably point out that I do see women wearing dungarees fairly often but that’s because I live in the noted lesbian enclave of Stoke Newington; so if you think the lyrics to the song were in any way perpetuating a stereotype then I suggest you pay it a visit, and give particular attention to the newish retro shop with a whole rack of dungarees in the window.)

Now, I know this is a blog about male style but it’s still worth keeping an eye on female trends as, like viruses, they can mutate and jump from one species to another. So, what’s the deal with dungarees? I can kind of see the attraction of putting toddlers in them; they’re kind of a romper suit that you can wear outside. And for plumbers, they are presumably useful for having lots of pockets (though I’m only assuming that plumbers wear them, and I admit this is based on Super Mario). Similarly, I assume that Mumford and Sons wear them but can’t honestly say I have any pictorial evidence to back that up other than a faint suspicion that it’s the kind of thing they would do as part of their faux-Americana thing. But regardless of whether they do, we can still add inbred hillbillies to the list of dungaree enthusiasts.

Were the people I saw wearing them doing it for a bet? My suspicions tell me not. For I have overwhelming reasons to suspect that both those I saw are affiliated with some well known young women’s magazines, and those people aren’t really know for their developed senses of humour or irony. Now, whilst I don’t read women’s magazines with much regularity, I’m not aware that dungarees have been tipped as the next big thing; whilst though it’s possible that they have,

I’ve come to suspect that people who work in fashion feel under so much pressure to be ahead of the game that they try to be ‘early adopters’ of future trends simply by wearing everything they can possibly think of and hope that one of them comes into fashion a few months later. Of course, the downside of this is that whist on one or two occasions you may well correctly anticipate a style and be lauded for your forward-thinking cool, it will also be the case that some 97% of the time you well end up looking something of a twat.

Still, my suspicion is that whilst dungarees may indeed be the next big thing in women’s fashion they won’t affect the male scene. Or, at least, I pray to God that they don’t. Still, in a way I hope they do, simply because it would be so funny watching grown men walk around dressed as toddlers. But, then again, the theme tune from Adventures with Lesbians mentioned Doc Martens too, and they never seem to go out of style. They’re kind of the cockroaches of the post-apocalyptic style world; both the idea of them, and quite possibly the boots themselves, seem destined to outlive civilisation itself. So, if that well known 1980s children’s series was right about those then who’s to say it didn’t also predict the dawn of adult dungarees?

Heroes of the Style Vortex: Leonard Cohen (and a look at the perils of trying to be stylish in middle age and beyond)

It’s easy to be cool when you’re young. In fact, it’s pretty much a requirement that you at least try. After all, whilst a uniform of Marks and Spencer polyester slacks and nylon shirts is pretty much de rigeur for men in their forties and beyond, if you were to dress like that in your teens it would almost certainly mark you out as someone shaping up to be a sociopathic sexual deviant and probable future serial killer or, even worse, that you were going to development an unhealthily prepubescent obsession with politics and become the new William Hague.

Indeed, there are so many reasons to at least attempt being cool when you’re young that people are quite right to be suspicious of anyone who doesn’t: you have more time on your hands, more disposable income, a peer group to advise you, bands, actors and other figures to take inspiration from and a whole army of designers and shops aiming things at you.

But what happens when the years have performed their terrible dance? What exactly is it that causes middle aged people to stop caring about how they look? Is it the drying up of disposable income that comes with having a family? The difficulties of buying flattering clothes as the combination of too many M&S ready meals and not having any time to exercise mean there aren’t any cool clothes that will fit around your middle aged spread? Or do middle aged people simply abandon any pretence at looking good once they realise that, by and large, no one’s going to want to shag them anymore?

Well, whatever the myriad reasons, there’s no doubt that clothes designers feel little inclination to make stylish clothes for anyone beyond their thirties. Once you’ve hit the big 4-0 you’ll find that any sources of stylish clothes have pretty much dried up and whereas once you were easily able to wear skinny jeans and slim fit shirts, you enter a shop to find the only clothes available for someone of your age group are baggy and amorphous garments designed on the assumption that anyone over the age of 45 will require elasticated trousers and shirts with additional material around the stomach area. But what options are there for those people who manage to not only stay in shape as they enter middle age and beyond but also have the interest and income to attempt to stay stylish?

It’s pretty common to see rock stars attempt to continue to sport the look they had in their twenties into their fifties and beyond but I’m not entirely convinced the classic rock star look is all that dignified when you’re in your twenties, let alone as your approach pensionable age. Take the Stones, for example. Keith Richards may have cut quite a figure in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s but let’s not forget that they once all dressed up as sailors for a video. Mick Jagger deserves our respect for maintaining a 28-inch waist into his seventies but he’s certainly sported some odd looks over the years. And in recent photos the band looked like they’d been styled by someone who was expecting to be working with a band in their twenties but decided to use the same clothes anyway; the end result was vaguely reminiscent of an episode of Dr Who where the Master used an artificial ageing ray (or something) on the Doctor, causing him to shrivel up into a Gollum-type creature whilst still wearing his usual clothes. Just because you can fit into skinny jeans and fitted jackets when you’re seventy it doesn’t mean you should.

Fortunately, there are ways to remain stylish into old age and, happily, it’s a path that’s been trodden by several rock stars, with the most notable example being Leonard Cohen. Even if he wore nothing but clothes made out of bin liners, Cohen would qualify as being especially cool because of his work and unique career path: a poet and novelist who didn’t even release his first album until he was 33, and made successful comebacks in his fifties and seventies. (And, of course – OMG! – the X-Factor covered one of his songs! OMG! Etc…)

In fact, Leonard Cohen pretty much wrote the rules on being cool in middle and old age. And there’s only really one rule: well-fitting suits. You’d think that was obvious, but try telling that to the ageing rockers you see wearing snakeskin trousers and sparkly jackets. I was very young when Cohen’s comeback album I’m Your Man came out but couldn’t help but notice how cool he looked on the cover: understated shades, pinstripe suit worn with a t-shirt underneath and slicked back hair. And he was eating a banana, just to add humility to the whole get up. And he’s pretty much stuck with that since, albeit with the addition of a hat in recent years. But not a top hat with sharks’ teeth on it or anything like that; trilbies and fedoras, as befitting a man of his years. To be fair, his look was always pretty sharp; but it works, and has now become a kind of uniform for ageing literary rock star types (more recently with Nick Cave).

To be fair to the Stones, Keith Richards has managed to carve out a look that retains his outlaw rock and roller status without making him look like an idiot, but Mick Jagger seems to have adopted the Elton John method of throwing everything against the wall of style and hoping something sticks (witness his recent sparkly jacket and tie combo at their O2 gigs). Charlie Watts, by contrast, has done the opposite, going the way of Leonard Cohen and creating a constant, understated and dignified look based on well-tailored suits (even if he did also wear a sailor suit in that video). Neither Keef nor Charlie’s looks seem to have rubbed off on Mick, though. So next time you see him gurning and grinding onstage like a great-great-grandfather at a wedding, resplendent in spray-on silver trousers, a see through vest, a sequinned jacket and a leopard print hat, just remember: there are alternatives…

Some Musings on the Placement of Menswear Departments Within High Street Stores

It may not be very PC, but can I say that I don’t see why men always have to walk through the women’s section in clothes shops in order to get to the men’s stuff? After all, women will crawl over broken glass to save a few pence on a designer bag, whilst men are famously lazy when it comes to shopping, so it doesn't make sense that shops expect men to make more effort and always put the women’s section on the ground floor. 

I appreciate that stores spend large amounts of money employing psychologists to study the shopping habits and patterns of humans so they can work out what music to play and how to lay the shop out, but if they’re such experts why don’t they realise that if a man enters a shop looking to buy some new socks but is faced with having to fight through a zombie-like army of women scratching and clawing each other over slightly reduced sale items, he’s simply going to abandon his trip and go home?!

The Chequered History of Check Shirts

I should first of all say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with check shirts. They may be a bit boring and predictable, the kind of thing you might casually throw on if you rush out of the house without having time to think of anything more interesting to wear, or something you might wear if you were going painting and decorating, but there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with them. And, in case you’re wondering, I have worn them myself, but this was well before their recent revival, at the end of the ‘90s when they weren’t considered cool, partly due to their ubiquity during the Grunge Wars.

But whilst considering the history of the check shirt, I struck upon an revolutionary idea: whilst fashion is largely random and frequently undergoes Stalinist purges of its own history, I wondered if it would be possible to undertake a statistical study of a particular garment, analysing the data and seeing if they can be used to predict its future fashionability. Has this ever been done before? Well, in order to find out, here is a graph showing the coolness of check shirts since the end of the 1960s. Don’t worry; I’ve shown my working:

1968-72: Checked shirt pretty cool as most bands are wearing bizarre hippy clothes; it could be argued that Neil Young and Creedence Clearwater Revival were proto punk in stripping down their look in protest of hippy ridiculousness. Although in Neil Young’s case it may be that, being Canadian, he was a child lumberjack so simply carried the look on stage.

1972–76: Neil Young’s career goes mainstream and bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath pioneer proto-metal alternative ways to challenge hippy looks. Coolness of check shirts declines.

1977-81: Occasional but inconsistent sightings amongst punk and post punk bands lead to check shirt becoming slightly more cool.

1982-87: All time high in check shirt coolness as a result of legendary US alt-rock band the Replacements almost exclusively wearing them as they challenge mainstream radio sounds, lay the foundation for alternative rock and date Winona Ryder back when she was young and not a kleptomaniac (this refers to the band’s singer, Paul Westerberg, rather than the group as a whole dating her).

1987-1990: Decline in check shirt coolness apart from brief surge in 1990 as Replacements release their final album, All Shook Down, seen by many as the first alt-country album.

1991-1996: Check shirt woefully uncool due to appropriation by grunge fans mistaking their teenage sexual frustration for existential angst, subsequently dressing like tramps and making check shirts unwearable by any style conscious person for the next five years.

1997: The end of Grunge; fortunes of the check shirt rise as alt-country gains pace following the success of Wilco and Whiskeytown. This continues into the next decade as Whiskeytown’s Ryan Adams goes solo and continues with the check shirt look.

2007: The Hold Steady wear check shirts and their coolness is maintained for a bit longer.

2010: Check shirt goes mainstream again and everyone is seen wearing them.

2011: Disaster. Prepubescent singing sensation Dustin Beaver is spotted wearing a check shirt, potentially rendering them uncool for the rest of eternity.

So, from this graph, can we tell if it will ever be cool to wear check shirts again? The sighting of Dustin Beaver in a check shirt can be seen as the sartorial equivalent of a devastating stock market crash but who can say how long lasting its effects will be? The check shirt has shown its resilience to fluctuations in the market before so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it make a comeback, even if not for a few decades. Remember, past performance is no indication of future success…

Some Observations on Fashion Since the Style Vortex Began

Now that the Style Vortex has been casting its critical gaze around the fashion landscape for over a year I thought it might be worth taking stock and raking over previous posts to see if, as it set out to do, the Vortex managed to cut through the grime of the fashion world like some sort of really good metaphorical cleaning product. And, looking back, I’m more than happy to see that the Vortex has remained consistent! Let’s look at a few things…

Where did all the duffel coats go? I can only hope that everyone who bought one read the post (I suppose it could happen) and, stung by the Paddington Bear comparisons, discarded them instantly. I haven’t seen any in charity shops, though, which makes me wonder if people who bought them simply burned them in their gardens to forever rid themselves of their shame.

The bow tie and elbow patches are still occasionally seen, but it looks like they’re near to extinction. Phew! Emergency over.

The Christmas jumper, interestingly enough, stayed around for two seasons. On the one hand I’m disappointed that after we first saw people wearing them in a vaguely ironic way back in Christmas 2011 they were still being worn and written about during Christmas 2012, though I suspect the people who thought they were cool for wearing them in 2011 looked down upon people wearing them in 2012. But the Christmas jumper has certainly travelled a strange path, going from being a stupid thing that no one in their right mind would wear to a stupid thing that trendy people wore to a stupid thing that lots of stupid people wore. But I am proud, and more than a little smug, to say that I have remained untainted and never worn one. At Christmas time I just stick to my Homer Simpson slippers. They’ll always be cool.

And double denim, as I suggested, was proven to work! Back in April I said that, despite it being considered style anathema by so many, I believed it could be successful, perhaps by using darker colours rather than light blue. And by the end of the year it was widely agreed that it could work! It was in the style pages of Men’s Health and everything.

This isn’t all about gloating, though. It’s nice to see that top celebrities have been reading the blog, particularly Paul Weller who has at least now had some decent suits made on Saville Row. He’s still got a stupid haircut, though.

Some Musings on a Visit to Liam Gallagher's Boutique

Whilst the idea of Liam Gallagher designing a line of clothes and being seen as some sort of style icon struck me as being about as appropriate as Wayne Rooney opening an institute for the study of molecular biology (or, indeed, as appropriate as Liam Gallagher opening an institute for the study of molecular biology) I did actually go into his boutique, Pretty Green, once. But with justification: there was an exhibition about the Who’s Quadrophenia taking place downstairs.

But as soon as I’d got in there, I was struck by something profoundly odd: everyone working in there (or at least all the men) seemed to be Liam Gallagher clones; it appeared that the chief requirement of anyone seeking employment there was to already hold him up as the greatest style icon the world has ever known, so monkey-style basin haircuts and predictable mod clothing were the order of the day.

I was quite surprised by this; did Liam really insist that anyone in his shop had to ape his sense of style? Or were they given makeovers upon being recruited? Or was it a ‘Boys from Brazil’ type cloning experiment, where Liam Gallagher had undertaken scientific research (probably with quite a lot of help) to breed a new generation of Mini-Mes to help staff his shop?

Startled, I rushed straight down to the exhibition and although I haven’t been back since I do walk by occasionally. It’s changed now, and there’s a slightly different range of people working in there, not all of whom look like Liam Gallagher. Still, I like the idea of shops where you have to dress or act the same as its founder or designer. For example, Virgin Megastores could have insisted their workers sported a beard and wore a chunky sweater. Or if The Kooples do another collaboration with Pete Doherty they can insist that none of their shop assistants report for work until they’re so drugged up to the eyeballs that they can barely stand.

TWENTY ONE DEGREES: THE TEMPERATURE AT WHICH STYLE BURNS

So, it’s summertime and the Style Vortex is on temporary hiatus. I’m not entirely sure if that’s because men generally abandon any pretence of style in the summer; after all, is it really possible to look cool in shorts and sandals or, god forbid, short sleeved shirts?!?

It’s the opposite problem in the winter: you have to wear so many clothes that it’s equally difficult to be stylish. Winter coats have to be heavy and even if you think layering is the solution there’s still a serious risk that the number of layers you’re forced to wear will cause your body shape to lose any definition and you’ll become an amorphous mass of clothing and no matter how slender your frame is you might end up with the silhouette of the Michelin Man.

So when is the best time of year to be stylish? Well, it has to Spring or Autumn, when you can get away with wearing two layers; no more and no less. In fact, I’ve come to suspect there’s a perfect temperature to be stylish. I reckon it must be around twenty degrees. Probably no more, though. But whatever this magical temperature is, why do I suspect it only occurs about three days a year?

A Quintet of Worrying Style Trends

Check suits

If you insist on wearing them just make sure you accessorise with an enormous pair of shoes, a giant floppy bow tie and a flower in your lapel that squirts water. This one was in Zara! They really should know better.

The Pocket Square

I’m not saying that the pocket square looks particularly bad, but I would beg you to consider its origins. For a pocket square is essentially a decorative handkerchief. And the handkerchief is the physical expression of the idea that it’s acceptable to expel fluid from your body and then, rather than immediately throwing it away, carry it around with you for the rest of the day. Obviously, I could extend that idea in a more revolting direction but in the name of public decency I’m not going to. But, before you place that handkerchief in your top pocket it’s something you may wish to consider.

Super Skinny Jeans

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for well fitted clothes and opposed to bagginess, but you can take the term ‘well-fitted’ too far. Super skinny trousers may be hot on girls but on guys they’re just plain weird. And what if you’re attacked and need to defend yourself with a kung fu kick? Any respect earned by your bravado will immediately be cancelled out by the fact you’ll tear a hole in your trousers and everyone will be able to see your pants.

African Tribal Print Shirts

Somewhat worryingly, GQ have mentioned these a few times as the next in thing. But you will surely have noticed that the only non-Africans to wear these are late middle aged, upper middle class types who pretend to like world music and think that if they walk down the street in an ‘ethnic’ shirt people will go ‘Look at that person! He obviously has a deep understanding and love for all the world’s cultures and has extensively travelled the world and been respected by tribespeople from Indonesia to Zambia!’ even though he has actually spent every day of his adult life going to work in a drab civil service building in Luton.

Plus, you will look like TV 'eccentric' Adam Hart Davis.

Tweed

It’s totally acceptable to wear tweed if you are over 75, or a farmer, or an inbred type who divides his time between Buckinghamshire and Fulham and who travels from one to the other in a Range Rover, and has a braying laugh that makes him sound like some sort of retarded donkey. If you are not one of those people, however, you may wish to avoid it, mainly because it’s very itchy.

The Style Vortex’s Guide to People Who Are Seemingly Condemned to Never Be Stylish - Number 1: Paul Weller

I think it’s fair to say that where style is concerned it’s far worse to try too hard than to not try at all. I mean, surely it’s better to go out in jeans and a t-shirt than hit the town wearing luminous trousers, a Steps t-shirt, a shell suit jacket and yellow wellington boots just because The Face told you they were all the in thing that week? So for this, the first in a planned series of Style Vortex Guides to People Who Are Seemingly Condemned to Never Be Stylish I’d like to look at how this applies to king of the faux-mods and inventor of retro, Paul Weller.

For much of his career Weller lifted both his fashion and music sensibilitiesfrom an earlier era, whether he was stealing the look and sound of the mid ‘60s during his Jam years (The Who’s Union Jack suits and the Beatles’ riffs) or borrowing wholesale from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s during his early solo career (John Lennon glasses and Traffic/Blind Faith sound). However, in the 1980s he not only adopted a soul-lite sound that gave him all the edginess of Sade, but then proceeded to jump on pretty much every terrible fashion bandwagon of the era; it was a classic case of trying too hard, with the end result being that he sported a catalogue of atrocious looks that made him the number one contender for Fashion Victim of the Decade. And considering that this was the 1980s, famously The Decade That Style Forgot, that’s some achievement. And the name of the band he led for much of this period? The Style Council! Has a band ever been so woefully misnamed?!

If you’re going to slavishly follow everything the style magazines tell you to do then historically there was no worse time to do it then during the 1980s, but that didn’t stop Weller and his equally sartorially hapless bandmate from committing a never-ending range of sartorial crimes. At various points these included wearing chunky knits and roll necks (making them look like the presenter of the Fast Show’s Jazz Club a good decade before that character was even invented), doing the faux-French ‘jerseys over the shoulders’ look and even going to such bizarre lengths as dressing as sailors and Prohibition-era gangsters.

Since the end of the ‘90s Weller’s dress sense seems not to have changed; he reverted to the mod suit look of his early twenties, leading me to wonder if he finally realised that it was virtually impossible for him to commit any more fashion crimes as he’d already covered pretty much all of them. But if that’s the case, what about his hair?!? In his Style Council days he sported, variously, the wedge, the slicked back look and even bleached highlights but in the ‘90s he somehow managed to top all those by deciding to have a basin. Yes, a basin, the hairstyle worn by the kids you were at school with who had so many siblings that their mum would cut their hair at home to save money and did so by sitting them down in the kitchen, placing a bowl on their heads and snipping around it. And Weller chose to have this look?!? The mind boggles!

Having spent so long trying too hard in the fashion stakes one can fully understand Weller’s decision not to have changed his look since 1998 but even though the mod look he now sports is every bit as unoriginal as when he did it during his Jam days, the hair remains a mystery. I mean, look at it! It’s kind of a feathered mullet of the sort that a particularly gullible person might get talked into when they visit Toni and Guy, to not realise how ridiculous it looks until they’ve got home. But he’s had it for over ten years! Hasn’t he even noticed it’s the same as the ‘comedy’ hairstyle worn by the painfully unfunny stand up Paul Foot? So I can only think of one possibility: his hair must have fallen out some years back, possibly as a result of bleaching it or maybe due to baldness and, in the same way that some people spend a ridiculous amount of money on a haircut and then, because of how expensive it was, refuse to accept how stupid it looks, he spent all of his money on a wig and has since refused to come to terms with how bizarre it looks and thus continued to wear it. And I know that sounds a bit far fetched but, seriously, when you look at his hair can you think of any more plausible explanation?!