I think it’s fair to say you don’t normally expect management accountants to be cool or stylish but I have to say that the only person I’ve ever encountered in real life who could pull off the shirt-tucked-into-jeans combo was just such a person.
Obviously
shirts and jeans are fine together. It’s the matter of tucking in where
problems begin to arise. The whole area is, for some reason, rife with
contradictions and paradoxes. If, for example, you decide to go with
‘smart-casual’, which seems to have become a uniform for City workers outside
work, where suit trousers are simply substituted for jeans, it’s somehow only
possibly to get away with it by not tucking your shirt in, even though you
would ordinarily tuck your shirt in when wearing a suit. It’s as if adding
jeans to the equation suddenly renders tucking in virtually impossible. Perhaps
it’s just a simple matter of needing to decide between smart (tucking in) and
casual (jeans), and combining the two just doesn’t work.
At the other
end of the spectrum there’s Russell Brand. Now, there’s a strange phenomenon
about him, chiefly that, whilst a lot of people mock his style, in photos where
he’s dressed ‘normally’ ie clean shaven, in a suit and with comparatively
controlled hair, he just looks plain odd. Have a look if you don’t believe me
but you’ll soon see that, no matter what you think of his trademark style, he
doesn’t look right when he wears anything else. But he’s also someone who can
get away with the shirts-tucked-into-jeans combo. True, they almost always seem
to be black, which seems to be another factor in making the look work, but it’s
quite possibly mainly because he’s just very skinny.
And maybe
that’s all there is to it. For, despite the seemingly endless number of
articles the Guardian runs about how the fashion industry is turning the entire
population of the world into anorexics (a number of articles very nearly
matched by all the ones they run about the world facing an obesity crisis; you
work it out) no one ever seems to go into the role that your size plays on your
ability to be stylish. I mean, is it possible to be stylish when you weigh
thirty odd stone? I’m going to say no.
So, when it
comes down to it, the question of whether shirts tucked into jeans can work is
not so much to do with the incongruity between smart and casual, or the
materials involved, or the colours. It’s about whether you’ve got a belly or
not. Phew. Glad that’s all sorted. If only everything were that simple.
(Disclaimer:
I used private browsing to find a picture of Jeremy Clarkson, so concerned
was I at my computer remembering my search and looking down on me as a
consequence. And I hope I get trolled for this article by some Clarkson fans.
Bring it on!)