The Strange Paradox of Why Shirts Tucked Into Jeans So Rarely Works

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.

Or is it much more simple than that? Is it simply down to the size of your gut and nothing else?! Jeremy Clarkson, for example, personifies the late middle aged man who, for some utterly inexplicably reason, tucks his shirt into his jeans presumably because he thinks a man’s gut is the male equivalent of a woman’s cleavage and, by his own twisted logic, is something that should be exaggerated if you want to be sexy. My feeling is that he is mistaken in this regard but who knows?! Some women may find Clarkson sexy but I imagine they’re the same ones who write to serial killers in prison then want to marry them.

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!)