Geek Pie

Not really reading the papers or watching the news very much, I get much of my comment and reportage on modern society from Viz comic. And an entry in the Top Tips section of this month's issue pretty much sums up my thoughts on Paul Weller's hair far more succinctly than I could manage:

'Get that expensive Paul Weller hairstyle for free by simply running out of the barber's shop before they've finished'

Actually, now I think about it, that's the same as what happens in an episode of Nathan Barley where Dan Ashcroft goes to get his hair cut but accidentally drops some scissors into the proprietor's dog's head so hastily scarpers when the haircut is only half finished. His colleagues praise his original hairstyle and he hastily christens it 'Geek Pie'.

(One more thing: I just googled Weller and the second suggestion when you type his name in is indeed 'Paul Weller Haircut'. Is this trending?!?)

An Essay on the Purchasing of an Expensive Suit as a Deterrent to Putting on Weight

I think it was Yves Saint Laurent (or someone) who once said (something like) ‘fashion is temporary; style is eternal’ (or something). And do you know what? I believe he was right. I’ve never been more aware of this than when, a few years back, I went to an exhibition of fashion through the ages. I forget what period it covered but all I can remember was that almost every exhibit from the 20^th century was uniquely awful, a catalogue of stylistic horrors, with the predictable roll call of fashion monstrosities too numerous to list but which included the predictable shell suits, flares and satin jumpsuits. In fact, all that stood out as still looking good was an elegant 1920s cocktail dress and a suit from the 1960s.

Whilst most people, if not everyone, accept having embarrassing photos of themselves in their teens in atrocious clothing to all be part of life’s rich tapestry, there are certain sartorial mistakes that can never be forgiven. For even if you have a wardrobe of shame filled with all the fashion mistakes you’ve made over the years, one thing that should never go in there is a suit. This is because a good suit is eternal, and if you spend money on buying one that attempts to mess with the winning formula then you deserve to have your money wasted and you deserve to look stupid. The whole point of a suit being timeless is that you’re meant to keep it for years. If you buy one in orange and yellow neon you may find that a few years down the line you find you like it a bit less than you did when you bought it.

I was looking at suits once and the shop assistant unwisely told me that the reason all the suits they had in stock had unusually long jackets was because Preston from Big Brother and the Ordinary Boys had worn them. Now, call me naïve, but I would think that when buying a suit (something you want to keep for many years, remember) it might be wise not to make your purchase based on the look of someone whose career, it could reasonably be assumed, wouldn’t be a particularly long one.

Tom Ford recently complained about a trend for suit jackets so short that you can see a man’s backside, and he was right to do so. It’s not unusual to see the style pages of men’s magazines feature letters from people asking whether they should invest in a suit that shows clear signs of bandwagon jumping (like the vogue a year or so back for suits with surprisingly short trousers). The advice is usually to avoid them, and it always should be.

So, for avoidance of doubt, this is what you should go for when buying a suit:

Single breasted (double breasted comes in and out of fashion; if you wear one when they’re out of fashion people will assume you’re going to a gangster and molls party, which is fine unless you’re going to a funeral. Unless it’s the funeral of a gangster, I suppose).

Normal length trousers that break at the shoe (sounds obvious but let’s not forget the trend for wearing shorter ones; doing that will make you look like your trousers shrank in the wash or that you’re wearing your brother's hand-me downs).

Normal length sleeves where you can see a bit of the shirt cuff (sounds obvious, but if suits can be made with shorter trousers, don’t rule out a similar trend emerging for sleeves).

It sounds obvious, I know. But, going back to the point about people writing letters to men’s magazines asking about the latest suit developments, the reason people write these letters is because they genuinely have no idea. You’d think anyone could tell that a suit with trousers that stop at the ankles will look stupid, but it’s stranger when people ask if they will look stupid in the future. Well, of course, the answer is yes, because they look stupid now. As for the emerging trend for men wearing suits with shorts, well, I'm not even going to lower myself to comment on that.

And one more thing: always spend more on a suit than you can afford. This is only partly because it’s something that will give you many years of usage; it’s more because if you buy an expensive suit you’ll then have very strong motivation not to put any weight on as then it will be rendered useless. And, on top of that, if you buy a really expensive one you’ll be so poor that you won’t be able to afford much food anyway, and are guaranteed to always fit into it. It’s a win-win situation.

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?