Before we chose to home-educate our children, it was more often than not my job to drop them off at their school in the morning. I found it very difficult, even remotely, to respect the other dads I saw standing outside the school gate. Most of them looked like overgrown kids themselves. Typically, the fathers wore tracksuit bottoms—what in the U.S. are called ‘sweatpants’—and t-shirts, hooded jumpers, and trainers. Acceptable, perhaps, if you’re off to a workout, but these men were off to the office. They looked awful. I would look upon these men, most of whom were middle-class and white-collar workers, and I’d think, “What a bunch of scruffs.”
When I was a schoolboy, had my father turned up at the school gate dressed like that, I would have asked him henceforth to remain in the car. In fact, I am quite shocked by the speed with which we in the West have become a people who look awful, almost all the time. My concern here is with the turnout of men, but frankly, women are doing no better. In the winter, women now seem to walk about in huge sleeping bags with sleeves, looking like a great sack of potatoes. In the summer, they forget they possess a wardrobe at all, wandering about only in undergarments. I always thought leggings were exclusively undergarments until I was disabused of this assumption some years ago. Throughout the warmer months, women took to wearing leggings and crop-tops with nothing else. The latest fashion, it has not escaped my notice, is for the synthetic fabric of the leggings to disappear up between the cheeks of the woman’s rear, leaving the imagination with nothing.
Now, I can appreciate the well-toned curvature of spandex-coated buttocks as much as the next man, but the fact is that the world now looks awful, largely because there’s a lot of us walking about in it and we all look awful.
Just look at how unemployed people, desperate for work in the midst of the Great Depression, nonetheless dressed themselves handsomely in 1930. Only a century ago, from the shopkeeper and farmworker to the factory owner and landed squire, a basic sense of presentation was considered essential to being a functioning human being in a functioning human society, even when it wasn’t functioning very well at all. Woollen jacket and trousers, a hat, collared shirt, necktie, and leather shoes with laces were not considered the garb of the wealthy alone, but the elementary pieces of any man’s attire.
Now, I am not calling for a return to such clothing, though that wouldn’t be the worst option. As it happens, I do not much like suits. I think matching jacket and trousers tends to look too much like pyjamas, which is the only other outfit I can think of for which a man wears a matching top and bottoms. I also think that the suit greatly contributed to what a friend of mine calls the ‘dictatorship of grey’—his name for all that is modern. The suit is in many ways the garb of an egalitarian society, wherein everyone—whatever their actual status or social position—must walk about in the same pair of PJs, with the only bit of flair being whether you opt for blue or grey and striped or checked. Just look at the glorious and multifarious outfits of Renaissance Italy or Regency England, and you can see how grey everything has since become. Nonetheless, if our decomposing modernity’s suggested getup is ‘active wear,’ then give me a society of suited men any day.
I stress that only a century ago it was the norm for ordinary and average people not to look awful because, when I point out how awful people look today, it is only a matter of time before I am accused of ‘snobbery’ and ‘privilege.’ As for my ‘snobbery,’ I deem it snobbish to dismiss others as those who can do no better than look like trash. My vexation with the awfulness of how those around me dress does not come from looking down my nose at them, but rather from my belief that they need not look awful at all. They look awful out of choice, and it is a choice I treat with disdain. And if I am snobbish when it comes to dressing, that is a snobbishness in which I want all others to join me. In fact, my snobbery is a very inclusive snobbery. And in my defence, I quote Sir Roger Scruton’s description of the great Monsignor Alfred Gilbey:
Even if you take his sartorial perfectionism, his clubbability, his Beerbohmian zest for social nuances, his lifelong addiction to hunting with hounds, his antiquarianism and his love of the old England of country house and Trollopian intrigue—even if you take all this and, discounting his constant visits among the poor, the sick and the dying, and the universal reach of his friendship, make it add up in some way to snobbery, then that only shows that snobbery can be close to sanctity.
A snobbery that wants to elevate others and rejoice in their aesthetic successes, and not one that seeks to crush or disparage others, is, in my view, a holy snobbery. That is the snobbery I seek to cultivate, and it is a virtue that I invite others to habituate. And as for ‘privilege,’ I can only say that one can—I know from experience—not look awful on a very tight budget. Note that I do not claim that one can look good, though I hasten to add that, in fact, one can look good on a tight budget. Given that at present the norm, however, is to look awful, I’m setting the bar at reaching the negative accomplishment of merely not looking awful.
When it comes to not looking awful on a tight budget, charity shops are your friends. In the early years of my marriage, when my wife and I were very poor and every penny counted, in our attempt not to look awful, we would travel to the wealthy parts of London and visit those locations’ charity shops. We found that tucked away were charity shops in Mayfair and Kensington where one could purchase beautiful, high-quality, well-cut clothing that had recently been discarded after one or two wears by very rich people. These items could be bought up for a tiny fraction of the original price, and thus it was possible not to look awful by just practising the ancient art of gleaning with regard to the wealthy’s hand-me-downs.
Now, when such clothes do eventually wear thin, or the seams become loose, or the cuffs begin to fray, there is a simple solution: needle and thread. I have very few clothes that I have not patched up or stitched up. You can double the life of a garment by putting in a stitch here or there without delay. True, once you’ve done this quite a few times on a single item of clothing, it starts to look a little trampish. On the other hand, that may not be a bad thing. In the UK, at least, there are two types of people who traditionally dress like tramps: tramps and aristocrats. Quite likely, as long as you have the occasional shower and aren’t constantly drunk, people will just think you belong to the latter. In fact, come to think of it, forget the shower and drink as much as you like, and people will perhaps have more reason to think you belong to the latter.
I do not believe it is any cheaper to buy t-shirts, hooded jumpers, fluorescent puffer coats, and all that garbage than to go to a good charity shop and buy second-hand but very nice clothing. On a tight budget, by being creative and visiting such shops, you can deck out your entire wardrobe in a few months without breaking the bank, and at the end of it, you won’t look awful.
As things stand, whether you’re in Boston, Birmingham, Bucharest, or Bombay, everyone seems to be wearing the same tracksuits and NY baseball caps. The universalisation of the worst aspects of American anti-culture has been a catastrophe. From Washington to Sydney, everyone is in the same American sweatpants made in the same Asian sweatshops. The world, which used to be home to innumerable cultures with countless sartorial expressions, has all fallen under the global dictatorship of grey, and now everyone looks awful. One way to combat this is to visit charity shops and buy the beautiful clothes of recently deceased people who belonged to a generation that understood how to dress nicely.
There are two very rudimentary reasons why it is necessary to take care not to look awful. The first and less important reason is that dressing nicely conveys to yourself that you possess a certain dignity, that you ought to be taken seriously, and that you are a grown-up. The second, and much more vital reason, is that by dressing nicely, you indicate that you respect others. The person who dresses nicely says by his outfit, and he says it to every person he meets: “Look, I have made an effort, because you’re worth that effort, and I wouldn’t want to look awful while we’re spending time together, even if it’s only for a passing moment.” Dressing nicely, then, is one of the key aspects of having manners, which is a somewhat Victorian way of saying, of being in right relation with others, and it’s being in right relation with others that makes you a fully human person. Thus, this is not as frivolous a topic as it may seem at first glance.
This brings me to the three sartorial basics that every Western man ought to know and around which he ought to construct his outfits. To be clear, I am no natty dresser, and I do not claim to have any authority when it comes to dressing well or even properly. I am merely someone who strives, as best he can, not to look utterly awful, and I invite others to do the same. The three sartorial basics are: a lapelled jacket, a collared shirt, and leather shoes with laces. That’s it. It’s that simple.
Yes, it is very simple indeed, but the variety is almost endless. You can wear a cotton, linen, tweed, moleskin, corduroy, velvet, or whatever jacket. You can go with whatever colour or pattern shirt you like. Trousers, creased or not, could be chinos, corduroys, denim if you really must, or whatever you fancy. Shoes might be black or brown, Oxfords or Derbys, brogue or plain, suede or polished. It’s all up to you. If you’re invited somewhere, as long as you’ve built your outfit on the foundation of the three sartorial basics, all you need to do is put on a necktie, and you’ll look fine. If the event turns out to be more casual than you expected, lose the necktie, and you’ll still look fine. Either way, you won’t look awful. In warmer months, opt for a short sleeve shirt. In colder months, add a jumper, gilet, or waistcoat under your jacket. Not looking awful, it turns out, is so very easy.
Once you’ve learned not to look awful, you’ll discover that dressing is a little like poetry, in that one can only break or bend the rules effectively and with panache once one actually knows the rules and is experienced in applying them. So, then, break the rules: opt for a collarless shirt with a linen jacket in the summer, switch your laced shoes to Chelsea boots, or do whatever you like. You see, now that you no longer look awful, you’re a free man. And hopefully, you will use your freedom wisely and never look awful again.
