In London, if you have even a passing interest in the sartorial you\u2019ll find yourself with plenty to lust over. It\u2019s not as good as my year spent in Milan in 2005\u20136 but much better than my uni years of Montreal winter wear and the abayas and kerkushas of my teenage years. I grew up in Paris in the 1980s and paid more attention to the museums than the fashion if I\u2019m honest (who cares about street fashion when you\u2019re 11) but I\u2019m fixing all that by living in a city where men\u2019s fashion makes sense as the ultimate exercise in class. Come on a journey with me through the world of men\u2019s formal fashion in the pre-Brexit era.<\/p>\n
Backpack authoritarianism<\/strong><\/p>\n What\u2019s very important to understand about men\u2019s fashion in London is that it\u2019s messy. That\u2019s important. Wearing a suit is as pleasant to the average worker as wearing their school uniform so there\u2019s always a form of rebellion involved. Yes the man has to wear a suit but he\u2019s going to let you know he doesn\u2019t like it. In 2019 this usually means two things: no tie and a backpack. There\u2019s no reason at all for that backpack considering the thinness of modern laptops and that most bankers will have to lock their laptop at work as part of their clean desk policy. So what on earth is in that damn backpack? Doesn\u2019t matter. Maybe last week\u2019s FT, maybe cycle gear, maybe nothing. But it could contain something, that\u2019s the point. It could be full of stuff for a weekend getaway in Europe. It\u2019s the promise and potential for another life that lies in that backpack. The backpack is also NEVER worn properly. It\u2019s worn on one shoulder, begrudgingly, to accompany the intent and aggression in one\u2019s stride (try walking up the City from London Bridge in the morning). It\u2019s reasonable yet unreasonable, just like the English (see Brexit). There is hierarchy in backpacks too. The \u2018net plus ultra\u2019 of backpacks for men in the City is a backpack from Victorinox or Wenger which can cost up to \u00a390. That\u2019s saying \u2018I picked this up while climbing with my client in the Swiss Alps\u2019. It\u2019s sporty yet serious, the perfect combination for that formal\/informal balance which communicates trustworthiness but not sterility.<\/p>\n The death of the tie<\/strong><\/p>\n Back to the no tie issue. I worked with Bosch years ago and was informed that the tie was dead because the head of a large German car company had given a keynote address at the biggest car show in Geneva without one. And that was it. It gave permission to everyone else at the highest level of a company not to bother either. The tie doesn\u2019t signal power, it signals a lack of power. So not wearing one can signal you might be important, whereas wearing one smells of desperation and in England there\u2019s nothing worse.<\/p>\n Pink shirts<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m writing this in India where a young man was made fun of for wearing a pink shirt by the MC of the conference I just spoke at. That would never happen in London. If you\u2019re wearing a pink shirt, chances are you\u2019re an equity fund manager. Because that\u2019s power, the power to turn into any colour into the colour of money. The more powerful a man in an organisation, the more colourful he is. Because he doesn\u2019t care and being care-free is for the all powerful in the City. The lower down the food chain, the whiter the shirt and the pointier the shoes (see T.M.Lewin\u2019s collection and pricing<\/a>). That\u2019s just how it works.<\/p>\n Watches & Cufflinks<\/strong><\/p>\n The only nod to tradition in the City are cufflinks and watches. Big fat expensive watches always worn above the shirt, the suit, the coat. Interesting cufflinks the shape of ridiculous things, but cufflinks nonetheless. Both are there to acknowledge that there is still tradition in the City regardless of all the sleeve tattoos and beards about.<\/p>\n The rest is a bit of a uniform. Dark suit, always black socks, black shoes, maybe a vaguely interesting striped scarf, and a dark or beige rain jacket but that\u2019s it. There might be the odd Rab puffer jacket and interesting glasses but that\u2019s rare too and mostly reserved for men in the beginning of a career. I\u2019ll occasionally spot an actual briefcase but that\u2019s so rare that I assume he must be visiting from Europe. Only Americans will wear chinos, white socks or basically any variation on the above. And men with great suits don\u2019t work in the City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Men\u2019s fashion in the\u00a0City In London, if you have even a passing interest in the sartorial you\u2019ll find yourself with plenty to lust over. It\u2019s not as good as my year spent in Milan in 2005\u20136 but much better than my uni years of Montreal winter wear and the abayas and kerkushas of my teenage… Continue reading Men\u2019s fashion in the\u00a0City<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-of-things","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-EM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}