DOESN'T SUIT YOU, SIR
Mark Birley, owner of the nightclub
Annabel's, says that the British don't know how to be casual
SOME months ago, I made a decision to change the dress code in Annabel's. For almost 40 years, it had been dark suit and tie, and I suppose that I felt the moment had come to move with the times. Few restaurants seem to insist on a rigid code, and on the Continent it is unheard of. After all, I reasoned, when Annabel's opened in 1963, it was the first club in London to dare not to insist on black tie, which gave us something of a radical reputation.
Anyway, ties were no longer to be a requirement. An expandable brochure with brilliant cartoons by my old friend Nick Garland, illustrating what was and what wasn't allowed, was duly sent to members.
I was unprepared for the response. I had overlooked the simple truth that the British have no tradition of casual clothes. We seem to have a uniform for everything: weddings, births, funerals, racing, shooting, hunting, fishing, dancing, dining in the City, attending concerts, tennis matches and so on. There seems to be almost no area of private and public life without its own innate dress code. Consequently, on those occasions when we are invited to use our initiative, it is invariably a disaster, as anyone who travels regularly through British airports will attest. Contrast this with the French, the Spanish, the Germans, the Italians and perhaps even the Belgians. Observe them travelling, shopping, dining out: they seem to have that easy confidence out of a suit and tie which comes only from long experience of well-made informal clothes.
Our modest alteration to the dress code in Annabel's produced a degree of informality we had not foreseen. Sights of almost Gothic honor appeared nightly with variations of dress that vied with each other for sheer ghastliness. The staff, themselves elegance personified, hated it; the older members hated it; the younger members hated it, and practically all the women hated it. Take a Briton's tie off, and he seems to think that he is in a pub with all the extremes of behaviour that can produce. December revelries were a particularly trying time.
I could not bear it a moment longer; to hell with moving with the times, and back to the refuge of civilised clothes and civilised behaviour. The effect has been remarkable. Elegance has returned along with manners. People smile at each other; stop to let others pass by; make attempts to disguise alcoholic miscalculations; and are friendlier and, quite frankly, a good deal nicer. The dress code has reverted and there, as far as I am concerned, it will stay.
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