What not to wear
Dylan Jones says it’s vital that men dress their age It was April 1994, my first proper date with the woman who later would become my wife and, judging by the number of times she tells this story, I’m not sure she has ever really forgiven me. Obviously, seeing that she was several meals above me in the food chain, I wanted to make a good impression. Or, more accurately, like most men in this situation I wanted to hide all my faults and actually appear to be someone else completely. So my choice of restaurant was crucial. Did I want to show off and get a table somewhere flash? Somewhere cool? Or somewhere in Paris? In the end I chose the Belvedere in Holland Park, principally because, at the time, it was the most romantic place I could think of: quiet, out of the way, but suitably chi-chi all the same.
Silly me. Having picked her up in my brand new silver BMW, wearing my brand new Paul Smith suit, having doused myself in the finest cologne, and having opened the Belvedere’s door to usher her in, we were confronted with Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt dressed in a badly cut electric-blue satin suit and 30 or so of his equally hideous friends all of whom appeared to be male, in the music business, and appallingly dressed. Men, it has to be said, don’t age well, not where clothes are concerned anyway. Sure, Michael Caine still dresses well, and Bryan Ferry, and Terence Stamp. Oh, and Mark Birley. But to a man they all dress traditionally. Because unless you’re Nicky Haslam, then on no account should you ever try and dress ‘young’. Because you will inadvertently look like a fool. And while there’s no fool like an old fool, it’s even worse if he’s wearing a badly cut electric-blue satin suit.
However, I am, I realise, partly to blame. For years at GQ we have been encouraging men to take more care with the way they look, to smarten themselves up and to invest in sartorial wonderment. To begin shopping like women, in fact. But occasionally I worry that we have been too successful. There we sit, in our ivory laterally converted tower, pontificating on the affairs of the day, with our fancydan ideas, and encouraging our devoted brethren to sport artichoke-coloured spats and latex cummerbunds, when all they really want to know is if they’re allowed to wear a pair of trainers after the age of 30. To which the answer is: it depends on how you wear them. The fundamental rule of dressing well is knowing when to stop. Sure, you can still wear skinny jeans, college scarves and winklepickers when you’re 50, but only if you’re whippet thin. If you have the body shape of Chav or Dave then you shouldn’t go anywhere near them. Baldness is equally unforgiving, and if you’ve lost your thatch then there’s no way you should be dressed head-totoe in a black leather body-suit.
The trick to appearing smart when you’re of a certain age is not trying to look like someone else. If you’re going through some sort of protracted midlife crisis, and you’re blasting out the Arctic Monkeys from your Range-Rover, and snapping your fingers and talking in Emo patois, then the last thing you need to do is dress up like Robbie Williams or Russell Brand. Because all you’ll do is force people to stare at you in the street and murmur, quietly to their friends, ‘Look over there, there’s a really sad old chap dressed up like Robbie Williams.’ By all means act idiosyncratic. And by all means start wearing a more colourful shirt with a more elongated collar. Change your shoes if you like, and go for something chiseltoed by Cleverly. But don’t dress up like Pete Doherty. Because not even Pete Doherty can convincingly do that these days.
No, simply act your age and start dressing like it. Ironically, as I was flicking through a reference book the other evening (looking for a picture of Bryan Ferry, circa 1972, a man very much in his pomp), I came across a photograph of Rick Parfitt looking quite the pip. My wife still hasn’t forgiven him (or me) for gatecrashing our first date, but at least I know that he once looked cool. Nothing strange there, then: it was 1967, and he was 19.
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