The FT's HTSI 'what's your personal style signifier?' is often a source of hollow laughter in our house. But I enjoyed the specificity of taste at the end of this sentence:
"I’ve worn Chuck Taylors every day for 20 years, but in 2015 they made the toe cap too pointy and I can’t live with it, so I only wear the older style."
While i'm getting all the hashtagnotes started I may as well get hashtagclothes going as well. I'm a lot more interested in fashion than you'd think from looking at me. I love all the hoohah of it. And I'm always saddened that I don't have the spirit to carry off anything more flamboyant that creativedirectormargarethowell.
As this piece in the FT puts it
" The distance between what a man wears to dress up — really dress up — and what he wears in workaday public life has not been, traditionally, very great. Evening dress, for example, is just a black suit with patches of silk or satin here and there. The distance has grown as everyday work clothes have downshifted steadily towards jeans-and-a-T-shirt informality"
But I woke up a bit glum on Thursday and put my 60s DAKS/Simpsons suit on and it right cheered me up. So maybe my 50s are the times I'll get my fashion on.
I also enjoyed this piece from Vogue about the Saville Row attention to detail on display at the Queen's funeral.
"Then there’s a world of gold-bullion embroidery, which will be displayed all over the procession, in all its infinitely complex minutiae of symbolism. “It’s a highly exact, specialist art,” says Stephen Doig, who reports for The Telegraph on the ins and outs of military and men’s formal attire. “One piece of frogging slightly out of place can mean a whole different thing. It’s a minefield.”
There's much about fashion that's wasteful, indulgent, materialistic, unethical etc. We all know this. But I can't stop thinking about something a young person said in a workshop I ran - sthg simple but revelatory about our sartorial choices being a bid to foster connection.
— Vanessa Kisuule (@Vanessa_Kisuule) September 24, 2022