Two Chaps Talking

I sit, dear boy, on a glorious English summer’s in the garden (aah, the blessing of wireless broadband), Mendelssohn tinkling in the background, the wind rustling the bamboo and a milspec Pimms to hand. I’m even in that state of losership most comfortable to an Englishman having lost the football, the tennis and looking set to get thrashed in the Northern Hemisphere semis of the World “Finding-Your-Own-Arse-With-Two-Hands,- A-Map-And-A-Flashlight” Competition.

All should be well with the world, yet, as always seems to happen at perfect moments like these, something dark looms. Something muddies the waters like a Brandy Alexander spilled while bathing. It is (isn’t it always?) a matter of fashion which troubles me most.

I am of the opinion that a man’s dress may be said to be ‘in fashion’ whereas only a lady’s can be ‘fashionable’. In case that semantic distinction troubles your gin-compromised brain, let me explain. A man’s clothes should always be either rigorously fit for purpose or have been so at some point in history.

The modern chap’s dress comprises items that have been tested on the sports field, by the military or by working men. They can, at various times be ‘in fashion’ but they have no quality, in and of themselves, of ‘fashionableness’.

The shoes I am wearing are hybrid descendants of the hiking and the tennis shoe. My socks are a short version of those we wore for rugger at school. My denim trousers (No…. I still can’t utter the word) were designed for cowhands or sailors, my T-shirt for Marines, my chambray shirt for horny-handed sons of toil and my watch for a diver. Of course, our readers may opine, we expected nothing less in the casual wear of our rugged and manly correspondent but what of his more formal working attire?

Here, dear friend, I borrow your mantle as fashion maven to point out that my brogues descend from the self-draining footwear of ghillies and my trousers are cut to the lines originally designed to give gentleman sportsmen more freedom than breeches. My shirt derives from the linen undergarment intended to absorb the sweat of a flustered aristocrat and my suit coat has the body of a riding tunic and sleeves designed for surgeons. Even my tie is a direct descendant of military colours or the favour worn by a knight.

Though a lady may freely wear ‘fashionable’ items with no more purpose than the enhancement of her beauty, any item in which a gentleman can feel comfortable has to have this historical functionality - this ‘form follows function’ intrinsic-ness. From this solid base a man can be as dandy as his valet will permit in his variations from the basic theme but he never loses the sheet anchor of purpose.

So….

What the fuck are three-quarter length trousers all about?

Why are half the male population of London, mincing the streets of Soho in truncated bloody pyjamas? Shorts, I can sort of deal with. I mean, there are swimming trunks and the admirably modest British Army Short and a variety of sporting garments in between. But even at their most ludicrous, the Army never permitted shorts below the knee. Why? If you need the knee covered, wear trousers. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a single pair of shorts in either of our recent desert wars. If the military have seen fit to do away with shorts so should we (Please see entirely separate rant concerning civilians who wear DPM fatigues for the challenging battle zones of Starbucks).

I’m racking my brains for anything even remotely resembling a precedent for these half-cocked disasters and have been able to find only three possibilities.

a) The Plus-Four. Below the knee breeches worn by unbearably inbred Englishmen in winter. Enjoyed a brief flowering in the 1920s when the wearing of a pair was considered such a blatantly classist affectation that it could provoke riots or beatings from justifiably enraged commoners. Two World wars and a general strike have ensured that even the most bloated plutocrat will only wear plus-fours in the safety of his Land Rover or on his own land.

b) The South East Asian fisherman’s trouser. Brought back from a gap year in Thailand or Viet Nam, the trousers of a short, malnourished third world peasant must have seemed amusing to the Trustafarian. They are occasionally worn by people called Jeremy for the 187 metres between the door of the Qantas Jumbo and the first gents in baggage reclaim. We can only hope that in a small, squid-reeking village just North of Num Duc Tro there’s a four foot high, eighty-five year old, entirely toothless fisherman wearing a £500 pair of hip slung, dropped-pocket, twisted seam, vintage selvage jeans with positively enormous turn-ups.

c) The trousers of very poor people, mad people or tramps. People who, through no fault of their own are forced to rely on the charity of others to provide their trousers sometimes customise them with irregularly ripped legs and a strong smell of wee.

So when I see some grotesquely overpaid ad agency creative lurking outside a Notting Hill boite, his tragic, adultescent, sagging arse encased in calf-revealing, bepocketted twat-pants, his phosphorescent, etiolated shins disappearing into a pair of ‘technical’ sandals - a human tone poem in breathable beige GoreTex, velcro tabs and self-delusion - who am I to imagine he’s emulating?

I think I’d feel more at ease wearing pointed shoes with bells, a whittled wooden cock-sheath and one of those shapeless, brimless felt cloches worn by drooling village idiots in Breughel paintings.

Your in Christ

T