6 Wednesday January 19 2022 | the timesfashion
Tim Roter, told me, the brand “has
recently had a couple of lawyers
coming into the shop specifically
asking for a brightly coloured pair”.
More small homegrown operations
worth mentioning include Finisterre
(its stone cable-knit Cabet is peak
lighthouse man in a good way — £135,
finisterre.com — and it’s also strong
on jeans and casual trousers) and
Lavenham (for really special quilted
outerwear, such as the Denham jacket,
£245, lavenhamjackets.com).
Then there’s & Sons Trading Co. Its
artfully battered-looking Sunday
shirt is a real winner (£120,
andsons.co.uk), and its army
pants are especially well cut
(£155). Colorful Standard,
meanwhile, offers a rainbow
of tees, sweatshirts, hoodies
and trackies. Its shades are
so good they will tempt even
the most avid colour refuser,
as my 15-year-old friend
Arthur will testify. I bought
him the purple sweatshirt for
Christmas and he put it on
immediately (£50,
colorfulstandard.co.uk).
On the high street I rate John
Lewis’s affordable Anyday range,including its black or orange puffer
gilet (£45, johnlewis.com), and Arket’s
simple yet chic mix-and-match looks,
which work well when it comes to
bridging the work/weekend gap in all
but the smartest of offices. Its wool
overshirt, in grey, black, light brown
or black on brown check would do
nicely (£89, arket.com), ditto the
hopsack drawstring trousers in black
or navy (£69).
Arket also delivers a reliable
non-own-brand edit of, for example,
adult-acceptable trainers. Although
for my money, for men’s shoes and
trainers it has to be Grenson every
time, particularly the tan Archie
brogue or Fred brogue boot, which
— with their white wedge sole —
are halfway between the two
(£305 and £325 respectively,
grenson.com).
When it comes to jeans, I have
never met a man who doesn’t suit
Gap’s 1969 straight-fit dark wash
(£44.95, gap.co.uk). And there’s a
reason why Uniqlo’s unisex relaxed-fit
ankle-length trousers are close to so
many men’s — and women’s — heart
(£19.90, uniqlo.com). Just don’t tuck
your top in to reveal the elasticated
waist. Shhhh. Our little secret.W
hat does it
mean to be
a well-
dressed man
in 2022?
Something
very
different
to what it meant a few decades ago.
Formality, once a synonym for power,
can now present as old-fashioned, out
of touch. Yet streetwear — these days
a misnomer given that it is everywhere
— can look desperate and/or drear,
especially when you are older.
I am here to help you to get it right,
whether you are a man, or a woman
who has a man in mind! For me it is
about pinning down that sweet spot
between just cool enough and just
classic enough. What’s remarkable is
how few men manage it. Except in
truth it’s not that remarkable. Because
if the men of my acquaintance are
anything to go by — and they
are a diverse bunch, so I’d wager
that they are — there remains
an uneasiness in the British
male psyche about being seen
to care about what you wear.
Most men don’t invest
time and energy, not to
mention money, in their
wardrobe. So most men
look, at best, “bleurgh”.
And if you wouldn’t
accept bleurgh in any
other aspect of your life,
how odd — more than that,
how fundamentally ersatz
— to accept it when it
comes to how you present
yourself to the world.
I totally get that showiness
is not appealing to most British
men, not least because I don’t
think it is a quality that is
appealing to most British women
in their men. But looking
effortlessly good, on the other
hand, that seems to me a
no-brainer — and, no, not in the
sense that it might suggest you
don’t have a brain. So gird your
loins for a veritable volley of my
favourite men’s brands.
Up first has to be Sunspel, because
it quite simply gets Britishness. “We
spend a lot of time thinking about
what British style means,” says
Sunspel’s chief executive, Nick Brooke.
“So many brands’ focus is America or
China. We look at our archive and
work out how to make classic British
styles contemporary. We are quite
understated. It’s not about being a
fashion brand. It’s about making
people look modern.”
There is no one better at navigating
the line between smart and casual
than Sunspel, with second-to-none
quality (its T-shirts are the stuff of
legend among the fashion pack) and
an approach to colour that embraces
neutrals plus a range of brights thatdeliver added attitude without being
scary. My present picks include the
soft lambswool crew neck in a wide
array of colours (from £138 to £220,
sunspel.com) and the plain waxed
jacket in navy or chocolate (£375).
Ahhh. Waxed jackets. That brings
me to my second favourite brand,
Archie Foal. Its wax jacket, the
so-called biker field, walks the
tightrope between country and town
perfectly, a balancing act at which the
brand is peerless (£385, archiefoal.com).
It is particularly standout in the label’s
dark yet bright rendering of navy.
Similarly noteworthy is the
leather-sleeved navy wool varsity
jacket (£395) and the chunky Brody
knit in khaki or navy (£235).
Next up is a third British brand that
is one of the best around at taking
potentially humdrum utility wear and
making it interesting and of ever-after
quality. Oliver Spencer’s Bembridge
fleece jacket, in navy or ginger, is
a superlative case in point, with
its contrast cord pockets and
half-lining (reduced to £217 from
£310, oliverspencer.co.uk). No one is
going to mistake you for a
teenager, nor a mountaineer,
and yet its nod to both will
make you appear up to date.
Oliver Spencer pulls off
the opposite kind of magic
with its suiting, rendering
the theoretically strait-laced
present as relaxed. To wit:
the unlined charcoal wool
single-breasted Solms jacket
and drawstring trousers (£369
and £179, respectively). I also
rate Timothy Everest and
Old Town in this regard.
One more love letter,
this time to MC Overalls,
a British workwear brand
established in 1908 in the
East End of London. Its
polycotton workwear
jacket — great over a tee
in warm weather, just as
good over a knit in lower
temperatures — comes in
classic navy (£135,
mcoveralls.com), as well as
more daring colours.
I recently got my other half —
a navy devotee to the core — into
the dusty pink and, to his surprise,
he has loved wearing it: loved
the pep it has put in his step;
loved the positive responses.
It’s worth remembering that
so many of our ideas around
colour are cultural
codifications. It was, after
all, pink for a boy, not a
girl, until a century ago.
Talking of cliché-busters,
MC Overalls’ signature overalls
— jumpsuits to you and me — have
long been popular with creative
types (£150). But the times they are
a-changin’. As its managing director,These men are on my hot list —
The best-dressed men know how to
strike a balance between classic and
cool, writes Anna Murphy, but there
are a few rules. This is how to pull it off
Monty DonBelow: T-Michael and
David Hockney. Left:
Willem DafoeJeff Goldblum