June 15, 2011 |
FROM THE VAULT (SPRING SUMMER 2011)
These days, something strange happens to the dress sense of British men when the weather turns cold. It might happen in November, it might not come until March, but once the temperature drops below about 5°C, men across Britain suddenly begin Winter theme-dressing. Chaps who never wear hats suddenly sport brightly-coloured, woolen Aztec earflap hats with drawstrings dangly beside Grylls-like stubble or, this winter, fashionably nerdy bobble hats.
Colleagues whose chief physical exertion is walking to the bar and back turn up at the office in extreme-sport-y Polyamide cargo pants and the sort of obscure-American-brand hiking boots that look as if you’re wearing something from a nineteenth-century iron foundry at the bottom of your leg. There are padded gauntlets that look like swollen nylon poultry into which one has inserted one’s hand. Red, orange and yellow gilets. This winter we have even seen the renaissance of shearling and the arrival of the man-snood on Premier League football pitches; it’s as if extreme weather conditions give us permission to experiment with bizarre clothing, and enough to make you wonder if “deep winter” could be added as a sort of capsule collection to menswear ranges.
What is the origin of this masculine winterfest of padding and layers? I have been trying to work it out. Could it have something to do with the popularity of skiing and snowboarding? Did it somehow begin with new ideas brought back from exotic foreign travel, or festivals? I have even wondered if it could have something to do with the admiration that so many men seem to have for Bear Grylls – after all, he does have his own Polyamide-rich clothing collection. In the absence of any convincing explanation, though, I have concluded that this new shiver-chic is really just a modern, exuberant manifestation of an eternal truth of British menswear, ie that in his thermal-vested heart, the British male always prefers dressing for cold weather than for warm.
The history of our clothing certainly supports this theory. For one thing, so many of our distinctive materials and styles (corduroy, moleskin, tweed, waxed cotton, brogues, wellington boots) are A/W-oriented. For another there is the the winter coat. If there is a garment besides the suit for which the British have a prolific genius for inventing and reinventing, this is surely it; duffle, Crombie, trench, Chesterfield, Ulster, covert, Barbours and Belstaffs, never mind the all-weather Macintosh; which other nation on earth can boast a coat-folio with half as many all-time classics?
Even when other countries invent something before we thought of it, they need our enthusiasm and innovation to turn it into a piece of serious, stylish menswear; what, for example, were Americans doing with the fishtail parkas before the mods rescued it from army surplus shops? If you think this is a flippant point, ask yourself which other countries could produce a cult designer like Nigel Cabourn, who still makes everything in England, treats outerwear like an obsessive academic historian, and enjoys cult status among all sorts of men from football casuals to fashion editors…?
The winter coat, like the suit, is a big, rite-of-passage purchase for men. For the generation that grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, and were forcibly dressed in playground-standard-issue snorkel parkas, it was important even in childhood and adolescence, because big coats were important tribal signifiers. Crombies for skinheads, fishtail parkas for mods, vast, heavy flapping military overcoats for serious headbangers and prog fans; whichever one you chose putting it on felt serious, somehow, perhaps because it would be the thing that, in conjunction with your haircut would identify you to friends and foes.
The right one protected you, (in this respect, it was like putting on armour) and the wrong one could get you beaten up; I can attest to this, having been chased through the streets of Bridlington by a gang of bikers one night in the Spring of 1982. On my way to a Madness gig, I was clad in a fishtail parka, and had walked into the wrong part of town, ie any of it. I escaped, but took the coat off to walk the rest of the way – given the size of a parka it would still have been pretty obvious, but it was enough to fool a Brid biker in the early 1980s. Anyway.
After the tribal allegiances of youth comes the individualist experiments and embarrassing fashion-disaster winter coats of one’s twenties. These are the hedonistic, irresponsible years of coat-buying; it’s possible to get it right and not only look great, but also have a lasting impact on fashion. It was a man in his late twenties, a sales assistant in the Duffer of St George whose name is lost to history, who in the 1990s reinvented the covert coat by wearing it with jeans and trainers; Kevin Rowland of Dexy’s Midnight Runners did something similar for the donkey jacket in 1980, but not everyone is so successful. I had a navy wool overcoat with metal clasps and beige leather trim that I bought from a camping shop, and that I considered a really interesting and unusual piece guaranteed to attract admiring looks. It did not, and I still feel compelled to destroy any photographic evidence when I find it.
For most of those prone to similar mistakes the thirties can bring a certain relief because you can think about buying, or saving up for, quality and seasonal fashion. Your coat now exudes confidence and vitality like the glossy coat of a healthy young terrier, and if you go for proper, seasonal pieces you will for a few months reify that thirtysomething feeling of being at one with the times you’re living in. That’s true of any garment of course, but the self-enveloping winter coat feels like a statement, something that reminds you of older men you admired as a kid, standing around in the cold at family funerals or weddings, or maybe at the football or the races. This winter, for example, anyone can wear Burberry’s military topcoat – thecoat of winter 2010 hands down – but a twentysomething will run the risk of looking like a Downton Abbey walk-on and an older man (eg me) could somehow give the impression of being a real member of the forces, which is not the point at all.
A real full-length, brass-buttoned, coming of age, though, comes somewhere towards the end of your thirties, when you try on a British classic overcoat – a Chesterfield, say, or even an Ulster– in a good shop with deep carpets and intelligent staff, and find that it looks so flattering that it looks as if it was made for you. Perhaps this is the fashion gods’ compensation for your not being able to get away with experimental donkey jackets any more; if so it is a more than ample consolation, because it means the second great age of showerproof outerwear is upon you, the age in which you get to wear stuff that makes you feel like Tony Soprano when he wears those camel polo coats at the mafia funeral scenes.
Personally, although I did have a Chesterfield moment, my favourite buy was a vintage duffel, bought from a shop in Leeds. I think it’s a copy of an original Tibett, and is made of a wool so heavy and stiff that you could roof a house with it. I love it because a) it reminds me of the one Field Marshall Montgomery used to look jolly spiffing in, b) the old label inside says “showerproof”, which is a masterpiece of British understatement because it is probably nuclear bomb proof, and c) it makes me feel safe when I wear it. I know the bit about feeling safe sounds ridiculous, but there you are. It does.
I look forward now to the next stages, ie my late forties, fifties and beyond, because there are still coats that really only look right in the full ripeness of middle and old age, most notably the wide-lapelled and wonderfully-named British Warm, and anything in full-length black cashmere. Good coats, like shoes, are great consolation clothes; they can often look good even when you’re fat, and a lot of of them look better on the more mature gentleman. The same doesn’t really apply to the anorak, it has to be said, but as this winter’s collections seemed to feature a great many natural fabrics and classic styles, we can perhaos hope that we’ve seen the black-nylon backs of them for a while. Perhaps some of the snood and gauntlet wearers will be converted too.
I’m now reaching the end of this piece and have not even begun to talk about the delight British men take in the changing styles of scarf-knotting as I intended to do; the joy of coats and wintertime is such that it is hard to contain it within the toggles of word length. To paraphrase Andre 3000, what’s cooler than being cool? Wrapped in a nice coat when it’s ice cold, that’s what.
by Richard Benson
