This is the time of year when the sales are on. I buy a lot of my clothes at the sales. I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s the only time of year at which they’re being sold at something approaching their correct price, that is without a huge mark-up. So maybe instead of writing this piece I should be dashing out there to the shops right now braving the heaving throng hunting around for bargains. Or maybe not. You see, being a man, I first ask myself the question: do I need any new clothes ? And, to be honest, the answer is no. My wardrobe and drawers are full. Also, I like to think that “style never goes out of fashion”.
I have more clothes than you could shake a proverbial stick at. I never get round to wearing them all, there are some items I’ve forgotten I owned. Moreover, the more clothes you have the less quickly you are likely to wear them out.
Indeed, does anyone wear out clothes these days, you may ask, before we simply get fed up of them in our Western affluent society ? Well I do actually. From protracted riding of my bike to work I actually wore through the seat of some woolen trousers before the summer. It took me some time to find an identical pair; I was pleased to discover the exact same pair of Marks and Spencer’s luxury dark blue trousers in wool and cashmere at their branch in... Ankara. I was disappointed when they closed their Brussels shop ten years ago. When such a standard item was getting past it, I used to just go down there and get the same again, I’m talking about plain white shirts, undies, socks and the like which require no careful choosing. M & S also sell garments in genuinely different sizes, so you don’t subsequently have to pay someone else to hem them and finish them for you. I now have to wait for a trip to England to stock up on basics.
My most basic clothes do actually get so frequently worn and washed that they start to fray and develop holes, so need to be regularly phased out and replaced. Fortunately I don’t change size much, so that in itself doesn’t give me too much of a reason for buying new clothes. Nonetheless, round about this time of year (which may not necessarily be a good plan, what with post-Christmas flab) I do go through the wardrobe and weed out trousers and jackets that are, shall I say, becoming uncomfortable. I also have an unfortunate tendency to mysteriously acquire indelible food stains on some items, especially light-coloured polo shirts, so they have to be replaced, while their predecessors are moved down the hierarchy from the category “smart” to “lounging around home” to “climbing, gardening and decorating” and finally, when no longer fit to wear, to “cleaning the oil off the bike chain” or other uses as rags.
It seems then that I have a fairly utilitarian attitude towards clothes. To tell the truth I don’t particulalry enjoy shopping for them and am glad when someone else takes the trouble to make me a gift of them. When I do go shopping for clothes myself, I like to check the composition of the fabric on the label, having a preference for natural fibres, cotton and wool.
I also try to run a “one in, one out” policy to counter my natural inclination not to get rid of anything. Any new acquisition should entail the giving or thowing away of an equivalent older item to make room for it.
Clothes are very important to a lot of people, especially women, at least judging from those in my own family, who seem to spend a lot of time shopping around for them and a lot of money buying them.
“Kleider machen Leute” or “Clothes make people”, runs one popular saying. The clothes we wear contribute a lot to that all important first impression we make. A lot of our pigeon-holing of others takes place on the basis of attire and it can be quite literally a “smart” move to dress up for a first encounter especially if it’s for professional purposes or meeting the in-laws.
Ultimately though “Clothes make people” is a saying which reflects the superficiality of society and people’s judgements of others. On the one hand, I’m not sure I value the opinion of someone who judges me so quickly as to categorize me on the basis of what seems to me to be something of only secondary importance. On the other hand, the fact that someone is prepared to make an effort to respect the dress code for an event, does show a desire to join in and play the game. That is actually quite important as a form of social interaction, it implies that you care about and respect what others attach importance to. There’s something grand about a wedding celebration in any culture where the guests have deliberately gone out of their way to be smart. People do genuinely like to fit in and not to be over-dressed or under-dressed. In the end, even Bohemians have dress conventions.
It always amuses me at important political meetings to see how the dress code for ministers is impeccable suit and for journalists and cameramen as scruffy as possible - no chance of confusing the two groups there. As interpreters there is always a chance that we may have to get in the room with the ministers, so we are expected to dress accordingly. Jacket and tie are “de rigueur” for men.
I have to admit that I actually quite like that as it helps me define my professional persona and so has an influence on how I present myself. I guess a doctor looks more serious in a white coat, a mechanic in blue overalls, an undertaker in a dark suit and a policeman in a uniform. Again, it’s part of the game and here there really is an element of clothes making the people.
However, the idea that beyond their chosen professional persona people’s personalities are more generally defined by their clothes strikes me as rather preposterous. This notion is nonetheless the main spring of the very popular British TV series “What not to wear”, where an attempt is made to demonstrate that you can change someone’s personality merely by changing his or her wardrobe. To be fair, the programme concentrates a lot on getting people to come to terms with their actual body shape and to dress accordingly, rather than pursuing some mistaken ideal or hiding from themselves. Anything that helps someone to come to terms with their own personality and to be confident about who they are is laudable. Still I think there’s a limit to what clothes can do to change you, while they do almost certainly reflect a personality you already have. There are things we would never wear because “it’s not me”, most usually by association with the dress code of some social group we would rather not identify ourselves with, or by a desire not to make ourselves an undue centre of attention or even ridicule.
Personally I don’t worry about whether “my bum looks big in this”, or whether, because I’m wearing the same jumper as six months ago, someone might think I’m no longer drawing a large salary cheque. My main aim is to be comfortable, clean and dressed practically or appropriately for my intended activity.
So what do I wear?
It is axiomatic that the working man dresses up at weekends and the professional man dresses down.
So let’s start with what I wear to work.
A very large section of my wardrobe is devoted to what I wear to work, even if that accounts for a small proportion of my time, bearing in mind that I tend to change straight back out of it as soon as I get back home, but will put it back on again if the formality of an occasion requires it, such as a wedding or an opera première.
And so, looking into my wardrobe behind me, I appear to be the owner of no less than 9 suits and 12 jackets of varying weights and colours, though generally on the sober side - we’re talking blue, grey and brown. To accompany them I have over 40 serviceable silk ties (that’s not including those that passing fashion has now relegated to the “joke / fancy dress” box). Such is the accumulation of middle age that the younger me would never have believed.
In fact, I don’t mind ties, the secret to not being constricted by them is to buy shirts that have a loose collar to start with. I do like collars, I like to keep my neck warm and most of my tops have a collar anyway. I had to wear a tie everyday at grammar school in England, so it’s something I’m used to, like the rain. My school tie was a particularly vile number, brown with a pink stripe. Mindful of it I tend do dislike any tie with diagonal stripes, though I do have a few. They’ve been something of a fashion recently, I suspect because they are associated with a British public school gentleman’s education, something worth dissociating yourself from in my opinion. Mainly I just find them boring, a bit of a missed opportunity when your tie is the only original thing you wear as a smartly dressed man at work. Perhaps it’s the streak in me which makes me prefer figurative to abstract art that makes me fond of a tie with a little motif, preferably from the natural world but definitely not to do with horse-riding. We used to get given ties at work as presidency gifts, some are even quite wearable, but the worst offender was the mid-1990’s British pizza grenade job allegedly designed by schoolchildren (one now for the joke tie box which I feel I must share with you).
Well that certainly put the “yuck” in UK.
On the whole, having lived with an Italian for over twenty-five years, I like to think I’ve got the hang of the difficult arts of colour combination and pattern co-ordination of which I was blissfully ignorant in my student days. I also like to think that I’m always well turned out, but in an understated way that is not seeking to be the centre of attraction, which is after all in keeping with my station.
The one item that really distinguishes me from others at work is my sleeveless v-neck jumper. As someone who cycles to work, exposing myself to the elements and changing temperatures, which by the way also includes the vagaries of air-conditioning in the booth, I need to modulate my layers of clothing quickly and easily, so the slipover woolen sleeveless jumper is comfortable and practical to this end and as they make good Christmas presents I now have about eight different shades of them. This works well for me as I don’t wear anything under my work shirt, which is usually white and crisply ironed (though not by myself), as it would be a hassle to remove a vest from beneath one when I’m too warm. While I wear a jacket to work I usually take it off once I sit down in the booth, but keep my little wooly on.
I most often wear a jacket and trousers but upgrade to a suit as soon as the meeting gets more “important”, as in presence of a minister etc.
Generally, the beauty of a jacket is that it has lots of pockets and since I’m not into handbags I find this very practical, so I like to wear one when travelling, even if not for work, just for the sake of being able to stow away conveniently various essentials.
For the same reason I’m very fond of a black fleece waistcoat with zip pockets especially when it’s a bit cool and I’m not quite sure how well heated is the place I’m going to.
I love pockets and as a man I’ve never quite understood what it is women seem to have against them.
I see I’m moving on to what I wear in my free time. Still slightly in the direction of work clothing, I suppose, there’s “smart casual” which is what I put on when I’m going out or am invited round to someone’s for dinner and generally consists of recent acquisitions deemed by my wife to be more presentable than slouching around home wear.
I suspect though that the real me, or the one that comes without any propitiating of the gods of conventionality and formality, is reflected by what I wear around home.
The thing about being at home is that there are always bits of housework or repair jobs to be undertaken which I will do immediately without first considering whether they will lead to stains or rips and which, therefore, in theory ought to require prior changing and in practice often lead to grief over irreperable damage. It’s a good idea, therefore, for me to wear older clothes when at home. More deeply, though, I’m one of those people who like comfort clothes, familiar or even fetishistic items, which from repeated wearing have become second nature and comforting to put on. Sadly, of course, they wear out and I can never find quite the same one again, so I have to transfer my allegiance to some other garment. This explains why I frequently appear to be wearing the same thing in photos of a certain period.
One thing I’ve not worn for well over twenty years is jeans. I admit that as a student I virtually lived in them and indeed many people of my age continue to wear them in the mistaken belief that it makes them look younger than they are. However, in my book, jeans are merely badly cut trousers made from an inferior material. Denim is too hot in the summer, not warm enough in the winter and won’t dry out once wet. I favour woolen trousers in the winter, cords in mid season, light cotton and linen in the summer. Consequently I have rather a large number of pairs of trousers, which incidentally I hate to be tight as I spend a fair bit of time sitting down. At the height of summer I move into shorts, these days on the long side, but definitely not to be worn in the big city, even in the tropics, that’s just too much the naff tourist for me.
On the other hand I tend to wear short-sleeved cotton polo shirts the whole year round, varying the thickness of what I wear over them when it’s not summer, but usually something also with a collar. I prefer them on the large side so that air moves freely under them when it’s hot. I don’t feel the need to wear any T-shirts advertising my musical tastes, political affiliations, sporting achievements, cheap humour or brand allegiance. I would feel slightly uncomfortable with such a limited definition of my personality and so prefer initial anonymity.
As I enjoy being out of doors I have a fairly extensive collection of purpose made clothes for hiking, mountaineering, cycling and skiing. I used to be sceptical about “technical” garments or more particularly about people who seem to spend a fortune on the right gear but don’t actually spend much time exercising. Over the years though I’ve come to own quite a few such garments and the investment has always been rewarded with the satisfaction of the comfort of wearing a garment specifically designed for an activity. For example, I wouldn’t dream of cycling a significant distance without tights or shorts that have a padded seat. Also I swear by the light-weight quick-drying polyester tops which I wear as the layer next to my skin for all my outdoor activities; they keep me warm and dry, even if they get smelly.
I also own a large number of fleeces and, you guessed it, anoraks (mainly Goretex).
In fact, as I’m so used to cycling around town, I hardly ever wear a long coat but usually some form of jacket that still covers all of my back when bent over the handle bars. My recent favourite during the cold spell has been a short black well-padded warm coat which I bought on a visit to Stockholm in September last year when it was already so cold I needed to get something warmer. Now the Scandinavians really know how to do a serious winter garment and I love the details on this one designed to keep you warm.
Finally, I should include a paragraph on footwear. As someone who walks and cycles a lot I believe in sensible footwear. The first thing I do with a pair of shoes in a shop is to turn them over to see what the sole is like. My shoes tend to be solid and long-lasting, so I don’t own that many pairs compared to other members of my family. Nonetheless I want them to look passingly elegant so they can be worn on all occasions. My favourite pairs are of a traditional Austrian design, bought in Vienna but actually hand crafted from quality leather in Italy. They are a satisying combination of robustness and smartness. In the summer I like a pair of Italian mocassins. Around home I wear Teva sandals. For outdoor activities I have several pairs of hiking boots and trainers, but I wouldn’t usually wear them around town unless conditions are particularly adverse.
So that’s what I wear. However, I’m not sure how much insight it gives you into my character.
Clothes are very important to a lot of people, especially women, at least judging from those in my own family, who seem to spend a lot of time shopping around for them and a lot of money buying them.
“Kleider machen Leute” or “Clothes make people”, runs one popular saying. The clothes we wear contribute a lot to that all important first impression we make. A lot of our pigeon-holing of others takes place on the basis of attire and it can be quite literally a “smart” move to dress up for a first encounter especially if it’s for professional purposes or meeting the in-laws.
Ultimately though “Clothes make people” is a saying which reflects the superficiality of society and people’s judgements of others. On the one hand, I’m not sure I value the opinion of someone who judges me so quickly as to categorize me on the basis of what seems to me to be something of only secondary importance. On the other hand, the fact that someone is prepared to make an effort to respect the dress code for an event, does show a desire to join in and play the game. That is actually quite important as a form of social interaction, it implies that you care about and respect what others attach importance to. There’s something grand about a wedding celebration in any culture where the guests have deliberately gone out of their way to be smart. People do genuinely like to fit in and not to be over-dressed or under-dressed. In the end, even Bohemians have dress conventions.
It always amuses me at important political meetings to see how the dress code for ministers is impeccable suit and for journalists and cameramen as scruffy as possible - no chance of confusing the two groups there. As interpreters there is always a chance that we may have to get in the room with the ministers, so we are expected to dress accordingly. Jacket and tie are “de rigueur” for men.
I have to admit that I actually quite like that as it helps me define my professional persona and so has an influence on how I present myself. I guess a doctor looks more serious in a white coat, a mechanic in blue overalls, an undertaker in a dark suit and a policeman in a uniform. Again, it’s part of the game and here there really is an element of clothes making the people.
However, the idea that beyond their chosen professional persona people’s personalities are more generally defined by their clothes strikes me as rather preposterous. This notion is nonetheless the main spring of the very popular British TV series “What not to wear”, where an attempt is made to demonstrate that you can change someone’s personality merely by changing his or her wardrobe. To be fair, the programme concentrates a lot on getting people to come to terms with their actual body shape and to dress accordingly, rather than pursuing some mistaken ideal or hiding from themselves. Anything that helps someone to come to terms with their own personality and to be confident about who they are is laudable. Still I think there’s a limit to what clothes can do to change you, while they do almost certainly reflect a personality you already have. There are things we would never wear because “it’s not me”, most usually by association with the dress code of some social group we would rather not identify ourselves with, or by a desire not to make ourselves an undue centre of attention or even ridicule.
Personally I don’t worry about whether “my bum looks big in this”, or whether, because I’m wearing the same jumper as six months ago, someone might think I’m no longer drawing a large salary cheque. My main aim is to be comfortable, clean and dressed practically or appropriately for my intended activity.
So what do I wear?
It is axiomatic that the working man dresses up at weekends and the professional man dresses down.
So let’s start with what I wear to work.
A very large section of my wardrobe is devoted to what I wear to work, even if that accounts for a small proportion of my time, bearing in mind that I tend to change straight back out of it as soon as I get back home, but will put it back on again if the formality of an occasion requires it, such as a wedding or an opera première.
And so, looking into my wardrobe behind me, I appear to be the owner of no less than 9 suits and 12 jackets of varying weights and colours, though generally on the sober side - we’re talking blue, grey and brown. To accompany them I have over 40 serviceable silk ties (that’s not including those that passing fashion has now relegated to the “joke / fancy dress” box). Such is the accumulation of middle age that the younger me would never have believed.
In fact, I don’t mind ties, the secret to not being constricted by them is to buy shirts that have a loose collar to start with. I do like collars, I like to keep my neck warm and most of my tops have a collar anyway. I had to wear a tie everyday at grammar school in England, so it’s something I’m used to, like the rain. My school tie was a particularly vile number, brown with a pink stripe. Mindful of it I tend do dislike any tie with diagonal stripes, though I do have a few. They’ve been something of a fashion recently, I suspect because they are associated with a British public school gentleman’s education, something worth dissociating yourself from in my opinion. Mainly I just find them boring, a bit of a missed opportunity when your tie is the only original thing you wear as a smartly dressed man at work. Perhaps it’s the streak in me which makes me prefer figurative to abstract art that makes me fond of a tie with a little motif, preferably from the natural world but definitely not to do with horse-riding. We used to get given ties at work as presidency gifts, some are even quite wearable, but the worst offender was the mid-1990’s British pizza grenade job allegedly designed by schoolchildren (one now for the joke tie box which I feel I must share with you).
Well that certainly put the “yuck” in UK.
On the whole, having lived with an Italian for over twenty-five years, I like to think I’ve got the hang of the difficult arts of colour combination and pattern co-ordination of which I was blissfully ignorant in my student days. I also like to think that I’m always well turned out, but in an understated way that is not seeking to be the centre of attraction, which is after all in keeping with my station.
The one item that really distinguishes me from others at work is my sleeveless v-neck jumper. As someone who cycles to work, exposing myself to the elements and changing temperatures, which by the way also includes the vagaries of air-conditioning in the booth, I need to modulate my layers of clothing quickly and easily, so the slipover woolen sleeveless jumper is comfortable and practical to this end and as they make good Christmas presents I now have about eight different shades of them. This works well for me as I don’t wear anything under my work shirt, which is usually white and crisply ironed (though not by myself), as it would be a hassle to remove a vest from beneath one when I’m too warm. While I wear a jacket to work I usually take it off once I sit down in the booth, but keep my little wooly on.
I most often wear a jacket and trousers but upgrade to a suit as soon as the meeting gets more “important”, as in presence of a minister etc.
Generally, the beauty of a jacket is that it has lots of pockets and since I’m not into handbags I find this very practical, so I like to wear one when travelling, even if not for work, just for the sake of being able to stow away conveniently various essentials.
For the same reason I’m very fond of a black fleece waistcoat with zip pockets especially when it’s a bit cool and I’m not quite sure how well heated is the place I’m going to.
I love pockets and as a man I’ve never quite understood what it is women seem to have against them.
I see I’m moving on to what I wear in my free time. Still slightly in the direction of work clothing, I suppose, there’s “smart casual” which is what I put on when I’m going out or am invited round to someone’s for dinner and generally consists of recent acquisitions deemed by my wife to be more presentable than slouching around home wear.
I suspect though that the real me, or the one that comes without any propitiating of the gods of conventionality and formality, is reflected by what I wear around home.
The thing about being at home is that there are always bits of housework or repair jobs to be undertaken which I will do immediately without first considering whether they will lead to stains or rips and which, therefore, in theory ought to require prior changing and in practice often lead to grief over irreperable damage. It’s a good idea, therefore, for me to wear older clothes when at home. More deeply, though, I’m one of those people who like comfort clothes, familiar or even fetishistic items, which from repeated wearing have become second nature and comforting to put on. Sadly, of course, they wear out and I can never find quite the same one again, so I have to transfer my allegiance to some other garment. This explains why I frequently appear to be wearing the same thing in photos of a certain period.
One thing I’ve not worn for well over twenty years is jeans. I admit that as a student I virtually lived in them and indeed many people of my age continue to wear them in the mistaken belief that it makes them look younger than they are. However, in my book, jeans are merely badly cut trousers made from an inferior material. Denim is too hot in the summer, not warm enough in the winter and won’t dry out once wet. I favour woolen trousers in the winter, cords in mid season, light cotton and linen in the summer. Consequently I have rather a large number of pairs of trousers, which incidentally I hate to be tight as I spend a fair bit of time sitting down. At the height of summer I move into shorts, these days on the long side, but definitely not to be worn in the big city, even in the tropics, that’s just too much the naff tourist for me.
On the other hand I tend to wear short-sleeved cotton polo shirts the whole year round, varying the thickness of what I wear over them when it’s not summer, but usually something also with a collar. I prefer them on the large side so that air moves freely under them when it’s hot. I don’t feel the need to wear any T-shirts advertising my musical tastes, political affiliations, sporting achievements, cheap humour or brand allegiance. I would feel slightly uncomfortable with such a limited definition of my personality and so prefer initial anonymity.
As I enjoy being out of doors I have a fairly extensive collection of purpose made clothes for hiking, mountaineering, cycling and skiing. I used to be sceptical about “technical” garments or more particularly about people who seem to spend a fortune on the right gear but don’t actually spend much time exercising. Over the years though I’ve come to own quite a few such garments and the investment has always been rewarded with the satisfaction of the comfort of wearing a garment specifically designed for an activity. For example, I wouldn’t dream of cycling a significant distance without tights or shorts that have a padded seat. Also I swear by the light-weight quick-drying polyester tops which I wear as the layer next to my skin for all my outdoor activities; they keep me warm and dry, even if they get smelly.
I also own a large number of fleeces and, you guessed it, anoraks (mainly Goretex).
In fact, as I’m so used to cycling around town, I hardly ever wear a long coat but usually some form of jacket that still covers all of my back when bent over the handle bars. My recent favourite during the cold spell has been a short black well-padded warm coat which I bought on a visit to Stockholm in September last year when it was already so cold I needed to get something warmer. Now the Scandinavians really know how to do a serious winter garment and I love the details on this one designed to keep you warm.
Finally, I should include a paragraph on footwear. As someone who walks and cycles a lot I believe in sensible footwear. The first thing I do with a pair of shoes in a shop is to turn them over to see what the sole is like. My shoes tend to be solid and long-lasting, so I don’t own that many pairs compared to other members of my family. Nonetheless I want them to look passingly elegant so they can be worn on all occasions. My favourite pairs are of a traditional Austrian design, bought in Vienna but actually hand crafted from quality leather in Italy. They are a satisying combination of robustness and smartness. In the summer I like a pair of Italian mocassins. Around home I wear Teva sandals. For outdoor activities I have several pairs of hiking boots and trainers, but I wouldn’t usually wear them around town unless conditions are particularly adverse.
So that’s what I wear. However, I’m not sure how much insight it gives you into my character.
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