After last week’s “A Drink with the Idler” on clothing in the time of Caravaggio, we take you back to Gustav Temple‘s 2015 piece for us on dressing well

A spectre is haunting Europe. This spectre is recognizable by its clothing: denim pantaloons, a hooded top, plimsolls and a T-shirt whose slogan has been deliberately faded by an eight-year-old Nepalese child on the minimum wage. This spectre is 47 years old, yet lacks the imagination or indeed maturity to dress any other way than how he did when he was 27.

This spectre is modern European man. Look around you at the way men are dressed today: are there any indicators of age, profession, social class or interests? Not really; they all look roughly the same, in their baggy, crumpled casual clothes in shades of dark blue, dark grey and black. Some cost more than others, though they have been carefully chosen to look inexpensive. Men spending lots of money on clothes designed to look as if they haven’t spent lots of money on clothes.

Whatever happened to dandyism? As recently as the 1990s, Youth used to peacock around in fashions that bewildered and annoyed their elders. Now their elders shop at the same shops as them, and are all trying desperately not to stand out from each other and, God forbid, to look as if they have lost touch with street fashion. Middle-aged men in Abercrombie & Fitch hoodies? I’m afraid so!

The time for a man to stop wearing hoodies is just after leaving school. The time for him to stop wearing jeans is when he no longer has the urge to slash cinema seats and is actually there to watch the film. Men, lacking sartorial imagination in their 20s, follow street fashions. This is fine and has sometimes led to such an explosion of style and colour that it eventually becomes an exhibition in the V&A.

But when men in the 30s, 40s and beyond slacken their imaginations, they should not be looking to Youth for inspiration. They should be looking more deeply at how men have dressed since Victorian times, with elegance, variety, panache, style and individual expression. Where did this absurd myth come from that dressing like a gentleman is somehow “stuffy” or “conservative”?

Surely wearing jeans and casual wear at age 45 is the more conservative option? To follow the herd is to be conservative, and to conserve one’s youthful fashions well into middle age is the ultimate act of betrayal to one’s inner growth and maturity, and also a betrayal to the outer decoration of society.

We, the men leaving youth behind, owe it to society to dress well. The middle aged years are in fact our golden years, when we have a bit more money and a lot more knowledge about history to dress in a way appropriate to our age, which will also give the young folk a run for their money.

Forget the latest trendy jeans brand. Get a pair of moleskin trousers in a daring shade. Pair them with a vintage tweed jacket made on Savile Row in the 1950s. Stick a polka dot pocket square in the pocket and a pocket watch in your waistcoat. Learn how to tie a cravat and how to spot the good ones in piles of neckwear at a jumble sale. Stick a hat on your head and get noticed by women again, for the first time in years.

The colour palette alone, never mind the vast wealth of fabrics, cuts, styles and unusual fastenings, of the gentleman’s wardrobe is so enormous that you will not only be the most brightly dressed man on the street, but you will never look the same on any two days, once you have acquired a half decent collection.

In my lecture for the Idler Academy (How to Dress: A Guide for the Modern Gentleman) I will show you how to assemble an impressive, unique, unusual, individual wardrobe for no more cash than you currently spend on the high street. I will also show you how to co-ordinate your clothing properly and how to look after it, so that you are always the best-dressed man on any street, anywhere in the world.

Gustav Temple presents The Idler Academy course How to Dress: A Guide for the Modern Gentleman.

Click here to join the Idler Academy.

A Drink with the Idler

Tonight’s guest on “A Drink with the Idler” is the historical fashion expert Elizabeth Currie, who will be talking about the hidden lives of the street people depicted by Caravaggio and his followers. That’s this evening, Thursday 19 February at 6pm. Book tickets here.
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How to Live Like a Stoic

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