The Guardian

Wear a suit to the office. It’s a special occasion…

by Priya Elan

He’s the designer famed for reviving Savile Row tailoring in the Cool Britannia era of the 90s with his sleek, jewel-coloured suits. Since then, office attire has become less formal and working from home has taken off, yet Ozwald Boateng believes rumours of the death of the suit are greatly exaggerated.

When Boateng opened his shop on Savile Row in the 90s, he was part of the “New Bespoke Movement”: hip young gunslingers who were seen as modernising the area, cutting through the elitism.

“In the late 1990s, Cool Britannia was reaching a global audience and Savile Row was ripe for being reinvented,” says Professor Andrew Groves, director of the Westminster Menswear Archive.

“Like Tommy Nutter in the 1970s, Ozwald Boateng, along with Richard James, Timothy Everest and Richard Anderson, made it cool to hang out on Savile Row.”

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Finanical Times

Why I wear black

By Josh Spero

The picture is full-spectrum colour: 10-year-old Josh in the boys’ department at C&A, camper than is wise, lighting on a furry, rainbow-striped sweater. It looks like someone has trapped and skinned the Muppets, but I have to have it.

For the best part of the next 20 years, my wardrobe will be full of colour: hot-pink slacks and blue-check jackets and even, for a grim while, matching purple shirt and tie.

At the jollier courts of Europe, however, colour dominated until rationalists and republicans gained in confidence in the late 18th century and royals started losing their heads.

“Previously, upper-class men wore colourful clothes, wigs and make-up,” says Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster in London. “But a new rational approach to dressing emerged that rejected the royal-court approach to menswear.” Utility and functionality, he says, became more important than flash and flair, appealing to the new business class of the industrial revolution. This shift is known — like the recent story of my dating life — as the Great Male Renunciation.

Since the second world war, black has found itself taken up as a uniform by all sorts of subcultures, says Groves: “the studied and self-referential cool of the beatniks in black berets”, the “crimped hair and layered black outfits” of yearning 1980s goths, Tom of Finland’s “ritualised and regulated approach to power dressing”. It’s the colour of masculinity in crisis too, he says, whether the violence of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho or Reservoir Dogs’ killers, disappearing in their black suits.

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WWD

Which British Royal Is Heir to Prince Philip’s Style Crown?

They may not be rocking pink velvet dinner jackets like Daniel Craig, but Prince Charles and his sons are still setting sartorial trends worldwide.

By SAMANTHA CONTI

LONDON — In a climate-controlled room at Kensington Palace, Edward VIII’s Savile Row bespoke cotton drill safari suit, with detachable sleeves and adjustable trouser lengths, sits folded in a special storage box, not far from the “baby presentation dress,” with a matching silk bonnet, worn by the future King George IV.

An ostrich feather cap, with little holes for jewels, that belonged to Henry VIII is yet another item in the 12,000-piece archive of royal and court dress that’s housed between Kensington Palace and Hampton Court Palace and offers a richly textured timeline of British history.

Yet the royal men can only go so far, and have to dress within the parameters of their profession and make those around them feel at ease. They also have to pay for everything themselves, and avoid making any major statements — or the British tabloids would pillory them.

“There is so much that’s off-limits, and as a royal, you are really dressing for your role, and for continuity,” said Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster and the director of the Westminster Menswear Archive, which he established in 2016.

He noted that Philip most certainly dressed for his role in life. “He was not the star, the Queen was, and he also belonged to that bygone era when men were outfitted for specific occasions, like sports, business and the military.” Groves added that royals generally have a shared sartorial language, and the aim is to dress in a way that is “inoffensive.”

“Prince Charles doesn’t have to dress any way to ‘impress.’ He is already impressive, powerful and puts everyone else at ease with his style,” said Groves, adding that the prince dresses in a very British manner, “like he saw the tailor yesterday. It’s quiet, not shout-y and only you, as the wearer, know how well your clothes are made.”

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