Return of the impeccable sloth
By Janice Breen Burns | theage.com.au | 13 July
In a tailored suit - provided it is decent and clean and recognisably cut in the current decade - a man is safe from fashion's tricky lingo. In a quick-change instant he can be archetypal Man's Man in armour of worsted cloth and sculptured padding. Kinkless and bumpless as a Balkan pickle. Yessiree. Beyond reproach and petty judgements.
In a tailored jacket that can build convincing blokey-bloke "shoulders" over the weak slope of his own, that can skim trimly through his mid-section with a bare, tightening glance across not-so-rock-hard abs, and that ends in the elegant, tapered plunge of tailored trousers over a glint of polished shoes, a bloke can truly relax. There he is, smugly suited and a whole hundred years of tailored tradition beyond any sissy-boy jibes about the secret sartorial semiotics he may or may not be transmitting by the pattern of his pants or colour of his jumper. A suit, in fact, is not only a suit. It is the classic mantle of masculinity and, unlike poor girls and women who are forever cursed to dress tantalisingly for his omnipotent and picky Male Gaze, a man in a suit can forget the cut of his jib altogether and simply get on with life.
Set and forget.
No worries.
Such is the suit's magic.
Little wonder that, despite decades of rhetoric about the creative evolution of men's fashion and despite the fact that, by now and all that's logical, men should be liberated enough to wear, say, frilled floral frocks and lacy bloomers with impunity to a shareholders meeting or a backyard barbie if they want to, in fact the most influential designers still return to the tailored suit as a kind of blueprint for all that's safe and, ultimately, most saleable in men's wear.
In Paris and Milan this past spring-summer 2009 show season, for example, collections were underpinned by a yearning for the soap-smelling, brushed-hair, smooth-shaved, lint-free neatness that an average bloke can exude in a halfway decent suit. Slovenly streetwear of the torn jeans, trainers and T-shirt or, worse, bare-chested variety, has unnerved enough of us, apparently, to warrant a backlash. "It is time to straighten ourselves out," said Giorgio Armani, one impeccable veteran of the clean jeans, black T-shirt and trainers look, before launching his collection at men's wear week in Milan. "We are too slovenly." So we are.
And slovenly is apparently no way to march into an uncertain economic future. Slothful though - that's entirely different.
"Slothful" can be easily combined with "impeccable", and that can equal silk and silk-knit versions of the T-shirt under softly tailored jackets in fine light linens, patterned cottons and spring-weight wools that do their blokey work at the shoulders and hips, then meet matched trousers that sag, elegant as Brideshead's Sebastian Flyte, down the body to stop short of the ankles and sockless shoes or raw leather sandals. As masculine and nonchalant as torn designer jeans, but classier by far.
Collections by Christopher Bailey for Burberry Prorsum, Paul Smith, Giorgio Armani (of course), Albert Elbaz for Lanvin, and even Jean Paul Gaultier and Kris Van Assche in his final collection for Dior Homme, were peppered with contemporary takes on tailored traditions. Cardigans, for instance, have had several seasons to evolve into ultra-fine, elegant jacket alternatives. Vests, blouses and shirts were shown together in multiple, papery layers that echoed the piece-by-piece assembly of a suit. And thin silk neckerchiefs, spidery scarves, cravats and loosely tied and looped neckties often added yet another pleasing complication to an essentially casual outfit. (And forget the recent hysteria whipped up around the fate of the necktie in tailored men's wear. They were everywhere, or nowhere, depending into which collections you looked.)
Even shirts worn alone were often buttoned to the larynx - a nod to the precise grooming required of classic men's wear - and so brightly coloured and textured at times, they were elevated beyond their bland, slovenly casuals out on the street.
For most average blokes, transition to a user-friendly version of the impeccable sloth look will require slow, baby swaps: the ubiquitous hoodie for a slack tailored jacket, an iffy interlock T-shirt for a silk ortissue-thin knit, summer-weight trousers for ripped denim. Give it a year and we could be bristling with dapper chaps.
First published by TheAge.com.au on July 13 2008
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