Many of you will be avid readers of my previous style columns for sundry publications and websites and will be glad to know that I have now made The Flaneur my home. Here is the place for you to read my finely-tuned analysis of male fashion, here is the place to discover what you or the man in your life should be wearing. Here is the place, dare I say it? Yes I dare…here is the place where England’s greatest sartorial expertise is given as freely as the air that you breathe.
Whether the sub-editors have allowed my mellifluous prose to float loving over the fibre-optics, satellites and wifi to your screen is not something I am able to prejudge. I hope, nay, it is more than that, it is a yearning deep in my very being, I yearn for the moment, the day, when my writings, ripped as they are with bloodied hands from the work-face of fashion’s mines are able to appear unsullied before you. Never, when I wrote for the papery formats was I able to see my text pure and as it had been born on the page. No! Every time I sent in a perfect melody of beating poetry, and on the page it had been rendered unreadable, with a word cut here and even, ha! a word added! It was too much, and The Flaneur has promised to print me without interference. But it is too much to ask. I can but dream.
And so to style. And more particularly, as my remit has been cruelly reduced, men’s fashion. I would like to share with you my thoughts and edicts about the female form and how it should be clothed, indeed I am certain my ruminations could but help the female of the species to better understand the world of fashion, but no! No more! My beat is that of the gentleman’s wardrobe, although over the months ahead I will write improving articles that will appear at first glance to be on subjects only tangentially concerned with fashion. Look more closely! Style is the beating heart of everything that is important in life. Why does a politician lose an election? It is often the cut of his suit. Yes, there may be other reasons suggested by the mainstream media, that is their business and good luck to them. But how often is the unspoken reason something more sartorial? Almost every time I tell you. How a man’s career can fade because he has chosen the wrong cufflinks for the travails of the day. How he can lose an opportunity because he has worn a meddlesome tie.
Getting dressed is a minefield of decisions and I am always amazed that anyone can complete their toilet in less than three hours. Even now I am writing in only a dressing gown, fez and a pair of Albanian goat skin slippers, my pyjamas made of hand spun cotton dyed in Portugal in a port wine jus and so enchanting a colour that when I see them at night I almost start to cry.
But to style. Alas I have used up my quota of words. If I was to write more the subeditors might take their scissors to my work. I dare not write more until next time, Adieu, and may your costume reflect well on the person who taught you to dress.
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