Turn to the left; turn to the right

At the start of my ministry, in the place I have just retired from, my wife and I invited people round for supper in groups of 15-20 once a month. Primarily this was to thank those who had worked on decorating our house before we arrived (a kindness) but it grew into a thing we liked to do. The first month we scrubbed up and made an effort. I may have worn a tie. Remember those?

Just before the second event my wife asked what I was going to wear that night. We do have this conversation or, from time to time, we dress a little too similarly and it scares us. I recall that my reply was that 'based on last time I thought I'd go for a fleece with food down it.' We dressed down a little bit but always felt part of our job was to pull the standard up.

Three things caught my attention over the last month under the heading 'fashion' - an article, a quote in a TV programme and an individual. Juxtaposition being the secret of most creativity, putting them together in my mind I wanted to have a go at talking about clothes.

Clothes are an important cultural signifier because of the response speed. '...you can react more speedily to the demands of the times with three-and-a-half metres of cloth than you can with, say, 5,000 tons of reinforced concrete.' (Marion Hume, Fashion Editor, the Independent 2/12/1994)

But we are increasingly mindful of those clothes which contain microplastics and the need to move on from throwaway society as we try to reduce, re-use and recycle.

Culture, Brian Eno once defined, is 'Everything you don't have to do'. So clothes aren't cultural but fashion is.

Of my male friends I am probably the one who cares the most about my appearance. I do care. I like to look good and to be individual. I realise I am setting myself up for a fall here but, as I have made my living in the Christian church for 37 years, I have to say it has never felt onerous to be the best-dressed person in the room and, when I notice that I am not, the person I notice is always very well turned out. As Patsy said in Absolutely Fabulous 'You may dress like a Christian but there the similarity ends.' I am talking here about those I perceive to be of my own gender (and I wouldn't have put it like that that 37 years ago, for sure). 

Comments on the clothing of those I perceive to be of other genders or non are kept to myself . Or discussed with Mrs T.

A few years ago, and I can't attribute, I heard this:

Men tend to dress to impress women; it doesn't work.

Women tend to dress to impress women; it doesn't work.

A more nuanced version of this would be Jess Cartner-Morley's, 'Much of fashion operates on a complicated code system that relies on your being sure of the level of sophistication your audience will bring to your wardrobe appraisal.' (Guardian Weekend 28/1/12)

Building on this, writing in the FT weekend the other week, Robert Armstrong drew a distinction between those who dressed ivy (as in Ivy League and almost effortlessly good) and those who were preppy (as in prep school and trying a bit too hard). I know it all gets frightfully snobbish when you step back a bit but, in very general terms, it is good to make an effort with your appearance, not necessarily with overspending; it is bad to make no effort or too much. Dolly Parton once said 'It costs a fortune to look this cheap.' To get to ivy not preppy, which means understanding classic lines and styles and keeping them contemporary, Armstrong says 'You have to care a little bit, spend some time shopping, and try things out. For most men, this can feel like a chore.' Still with me? Or going out in that dirty fleece?

That was the first of the three things.

From a relatively young age my Christmas and birthday presents usually included something fashionable. I enjoyed dressing up for special occasions and probably now spend more on clothes, hair and products than many men my age. I'm not sure whether I was influenced by my Mum, who trained as a dress designer and had a short career in the industry. My sister is a graphic designer and layout artist who worked predominantly in the fashion world. 'You think your job's tough but try getting a supermodel out of bed at 5 a.m. for a sunglass shoot.' If I let things slip she will have a quiet word and tell me what I should do (usually something very small) to show I know what it's all about. Those sideboards needed to be an inch longer. I wasn't one of the Thompson Twins.

When my sons were teenagers one went to a school with no uniform. All the students seemed to dress the same. One went to a uniformed school where individuality was expressed in coloured socks or wearing the tie strangely. Chambers Gigglossary describes fashion as '...a means of expressing one's individuality by wearing and doing exactly the same thing as everybody else.'

In the Texas Commerce Bank the bankers '...are conservative gentlemen and they are obliged to obey a 23-page dress code, a veritable Koran of corporate dressing.' (Tony Parsons 'Dispatches from the Front Line of Popular Culture, 1994)

There is a minimum way to show you know what it's all about. Wear what Douglas Coupland in Generation X labelled an 'Anti-victim device (AVD): A small fashion accessory worn on an otherwise conservative outfit which announces to the world that one still has a spark of individuality burning inside:...' To move from the 1990s to the present day, I think that's what Lady Hale (pictured) is up to with her famous broaches.

Most of us who enjoy the attempt at being fashionable probably started young. Which means there are some appalling, but thankfully pre-social media, photos of me making an effort mimicking the Tremeloes (pictured), on a non-uniform day in the late 60s. Buying yellow loons and making myself develop the personality to be seen in them in 72. Massive stack shoes and kipper ties in the mid 70s culminating in my wedding photos.

I haven't forgotten about the other two things. Let's get to them. We were on a winter holiday in Castle Combe recently, staying in a cottage on the village square. Each day we saw from our window a number of tourists pitch up and look around. One group, ethnically east Asian in appearance, were dressed much better than any of the others. And, to show I am culturally aware, a look known as preppy amongst Japanese girls and young women is popular. Whilst many tourists photographed the pretty village, this group photographed themselves with the village square as backdrop.

One guy must have been cold. Boat shoes. No socks. Thin baggy chinos turned up twice. He was carrying a dog. The dog wore a cricket jumper. The dog was a bag. The bag, which we googled, was a Thom Browne. It retails at £2,690. You read that right.

I filed that away in the 'ways I will never use money' section of me until a TV programme I accidentally watched in the unnecessary-extravagance-on-Alderley-Edge genre. A well-off family were having a small party for which they had rustled up caterers, live entertainers, a dog-groomer ('so she doesn't feel left out') and a wardrobe consultant, a man dressed in several layers and textures of white, plus jewels.

At one point the presenter, who was also getting a makeover for the party, asked the fashion guru 'Aren't you hot in all that?'

The  reply:

'It's fashion darling, It's not meant to be comfortable.'

So, for what it's worth:

You can spend too much on an outfit. Spending alone will not make you cool. You could end up preppy, or even Dolly but without the self-deprecation.

People who can afford expensive, timeless clothes spend less on them than those who buy cheap and seasonal. See the Terry Pratchett Sam Vines boots theory in his book Men at Arms. Expensive clothes last longer but there is a tipping point beyond which you can pay to look stupid when you think you're paying to look good.

If you are in sales, or at an interview where you are selling yourself, you need to match your customers' expectations if you are to sell to them. A young man I knew was told he could have a job as an MP's research assistant but he needed to remove his ear-stud. This was late 1980s. We've moved on from that and nobody blinks at most piercings any more. We've also moved on from the attitude discussed in Cosmopolitan in September 1994 '...dressing for success is a moral imperative for men and women'. A moral imperative? It was never one of those. But you will fail a live appointment process in the first ten seconds if your fashion isn't pitched right. Can you sell yourself better?

I think it's stupid not being comfortable but this includes being mentally comfortable that you can bear what you're wearing. I have a pair of electric blue trousers which I love but I can't mood-match them very often. You need to feel good about feeling good.

If you don't like talking about clothes you probably didn't get this far and never normally notice that I care.

As the French philosopher Barthes said '...fashion exists only through the discourse about it.'

Quite so.