0 From The Observer Archive, 10 March 1963: Men's New Passion For Fashion

Sunday, 10 March 2013 - The desire to look different has made style-conscious men turn to suede and slim trousers, and to look abroad for inspiration.

There was a time when accent was all to the Englishman. Nowadays his clothes mean more. Accent tells you where he wants to go.

The amazing speed at which male fashions are now disseminated makes the task of the fashion-conscious man even tougher. The shirt seen in Mayfair in March will be in Maidstone in May, in Middlesbrough by midsummer. The time-lag in fashion between London and the provinces used to be three years. Now it is down to three months.

The pressing problem is to be different at all costs. This year if you haven't the money or imagination to acquire that 1964 look it would be better to have the 1937 rather than the 1962 look. Nothing is more despised than last year's fashion. Better to be an eccentric than a hick.

When all celebrities on television look and sound alike, you remember the one who wore that extraordinary floppy Fair Isle cravat. It is touches like these that the sartorial climber strives after.

To dress differently takes time and skill, originality and a tailor of fine eccentricity. For instance, a writer I know bought a pair of check trousers in one of those newly ubiquitous shops that cater for men without hips. Fortunately this writer had no hips and the trousers fitted him like a pair of shrunken mittens. His feet, poking out at the bottom, looked enormous. Initially, he was embarrassed, but, being a man who thinks about his clothes, he decided that with a matching jacket the ensemble would be eminently wearable. He persuaded his tailor to make the jacket. Perfectly capturing the spirit of the trousers, it turned out like a long, cylindrical, checkered drain-pipe with two arms attached. My friend has now achieved his aim – he is now distinguishable from any other writer in Britain and, maybe, even in the world.

Another acquaintance, in advertising, covets that American Ivy League look, patented by Brooks Brothers: the trousers are slim and without front pleats, the jacket unwaisted and with the minimum shoulder padding. Altogether, it can miraculously make an overfed Madison Avenue executive look like an ex-football quarterback.My friend, after a long search round Savile Row, eventually crossed over to Soho and found a tailor who togged out American embassy personnel. Now, in Berkeley Square, he has the look of a fast-rising Manhattan executive and keeps his English suits for his annual trip to New York.

This practice of wearing the right clothes in the wrong country is a simple snobbism for the sartorially uncreative. A case in point is the man who goes annually to a small Italian resort. Out there, he wears long khaki shorts, cellular shirts, suede shoes and knee-length socks. The natives revere him as L'Inglese and point him out as a tourist attraction. The same man back in England wears nothing but gunmetal slacks, slip-on shoes, and looks like one of Rocco's brothers.

Wearing the right garment, but in the wrong material, is an increasingly popular ploy in the clothes game. The use of suede, for instance, was once limited to footwear. Now there is scarcely a self-respecting artist or photographer who doesn't have a suede jacket to call his own. Consequently suede jackets are old hat, and leather jackets have gone the same way. The future lies with the man who first eases himself into suede trousers or pulls on his first pair of tweed shoes.

This fight for masculine uniqueness has has reached such nerve-racking proportions that its most advanced exponents are now sponsoring a reaction. "Clothes," they say with utter disdain, "never give 'em a thought." The exponents of this new negligent line spend more time on their wardrobes than anyone else. For proof just look at the carefully rumpled appearance of the suit (the material is usually specially designed not to hold a crease, but to hold a rumple for ever). Look at the extraordinary clashing of colours, such bad taste cannot happen by accident.There is one gentleman, a poet – his name cannot be revealed, but he usually lives on a Mediterranean island – whose ability to match up old but unique pieces of clothing is unsurpassed. As his wardrobe goes back over a fair number of decades, he has quite an edge over his younger rivals.

When he emerges briefly in London or New York the effect is staggering. He might or might not be wearing a pyjama jacket, but the eye can't decide because it is immediately caught by a waistcoat that could have belonged to the Prince Regent. Then the tie – it could be a strip off some old bath flannel, more probably it is some fabulous new material made up at great expense from the bark of a rare tree found only beside the Amazon. That whole effect is topped off by a hat that looks like an Astrakhan that some deluded Astrakhaner once tried to sew a brim on.

For the new clothes-horses who want to win influential people the tyranny of the wardrobe is a constant nightmare. Nor is there any end in sight to the energy and money they have to spend. Perhaps they dream of ultimate release in a univeral nudism; a millennium when "Naked as Nature intended" is more than just a film shot by a lot of showbusiness boys in personality suits.