ABC of Men's Fashion

By Hardy Amies

‘Deerstalker: Sherlock Holmes wore one. You need not.’ ‘Turnups: You can’t have any.’ These are just two of the hugely entertaining entries in Hardy Amies’s very firm guide to men’s dress. His perfectly honed eye guides the reader safely through style decisions on everything from blazers and brogues to skiing and sandals. Originally published in 1964 and illustrated with delightful period photographs and drawings, it provides a fascinating window into the etiquette of men’s dress in the 1960s.

This book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: V&A Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781851779529

Hardy Amies

Sir Hardy Amies opened his fashion house in 1945 and became Dressmaker by Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen. Famous for menswear and his keen eye for classic style, Amies had a regular fashion column in Esquire magazine until he died in 2003.

Book preview

Chapter-Titleline

Accessories

In principle your accessories, such as ties and shoes, should be more expensive than your basic suit which, in this way, can achieve some reflected glory from them.

See Co-ordination, Harmony

Acrilan

Acrilan is an acrylic man-made fibre manufactured by Chemstrand Ltd. It is strong, hard-wearing, light and soft to handle, and crease-resistant.

See Man-made Fibres

Adjustable Tie

This sounds horrible but in point of fact a black evening bow tie (or any bow tie come to that) should really be made to the exact neck size of your collar; so, unless you can have your bow tie made expressly for you, some form of adjustable band is often necessary.

Air Travel

Air Travel means that you no longer need a special suit for travelling but can wear one which will be useful when you arrive. The tendency to use light-weight fabrics both for suits and their linings and canvasses is very beneficial to those who like to travel tourist class and thus have less trouble with excess baggage. Modern shoes of the slip-on variety either with or without elastic sides are a must for long distance air travel as pressurized cabins often make your feet feel too large.

See Holidays

Alpaca

Alpaca cloth is a mixture of alpaca wool (the hair of the Peruvian llama) and cotton. Lustrous and lightweight, it is often used for summer suits and linings.

American Styling

American Styling has made two important contributions to the men’s fashion picture.

First jeans. These are popular everywhere with young men – even on remote Greek islands. Men of all ages wear them for work and often play. They have done much to affirm the general tendency towards narrow trousers of all types.

The second contribution is more of an attitude towards dress. The American will not be uncomfortable. This has led him to an insistence on lightweight cloths which in their turn can only be used successfully in suits the lines of which are more loose than restricting. From this they have developed a typical look in urban clothes. Dark in cloth and usually white as to linen; and completed either by a tie too violent in colour and pattern (rarer now) or going to the other extreme of a plain black knitted tie.

Whilst this conservatism is often admirable for the middle-aged it can be criticised as being completely unadventurous. The American seems to have a horror of being different; except in play clothes where he is quite happy to be a horror.

Angola Yarn

Angola Yarn is a mixture of cotton and manufactured wool, often used to imitate Angora Yarn.

Angora Yarn

Angora Yarn comes from the hair of the Angora rabbit. Fabric made from it is extremely soft and warm, and does not shrink.

Anthony Eden

Anthony Eden has given his name to a black felt braid-edged hat which was once the younger man’s version of the homburg.

Approach

Approach to dressing is a delicate subject. A preoccupation with dress is unpleasant in a woman and repellent in a man; but both sexes should pay each other the compliment of giving the appearance that trouble has been taken if no more. A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care and then forgotten all about them.

Apres-ski

Apres-ski probably means a sweater so highly coloured that you have not dared to wear it for ski-ing. In point of fact most Swiss hotels are so overheated that the best apres-ski clothes are the darker articles in your summer holiday wardrobe.

Art of Dressing

An established trick in theatre design is to make a costume in a series of tones of the same colour. This is often more effective than two or more contrasting colours which can split up the effect instead of giving one big punch. But to achieve the nonchalance which is absolutely necessary for a man, one article at least must not match. For instance, you can wear a dark blue suit and tie with a pale blue shirt and navy blue socks, but you must then have a patterned silk handkerchief say in dark red or a paisley design of green and brown; or you could stick to a blue handkerchief and have dark red socks.

See Approach to Dressing, Harmony, Toning

Artificial Silk

Artificial Silk is now called rayon.

See Man-made Fibres

Ascot

If you are going to any of the enclosures or the boxes at the Royal Ascot Meeting, you will probably be very unhappy if you do not join the Moss Bros brigade, but you need not follow them slavishly. It is not necessary to wear a silver grey tie; yours could be dark red silk matching your dark red carnation. Nor is it necessary to wear a white shirt although of course your stiff collar must be white. You could wear a small black and white check shirt. For other meetings at Ascot, you wear a dark London suit or a neat semi-country check, and a bowler or dark felt hat.

See Weddings

Astrakhan

Astrakhan used to be used only on the collars of the overcoats of passé actor-managers. Now reappears on the gayest of youthful overcoats, and of course as fur hats.

Attached Collar (Shirts)

A stiff white collar is undoubtedly the smartest shirt collar a man can wear, but good laundries are as hard to find as missing collar studs. So we now have our collars attached to shirts. Many have some form of permanent stiffening, and just recently there has been a marked return to the use of tabs which hook over the neck stud or button and hold the collar and tie firmly upright. This gives nearly as neat an appearance as a separate stiff collar. Collars themselves are growing higher; young men cannot get them high enough.

Chapter-Titleline

Bagginess

Bagginess usually applies to trousers, which is why they were called ‘bags’. Baggy, of course, is the one thing trousers should not be; if they are, then they are either badly cut, badly kept, or out of date.

If badly cut, they will probably be too full in the seat and the back of the thigh; if you can reach round and grasp a good handful of cloth just below the seat, then you are suffering, and your trousers need taking in. If badly kept, the trousers will bag at the knee; keep them pressed and hung, and always take care to ease the knees before sitting down. If out-of-date, you will have far too much cloth flapping about your waist, legs, and ankles, in a garment that takes no account of the fact that your legs have a shape, and are narrower at the bottom than the top. Get some new trousers.

See Trousers

Balance

Balance is the ultimate test of a finished coat. It is really the hang, the look and the feel of the thing all combined in the one quality that make it a success or a failure – good balance. It should sit easily on the shoulders, hang evenly at the front and back, look as though it belongs to you without fitting too closely. The list of faults that may throw a jacket, however well made, out of balance, is so long and varied that there is no point in trying to be technical about something so intangible. To this, as to anything else that is designed and made, the one golden rule applies; if it looks right, it is right. You can judge for yourself in the glass.

See Cutter

Banquet

An invitation to a banquet will, or should, indicate the type of dress to be worn, or give the choice. If a banquet is truly the grand occasion the word implies, it should of course correctly merit full evening dress with decorations, in which case the invitation will state ‘Decorations’ or ‘Evening dress with decorations’. Quite often today, however, as strict formality is relaxed more and more, the option will be given of ‘Evening dress with decorations or dinner jacket’. In this case, miniature decorations may be worn with the dinner jacket, or not at all, as you please.

See Decorations

Barathea

Barathea is a twill weave used with a worsted yarn in one colour, giving a soft-finished cloth usually used for dress clothes, blazers, and uniforms.

Beachwear

The natural desire to relax is often the cause of the abandonment of all standards of taste. It is the Italians who arouse our admiration, but examination of their technique shows us that they are prepared to spend as much money and time on their beachwear as on their town outfits. An Italian dandy will have his slacks and shirts and indeed often his sandals made for him, and, if he cannot afford this, will have ready-to-wear clothes altered to fit him. He will never wear the same outfit two days running. He will press his shirt to get the creases out even when it is clean. He will never wear shorts except at the water’s edge. He will never wear short-sleeved shirts chopped off at an unattractive place just above the elbow; he would rather roll up his shirt to where his forearm muscles bulge. He also knows that a plain navy blue shirt with white linen trousers will always outshine any patterned job.

See Holidays

Beaded

A raised side-seam on the trousers. It adds to the ‘sportiness’ of cavalry twill or bedford cord trousers, for instance.

Beatle Jacket

See Cardin

Beaver-lamb Fur

A rich, deep brown fur that lies thick and smooth. It looks fine and luxurious on coat collars. It is lambskin sheared to look like beaver.

Bedford Cord

A hard-wearing cloth woven to give it a very definite cord effect, in which the ribs run lengthwise when it is made up. Very popular, and smart for slacks and riding breeches.

Beige

Beige really means natural-coloured, undyed. Usually therefore it is a very light fawn coloured cloth.

Bell-bottom

The shape of sailors’ trousers where they meet the boot. Attempts to bring this shape into civilian clothes have been unsuccessful.

Belt

You should always try to buy, or get given, the most expensive belt possible. It is often seen when your jacket is open, and more so when it is off. It lasts a long time. It should preferably be the same colour as your shoes; and, if you are very natty, it could be in the same leather as your wrist strap. In principle a narrow belt is flattering if you are not so young; if you are young, a really wide belt can be dashing and avant garde. You get them made at the saddlers who used to make Sam-Brownes.

See Trousers

Beret

A round, flat type of cap chiefly associated with the Basque peasant. It is also worn by men when hiking, cycling or on holiday, and (more happily) by paratroopers, commandos and other good regiments. Being itself of no definite shape, it requires adjustment to give it character. The young now wear it pulled forward, straight on the head, making a kind of peak. Not unattractive so.

Bespoke

From ‘to bespeak’ i.e. to order or command. Generally speaking, this means ‘made-to-measure’ as distinct from ‘ready-to-wear’ clothes (all kinds of clothes, that is, not just tailoring).

There is a fair amount of controversy over the strict application of the word to tailoring. A Savile Row tailor, for instance, will maintain that true bespoke tailoring can only mean clothes that are made not only to measure but to a customer’s exact requirements as discussed personally between himself and his tailor, the man who is actually going to make the suit.

Be that as it may, the important implication of bespoke tailoring is that a garment should be made-to-measure, which is the only way to get a true fit