By Neil Coupe
One of the topics of conversation that we middle aged men sometimes have is what should we be wearing and where should we be buying our clothes from?
Looking back at photographs from the 1970s and 1980s, local high streets would have drapers stores or gentleman’s outfitters, with reassuring names such as Hepworth or Greenwood. These shops would sell unostentatious beiges and browns, zipped fair isle cardigans, tweed jackets for the weekend, sensible shoes, and of course a wide variety of comfortable slippers.
A 50-year-old man in 1975 would have been 20 in 1945, so jeans, T-shirts and clothing attached to a particular musical genre would never have been part of his identity, so dressing in an unshowy way like his father would have done, made perfect sense.
Looking back at photographs of that era it is amazing how many men still wore ties at the weekend, either underneath jackets or, more commonly, under a snug fitting V-neck sweater.
So what happens when you are not quite ready to accept the coming Elastic Waistland of wide velcro fastening shoes and drawstring trousers?
We know that we need to wear lycra when out on a bicycle, with bonus points for an expensive Italian brand, and of course an ill-fitting nylon top is required when attending a football match- but what should we be wearing for the dreaded ‘dress down’ Friday or when out socialising?
A quick look at google took me to an American website, the worryingly titled realmenrealstyle.com, which set out to advise on what a man in his 50s should be wearing. It started off well by pointing out a couple of very clear home truths, namely that:
Every few years, a new generation comes up with something that I don’t understand. Hard truths about life mean you feel more and more like an older man as the years go by.
A near perfect description of what I believe about lots of things, such as the ‘bottomless brunch’.
It then makes another extremely valid point that we should always remember:
There’s nothing worse than seeing a guy approaching his 40s wearing the latest generation’s fashion or misusing new phrases because he doesn’t understand what they mean.
So far, so good, however once the website shows a man in an office environment on dress down Friday looking like a relic from a 1985 episode of Miami Vice (a T-shirt and a crème jacket with narrow lapels), my confidence in its relevance to my life declines.
When the writer actually proffers some advice as to what to wear on a Friday night in the pub, I’m afraid I have to face the fact that what works in the Mid-West may not actually work in suburban Berkshire: be the guy in grey slacks and a navy blazer with some sleek black dress boots and a fancy gold belt buckle that matches the blazer buttons.
Digging out some old photographs and comparing them with recently social events I have attended, I came to the realisation is that middle aged men wear exactly what they wore when they were younger men.
Those people with a taste for check shirts still wear check shirts, people who like AC- DC T shirts still wear them, albeit they may be a little more snug around the waistline. We just wear what we have always worn.
Anybody diverging from this principle will immediately be outed as having a mid-life crisis.
Of course, the unavoidable truth is that, apart from our own little peer group, nobody else notices or cares what 50-plus-year-old men wear.
