Liberals Narrow the Gap

Canadians have offered up the most interesting three-way I’ve seen this year. It’s election season (note the ‘l’), after all.

As the polls seem to show a straight shoot-out between the incumbent Tories, the rising New Democrats, and the resurgent Liberals, Canadian voters are making up their minds not only on a fair judgement of policy and plausibility. Voting-booth decisions are bound up with perceptions of the character, charisma and credibility of each of the party leaders. People want a Prime Minister they can trust. This boils down to the conviction with which leaders speak, and through things less tangible than words.

No Stephen, it's bigger than that

It’s no different when you set out to buy a car. Honest John only has a few minutes to persuade you that the lemon you’re about to buy has had only one careful owner, aged over 60, and the milometer reading really is genuine. In these circumstances, no consumer likes a cheap suit. Nothing screams ‘run away’ so loudly as a polyester two-piece. Luckily for us, car dealers seem not to know this.

Alarming, isn't it Tom?

It’s no different with politicians. As you can see in the montages of the three party leaders I’ve presented here, neither the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, nor his most likely replacement, Thomas Mulcair, has any clue that the gap between shirt collar and suit jacket is classically symbolic of a man who doesn’t fit. When the finger goes down the back of a suit collar, the finger goes up to the Suit’s candidacy.

In this respect at least, the Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, seems to have narrowed the gap. He looks tailor made for the part.

Of course, politicians are cynics. Some might tell you that Harper and Mulcair’s loose looks are deliberate ploys to make them appear men of the people. Maybe so. But what would that say of their view of ‘the people’? In a tight race, where two out of three are going to get it in the neck, I’m looking to the collar.

Year-End Renewal; or, Logging Off

I’ve turned into one of those: an absentee blogger. Here’s the deal.

The last quarter of the year was a total turnaround, and 2012 looks set to be on an upward curve. For two years I extolled, in these pages, the virtues of work. For a good portion of that time I considered this space as my workspace, and I gave it my full attention. Now somebody is paying me not just to do what I want to do for a living, but to be who I want to be. My first line of business was always the historian’s craft, and that’s where I’ve been the last few months. The next couple of years will require some serious writing on my part and I’m determined that it will be good.

The end of year involved the usual escape to Montreal. It is still home, regardless of where I happen to be living. It’s even better to be home when you’re feeling good about who you are and where you’re going. The holiday has been packed with the kind of manly activities typical of the repertoire you’ve been used to reading about here: Handel’s Messiah at the new symphony hall – a carpenter’s wet dream if ever there was one; proper steaks at The Keg; being a good guest, and a good host; the new wing of the Musée des beaux-arts; and a number of visits to the best tailor in town.

Montreal symphony hall. Pic from Audiophilia.com

On the latter score, I must give an extra nod in the direction of H. Padar on St. Catherine W. downtown. Mrs. VB is the proud owner of a new bespoke suit, readied from consultation to final delivery in one week. One week! Three pieces, navy blue super 120s merino. Truly remarkable. When you live in Berlin and your tailor is in Montreal, you either have to be extremely organised and plan months ahead, or you have to rely on great service. H. Padar gives you the latter, in addition to an excellent cut. He doesn’t hit you too hard in the pocket either. While he was at it, he completely transformed a Simon Horsley tweed suit, given to me by my dear brother, which unfortunately hung from my slight bones like a marquee on a corpse. To cut and shut a fine suit is no easy thing, but I am delighted with the re-modelling. A good tailor knows another good tailor when he sees one, and I’m sure Mr. Horsley would be happy to hear one of his creations has been given a new twenty-year lease on life.

It’s wonderful to feel well fitted. That my friends, is how I feel, in my suits as in my life. BeingManly is, therefore, to rest easy, not to die. Occasionally it may stir, when inspiration compels, but I think on the whole it will slumber happily. It’s been a joy making so many acquaintances and not a few friends along the way. Long may our associations continue.

I leave you with this: be manly if you can, and if you can’t, at least be polite. Happy new year!

Timothy Everest Online

I’m willing to bet that a fair portion of you will be putting hints in the way of your respective better halves about things you are craving for Christmas. Now that Timothy Everest has an online store, you will have something concrete to tell them about. I am the proud wearer of the Spitalfields tie you see here, and can attest to its quality and all around spiffiness. To be sure, I can think of things I’d rather take out of stockings, but in the realm of common decency this is as good as it gets. Happy shopping.

Berlin Conversations, or, Why Make the Effort?

It was only after some minutes that I realized she wasn’t taking in anything I said. She evidently couldn’t understand my English, for I was talking much faster now, and not choosing my words. In spite of her tremendous devotional effort of concentration, I could see that she was noticing the way I parted my hair, and that my tie was worn shiny at the knot. She even flashed a furtive glance at my shoes. I pretended, however, not to be aware of all this [Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin, 1939]

Minus the Nazis and the playful communists – though one can still find both, I am sure – Isherwood’s Berlin is very reminiscent of my own. Admittedly, I do not know any cabaret singers, prostitutes, or Jewish department-store owners. I do, however, encounter more than my fair share of middle-aged German ladies; a fair portion of young Germans – rich and effete as well as poor and intellectual – of various stylistic and sexual orientations; and the ubiquitous drudgery of trudging working-class existence. I have been poor here, and I have been better off. I have been in some sleazy holes, some shabby-chic Lokals, and to rather many refined establishments. I have gibbered through frozen cobble-stoned winters and baked in oppressive concrete summers. The Berlin stories hit home.

The above passage is perhaps the epitome of my affinity for Isherwood’s tales. British English is, now more than ever, a provincial dialect of the lingua franca that only a privileged few understand. There is another dialect – International English – that I am learning to speak, with some difficulty. It is, as any regular reader of my humble prose will admit, impossible for me to imagine a life without idiom, without metaphor. But International English is just that: a two-dimensional functional dirge, the linguistic equivalent of protein pills and vitamin supplements in lieu of nutrition by culinary means.

There are two aces up the sleeve of the colourful but misunderstood speaker. First, being English still goes a long way. For better or for worse, the English accent ratchets up one’s reputation a couple of notches in most of the Western world. Second, one can dress to reinforce this a priori impression. As per Isherwood’s example, the inattentive ear gives play to the wandering eye, and one must therefore make the effort to look the part. A top-hole accent matched to a refined appearance can make magisterial prose out of mere rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, and will leave your struggling interlocutor feeling like an intimate confidant.

In short, faced with a world that understands me not, I shall make the effort to look the part. Whatever I may say, I may then be confident that my befuddled companions at least have the right impression.

A Tweed Romance

It is tweed season. Long gone are the humid quandaries about the short trouser and the intransigent male knee; past is the rumple and crumple of processed flax; forgotten are our cotton discontents. We wait each year for the donning of Scottish twill, much as we shall lament its passing come spring, for the tweed season warms a man’s bosom just as his mantel warms his body. In tweed we reign majestic, clad in sturdy tradition, embodying fine craftsmanship, and ready for anything. Striding o’er hill and dale, sheep shoot us jealous glances at the finery we have woven from their coats. No fabric bespeaks sturdiness, fortitude and downright bloody-minded stubbornness as does this highland wooliness.

It is a solemn and momentous day when a man first acquires a coat of tweed, because it represents his emergence as himself. Tweed, after all, is the stuff of youthful scorn, unfairly associated with fusty granddads and stolidity. It comes with a bouquet of aristocratic rottenness that marks it out as a corrupt badge of distinction. It is a pompous old crotchety farmer. It is an Olde English hairshirt. It is, of course, none of these things, but it takes a profound moment of inner strength to tear off the drab overtones of threadbare stereotypes and thrust oneself into the loosely woven complexity of a truly adult suit of clothes. Tweed is a rite of passage.

From the wonderful Timothy Everest, of course.

Like all ceremonies, one is transported there each time the memory of it is evoked. Hence, at this time of year, one returns to the first tweedful radiance, in the blush ebullience of youth. The virgin crop of feelings of maturity, gravitas, authority and, above all, self-respect, return reinvigorated. One is re-born a man once again.  Let not the rock star, the high-street faux-tweed faux pas, or the Gant model deceive you. Tweed is truly a manly affair: not an on-again-off-again fling, but a perennial foundation stone of the goodness of man.

This post is dedicated to Gilles. Welcome to the club.

Fleet Street; or, Pipes, Facial Hair, and Suits

I love everything about this, and I think many of you will as well. If only newspaper men still looked like this, what? Click on the picture to be taken to the video. Be prepared for smart men in wide-lapel suits, pipes in conference rooms, and moustaches at which one could not shake a stick.

FLEET STREET

City (E)scape

I’m catching up with myself. I’ve ditched Berlin for the month of June, and come to you from Montreal. New York next week. Montreal is the city I call home – a place I adopted five or six years ago – and, as with all homecomings, one begins by exhaling. The psychological comfort zone is welcome. I’m steeling myself for a busy time, as I attempt to reconcile my purpose to my future. July is likely going to be a mare, but I’ve broken worse.

A couple of points of order:

I must cordially acknowledge Lily Lemontree for giving me a hearing on her elegant blog. It’s a strange experience to answer direct questions about oneself, but the result I think is pleasing, and possibly an insightful backdrop to the pages before you. In the coming weeks I shall appear there again, detailing five elegant places not to miss in Berlin. I’ll let you know when it appears.

On arrival here I was pleased finally to take possession of my Timothy Everest signature tie, which I consider myself very lucky to have received. Tim’s Spring into Summer ready-to-wear is out, and as per usual it’s right on point. I hasten you there. Here are his images, stolen in the nicest possible way:

Perils of the Fad

This post gives me the pleasure of re-introducing my artist friend, Julian Peters, whose website is now full of his magical skills. Honestly, who knew that poetry and comic books could make such stylish bedfellows. I hasten you there, where you may happily lose an hour or two.

We’re all subject to fads; even the best of us. Although the more elegant of our number will point to a certain permanence of style, we nevertheless watch as cuts go in and out, longer and shorter, and as tie widths narrow and widen from one year to the next. Take time-lapse photography of the face of an adult male over ten years and you will see his sideburns dance up and down, with seasonal facial hair sprouting and disappearing whimsically. The mutton chop, however, is now dead (and wherever you see it, you can be sure it’s a fad). At least we can say that the mode du jour in these terms is only variations on a theme. Taking a broad view, things appear basically to stay the same.

Reproduced with permission. Julianpeterscomics.com

Click to enlarge.

Not so in the inelegant world. There’s a meaningless revolution every five minutes out there on the street, as vanity dolls everywhere do their best to be miniature poodle of the year. It really is as tasteless as Crufts. Someone should hand out rosettes for best in show. Particularly annoying this year is the craze among women to wear not-quite-thick-enough black tights sans skirt. This year I’ve seen more underwear, cellulite, bum sweat, and unmentionable bulges than any given single man with broadband. And all I’ve been doing is making my way on the pavement, trying in vain to mind my own business. Really, ‘ladies’, when did you decide that this was above board? If it’s merely a fad to presage the second-coming of the long dress and empire waist I might just about live with it. I fear however, that the next step will be even more revealing, and a further notch on the self-degrading scale.

The male fad that’s made me sigh most this year – and maybe it’s just a Berlin thing – is wearing glasses without lenses. That’s right, just frames. It helps if the frames are luminous pink, or green, but I’ve also seen rather swish tortoise-shell affairs astride the hipster nose. I don’t get it. Is being somewhat optically deficient in? Were my sight to diminish I should embrace the wearing of glasses wholeheartedly. Until it does, and I pray it won’t, I shall continue with nez au naturel.

Reproduced with permission. Julianpeterscomics.com

Click to enlarge

At times like this I wish I were an oak tree. As the years pass, I would barely notice these fools, and the world might seem like a consistent procession of the stylish.

#FF? Hang Twitter, It’s Formal Friday

There’s a large minority of people – probably the majority of intelligent people – who think that the casual turn is really what’s wrong with the world. There’s something about ‘looking the part’, a lesson I learnt when I was about four years old, that instils purpose. Uniforms serve a purpose, and not only in schools. I would expect a bank manager to look like a bank manager, for example, and would think twice about entrusting my money, or my conversation about a loan, to a man in khakis and open collar. When I have to deal with a call-centre monkey, pace call-centre monkeys everywhere, I really think I can tell whether s/he has turned up to work smartly dressed or not. It’s something in the tone of voice. You just can’t be confident and professional if you show up to work in a t-shirt. Television engineers, gas men, electricity meter readers, plumbers: under your overalls I should like to see a collar and tie. It shows you care. It shows you’re professional. If you come to install my Sky box or fix my boiler wearing jeans that would be illegal in certain Southern counties in the US I should be loathe to let you into my house.

Worst of all is the general trend in offices everywhere to observe ‘casual Fridays’. Whose idea was this? It can’t be good for business, and it can’t be good for people’s self-esteem. The Victorians believed in the maxim of ‘healthy body, healthy mind’, and bless them if they didn’t rule the bloody world. I can only think that the twenty-first century motto will be remembered as ‘casual attire, casual attitude’, or ‘slack pants, slack off’, while civilisation crumbles around our under-used ankles. What’s more, being casual at work actually takes more effort than professional wear. People worry lest they are judged for their ill taste, and compete for the best individual appearance. Work wear makes no such demand. It simply is what it is. The style-savvy professional might know how to make it his own, but nobody is going to mind if he doesn’t.

Some rather natty Americans have formally rejected the casual turn, and announced that Fridays be especially formal. I’ve long thought that dressing well sets an example, and that, whatever the policy, if a respected individual dresses like a professional then others will emulate him. I exhort you to join the ranks of these fine people and don your best for Fridays in an outward show of contempt for the broad societal acceptance of slovenliness.

RTW @ Timothy Everest, SS2011

Pace Mr. Everest, I’m stealing his photographs, but I’m sure he won’t mind. The bespoke tailor to men, celebrated or otherwise, of impeccable taste, has just launched his Spring/Summer ready-to-wear collection, and it’s divine. Pictures are all from TE’s blog.

Top to bottom: 3-Piece Prince of Wales suit, sky-blue penny collar shirt, and TE's signature Spitalfields flower tie; navy two-piece, with classic spotted tie; cream cotton 2-piece suit, with notable Sea Island pink cotton socks; navy knitted blazer with Liberty print shirt.

McNeal Continues to Impress

A few snaps from the Spring/Summer collection from McNeal, which continues to impress in terms of style, quality and price. I can’t pick the difference in quality between this and Gant, but you can reckon on paying about half the price for everything.

I raided the sale rack for this brown-sugar coloured cord jacket and the classic tie. Went for a song.

J'Adore Dior

John Galliano has fallen from grace, and Dior had no choice but to let him go. No designer is bigger than the house. I’m in two minds about the whole fracas. Galliano was clearly out of his head, and so far as anyone knows had no clue what was coming out of his mouth. Still, he said what he said and now must take it like a man and face the consequences. I’m unsure quite why the tirade was being secretly filmed, and I’m even less a fan of the sale of the video to The Sun. It all smacks of seediness to me, which is just bad cricket.

Dior, however, did the right thing. No company can defend that kind of embarrassment without taking a hit, and they had to appear holier than thou for the sake of their own reputation. If Galliano has become the fashion world’s sticky accelerator then it’s time for a re-fit.

I’m currently rather taken with Dior’s Intense Eau de Parfum, which I’ve been wearing since Christmas. It’s a complex fragrance that develops throughout the day, without ever being overpowering or macho: the sort of thing worn by complicated men with elegant lives (or those who aspire to such things). Take a look at the Jude Law flick below, directed by Guy Ritchie. It’s a trifle odd in the editing and concept, but is unquestionably elegant. The soundtrack by Muse is superb. More of this kind of thing please, and rather less lunacy from its designers.

Sangria and Spice in February; Or, Vagaries of the Weather

The greatest thing about being in Europe is that one can hop on an aeroplane and in two hours find oneself immersed in another culture, another language, another climate. Last Thursday morning in Berlin, as I made my way to the airport, the temperature slipped to minus eleven Celsius. By 2 p.m. I was sitting in Plaça Reial, just off La Rambla in Barcelona, where it was a comparatively balmy twenty degrees. Some of the locals, enduring their own winter, were wearing coats, gloves and scarves, but I’ve long since realised that how one feels in the weather is entirely subjective. In Englands old and New, everyone is so fed up with winter by April that the first hint of warmth brings out the shorts and espadrilles. The very same temperature in September will see the donning of woollens and scarves. A wise man once said that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. In any case, the weather is always refracted through the psychology of the individual and his crowd.

A thirty degree temperature differential in a matter of hours will make the most objective meteorologist sweat, and I took the opportunity to shed all the accoutrements of winter and bask in the sunshine with a litre of sangria. In a place like this, so driven by tourism, it’s pretty difficult to isolate the Catalan ‘look’, especially in such a weird season as the Western Mediterranean winter. The people on the streets had generally just arrived from colder climes, and seemed altogether overdressed. The locals also represented a range of climatic origins – plenty of Latin American, South Asian and Middle Eastern natives here – and each had their own interpretation of what fifteen-to-twenty Celsius felt like. Disappointingly, very few jaunty hats were on show. I really thought I’d see some debonair headwear in Spain, but I’m afraid I rather stood out in that regard. Then again, there’s nothing so very wrong with standing out.

Best encounter I had in Barcelona: a broken conversation with a young Bangladeshi man about Irish cricket, while he sold me a Turkish kebab. He was very excited about it all, and told me, as he poured a liberal ladleful of chilli sauce on the kebab, that spicy was normal. I rather fancy that, in Barcelona at least, he was more right than he knew.

Winter, Get Away: More About Cake

This is likely my last post until Tuesday next week. It’s back down to -11C here in Berlin, and we’ve had enough. De-camping to Barcelona for the long weekend.

There are only so many things one can do to stay cheery when the winter drags on like this. One can dress accordingly, of course:

And one can partake of plenty of this:

Or this.

My part of town is rather rich in cake and coffee. It comes of people being beautiful and unemployed. Is it manly? Doubtless not, but winter comforts sometimes take priority.

Incidentally, outside the café that serves these delights is a clump of old tree trunks, standing about eight feet high, with holes cut in them in various places, big enough to accommodate books. People drop their unwanted books in the tree and others come by for a browse and take what they like. There’s something rather sturdily reassuring about a tangible tree of knowledge, offering such delights as Flaubert, the Spanish language in Italian, and Thomas Mann. Since nobody would find the thing if they weren’t on their way for cake, I hereby upgrade the eating of cake to an intellectual pursuit.

Until next week then. Stay manly.

*Pics all mine save the last, which I stole manfully from foodieinberlin. Coat: Danier; Jacket: Nino Cerruti; Shirt: Hilfiger; Tie: Mila Schön; Cardigan: Iceland; Jeans: Levi's 514 straight; scarf: Liberty of London; cakes: Himbeer Sahne and  Schoko Limette.

One, Two, Three

How do you make a gentleman aristocrat out of a Bolshevik? Make him the heir to a Coca-Cola fortune, of course.

In Praise of Cake, Double Wicks, and Bow Ties

You’ll all be pleased to hear that the little party of last night went off in the right spirit. Homemade hummus, tzatziki, and tapenade were duly demolished, along with all the Sekt, and plenty more besides. Yours truly is slowly rehydrating before going for the Saturday long run. Candle, lit at both ends, is burning rapidly I assure you.

But what would a party be without cake? Thankfully, a good friend and former student of mine came up trumps with the most evil chocolate cake I have ever tasted. Comprising 500g of butter, a whole kilo of sugar, and ten eggs, this thing was a heart attack on a stick. And this is just as things should be. Too many people these days attempt to make chocolate cakes full of compromises, but frankly if you need to compromise you simply shouldn’t eat chocolate cake. Why transform the divine into the mundane? Surely that’s just depressing.

It may be of academic interest, but here’s a snippet of last night’s rig – nothing too formal, for we were at home after all. The best thing about a bow tie, by the way, is pulling on one end of it when the night gets long. Nothing says ‘man had a good time’ like the undone knot.

And so to the track, well buttered.

On Loyalty and Unassuming Pride, Part I

I watched a film today that I found posted by Will at A Suitable Wardrobe. It was made under the auspices of Esquire, and I only wish everything perpetrated by that particular rag paid such sober reverence to quality and tradition. If you have a spare hour, go and have a look. There are some very ordinary, salt of the earth, old-fashioned working people interviewed in this film; or at least, they seem ordinary, but they are not. In fact, they are stunningly exceptional.

Time was when the best working people spent years honing a skill, a craft, a vocation. The finest artisans did things that their brethren could not do, and they were rightly revered. They built the backbone of an empire, literally, with their bare hands. Forget machines. Forget steam. What drove British preëminence was a mind to quality. It was superiority in skill, in combination with the finest resources. As with so many ironies of history, the world these men built was to be inhabited by men who found no further use for them. The machine – the engine of mass production – was the death knell of empire. The zenith of imperial production was also the possibility for colonial competition. Any man, after all, can turn on a machine. Not everyman can make one.

How refreshing, therefore, to see a number of people who have spent years at their craft, loyally serving companies that had their origin in headier days. They are the last of their breed, but you can almost see the sense of pride running through their veins. Pride is not something I would typically advocate, save where it is magnanimous and absolutely justified. These people make the finest things of their type anywhere. They cannot themselves afford to own the things they make, but they are proud to see them being worn by others. Watch the tweed maker fill up when he sees his cloth transformed into a bespoke jacket, on the back of a Savile Row man. The social distance traversed in this extraordinary meeting is really something to behold. The pride is precious.

The loyalty of these people is bound up with their pride. They work for men who give them jobs for life, on the understanding that the standard set is high. Note how few young people you see in this film. We have lost hold of what it means, what it meant, to work for somebody, for something, that you believed to be important. Much greater than the pursuit of chasing pound notes was once the pursuit of position. Among working-class people, a skilled position within an esteemed manufactory was to be blessed with the best that could be hoped for: the respect of one’s peers, one’s employer, one’s family. To own a skill was a much greater asset than mere wealth. To ply that skill for the man who first employed you, and to do so for all your working days, was a matter of honour. One can read of it in books; it is a rarity to witness.

So, where do your loyalties lie, and does what you own mean anything? Without skills, and without allegiances, we run the risk of being frivolous, even to ourselves.

La traviata; Or, Fallen Gentlemen at the Opera

The last time I was in environs such as this I had to contend with chatterboxes and toothpicks. Unfortunately, the chatterboxes are everywhere these days, and if I give up going to the symphony and to the opera it will be because I really can’t abide the audience any longer. The mob at the Deutsche Oper for the last performance of La traviata was true to contemporary form, with mobile phones, sweets in noisy plastic wrappers, flash cameras, and voices incapable of a whisper. I tried not to get worked up. After all, I knew in advance that these things were sure to happen. I also knew that there would be endless applause regardless of the performance, but on this occasion the cast fed the beast with curtain calls after every scene. Everyone seemed most assured that it was all as brilliant as could be.

Well, some of it was extremely good. Anja Harteros (not pictured here) was in perfect command of Violetta, portraying convincingly the passion, sacrifice, fragility and fatalism of the role, and ultimately (and quite appropriately) she sang her lungs out. The male cast were professional in support, but I didn’t believe Alfredo or Giorgio for a moment. The first scene of Act II lacked sufficient movement to distract the audience from its length. The second scene of Act II was a feast for the eye, but one is never quite sure what to do with all those matadors. All of this is by the by.

What really caught my eye about the whole event was the look of the thing. A more perfect disharmony between cast and audience could scarcely be imagined. Berlin crowds, so I hear on the streets, don’t get togged up for high culture. I thought that this was because they simply shunned the artificiality of it all, and doubtless for some their choice of denim and running shoes was for precisely this reason. But Mrs. VB and I learned with much amusement that a good many actually made a concerted effort to dress to the nines and failed with hilarious results. I’ve never seen such a bizarre collection of ill-fitting sartorial curios in all my days, parading up and down in the intermission like it was a Zoologische Garten catwalk. Old and young alike partied like it was 1979. Meanwhile, on the stage, Verdi’s opera had been wrenched forward into an elegantly cut 1930s suit. The abundance of black tie on stage was in stark contrast to the complete lack of said costume in the seats. I felt sorry for the cast: they were the only ones looking at us, and unable to see how fine they themselves appeared.

It makes me wonder about the future of the opera. In the year 2100 will any artistic director stroke his or her beard and decide that the next production should have the look of the 2010s? Well, perhaps only at the Komische Oper.

Things A Man Should Know About Style; Or, A Book Review Of Sorts

Receiving a parcel is one of those delights that never gets old. Opening a parcel is a game of mixed fortunes, but on the most recent occasion that I received a mysterious package I found inside this book, sent from Mother Dearest, back in the Motherland.

This is not a serious book, and provides no justifications for the advices and exhortations it bestows upon the reader. On matters of style we are asked simply to believe the authors, as if clothes will indeed make the man, all by themselves. It seems there is a greater talent for aphorism than for philosophy here, but then, we shall always have recourse to Carlyle. Nevertheless, it is jammed full of practical wisdom and strategic nuggets of information that cannot fail to make life go more smoothly. What is more, these rules to live by are given with an irreverent wit that will surely raise a smile. This is typified by the selection of the model for all the photographic support that the book provides for its rhetorical maxims. A picture or two will speak many a thousand words:

So what of its rules and regulations? Here are some of the more valuable gems that I have found it handy to live by myself:

If you wear a suit on a plane and there is a flight delay or cancellation, the ticket agent will help you in a way that she wouldn’t if you were in a tracksuit.

The Hawaiian shirt: no.

“Easy-care” is for those who don’t.

There is no foot pain so severe, no dress shoe so fragile, no commute so arduous as to justify the sartorial holocaust that is wearing trainers with a suit.

A restaurant meal tastes better when you’re wearing a suit jacket.

Never trust a fashion magazine.

This last is particularly poignant because the publisher of the book also publishes Esquire, which, it should go without saying, you should never read. This tongue-in-cheek subversiveness warms me all the more to the tome’s tone. Nevertheless, there are some things to which I must take exception, and I might as well share them. First, the authors assume its readers to have no prior knowledge of these things, which surely cannot have been the point of publishing the book. Only a man who thought he knew it all already would ever find amusement in it, and if it ever fell into the hands of a style dunce he would likely regard it as so many silly pictures of bulldogs. I take no satisfaction from the introduction telling me that some of the rules may be broken ‘so long as you know what you’re doing. Which you don’t’. Furthermore, I must take at least partial issue with the following:

There are no bargains.

Speaking of colour, there is little use for pink…

You can’t wear a fedora if you’re under forty-five.

You can’t wear a bow tie with anything other than a tuxedo if you’re under forty-five or not a famous novelist or not a total geek. Got that, professor?

Keep a clip-on [bow tie] in reserve, should your bow-tying skills fail, which they probably will.

If there are no bargains I can only assume that much of my wardrobe doesn’t exist. Finding a bargain doesn’t mean you have to compromise. If there is little use for pink then most well-dressed Englishmen do not exist either. This must just be nonsense. Fedoras are a matter of confidence, not a matter of age. Likewise bow ties. Is one to presume that young and famous authors waited until post-fame to begin wearing them? And if your nervousness about bow ties causes you to carry a spare clip-on lest your ability to tie knots fails, then you should probably also carry some spare shoes that fasten with Velcro. The knot is essentially the same, after all.

All this being said, this isn’t really a book review, but an extended note of thanks for having received it. By the way, one thing that isn’t in here: Always send thanks to people who send you gift parcels. It’s only the right thing to do.

Corporate Man

Apparently if you work for Swiss bank UBS you’re about to get a break. Not the usual bonus, mind you, but a loosening of the corporate leash. I read in the news that UBS has a 44-page handbook telling its employees how to be – everything from their general appearance to their underwear and diet – and that this handbook is being revised and relaxed. As things stand, women aren’t supposed to wear red underwear (rather, it must be flesh toned), and garlic and onions are to be avoided. They’re instructed on their make-up, stockings and perfume to boot, with lifestyle tips for how to recover from wardrobe malfunctions. Men, for their part, undergo the same culinary prescriptions, as well as being told how to knot ties, to get regular haircuts, and to avoid unruliness in the piercing department (at this I am baffled. Is any amount of piercing on a man good?). Everyone is reminded to keep their glasses clean and shiny, lest they look negligent; but given the overbearing nature of the employer I wonder why they ever hire anybody with less than 20/20. ‘Our bankers can really see’ might be a unique selling point in this day and age.

All of this is nonsense, of course, and knowing the Swiss as I do I’m sure they take it all in the right spirit, which is to say, I’m sure they completely ignore it. Still, I’m given to wonder about what it takes to survive the cut and thrust of corporate land, so I’ve plundered the self-help shelves, subsection ‘executives’. There’s not much for men here, at least, not explicitly. There’s plenty of stuff for women though. Apparently, ‘a profound fear’ has ‘bound... women together over the course of the last 2000 years and continues to bind [them] together’. It is ‘the existential primal fear of sanctions and punishment’, associated with transgressing the role of ‘the unassuming, good little girl’ (Buholzer, Frauen starten durch, 1999). Another guide suggests that the ‘thing that stands between many women and the ability to get what they want is a proclivity toward self-denial… a preference for powerlessness’ (Rubin, The Princessa: Machievelli for Women, 1997). Meanwhile Corporate Man is everything Corporate Woman is not: he regards ‘new things as a challenge, and [is] usually of the opinion that accepting challenges is part of the essence of being a man’. Men are ‘primarily concentrated on themselves’; women are ‘afraid of exposing themselves to criticism’ (Haen, Das Zicken-Prinzip, 2000).* Which is to say, men should take a pill, and women should get over themselves. And all of this is sheer drivel.

Self-help?

The problem with self-help as a genre is that it is full of generalisations that, as an academic, I would immediately cross through in red ink if written by a student. The other problem with self-help as a genre is that it is not really self-help at all, but the preachings of self-assumed authorities. People who blindly follow its advices are no more asserting themselves than the rats who followed the piper out of Hamelin. The corporate idea that men are thus (sharks perhaps) and women thus (more like dolphins, if you were to believe Dodo Lazarowicz (Erfolg steht mir gut, 1999)), is not a foundation upon which the bonds of gender stereotypes can be broken, any more than Corporate Woman will be assisted by being given permission by the bank to wear red panties. Corporate World has gone through a crisis of late, and its population has shown itself to have lacked presence of mind, or the individual verve to think creatively around a problem. Corporate Man has shown himself to be afraid, like a little boy, of dealing with the enormity of new challenges, and, like so many lemmings, one by one they have walked over the cliff.

In sum, Corporate Man and Corporate Woman need be no different to any other man or woman of distinction in his/her character and general comportment. The uniform, such as it is, will merely give impetus to an attitude, but it will not by itself finish the cutting of jibs. In Corporate World there is more fear now than in living memory, but nobody, after all, is fearing for his life. It is a test of mere civic virtue to overcome it, and, on recent evidence, this is just as much of a challenge for Corporate Man as for Corporate Woman.

*Translations by Ulrich Bröckling, from ‘Gendering the Enterprising Self’, Distinktion (2005).