After two years as the country's whipping boy, bankers are back in fashion. Possibly. Selflessly bucking the persecutory trend, a firm of Savile Row tailors named Cad & the Dandy has organised a collective back-pat for our brave boys in blue pinstripes. It's called the best-dressed banker award.
Contestants were nominated by friends and colleagues, and their photos posted to the tailors' website. Visitors to the site (there were over 20,000) were then encouraged to give a thumbs-up to whoever caught their fancy. They ought really to have called it RateMyBanker.com.
For former banker James Sleater though (one of the award's founders), the final rankings were painfully ironic. He had a personal connection to third-place finisher Phillipe Guyot. It was Guyot who, two years earlier, made him redundant from his job with BNP Paribas, inadvertently kickstarting his career in the tailoring business.
The eventual winner was 46-year-old Greg Rellis, a Chicago commodities broker working in London. His prize is a £3,000 bespoke suit and three luxury shirts. In many ways though, the real prize will be shared by all bankers. They are no longer to be treated as mere pariahs. They are now, officially, Britain's next most stylish scapegoats.
