Do you feel it? Do you feel that breeze against your neck? Your hair bobbing around of its own accord? That wonderful, insistent waft of loose cotton? You know what this means, don’t you? It means we’ve done it. It means that dress-down Britain is finally here.
Glance around. Nobody cares how they look any more. Everywhere you go, standards are slipping. Convention has been traded for comfort. John Bercow recently told MPs that they don’t need to wear ties in the House of Commons any more. Following yesterday’s synod ruling, members of the clergy can now officially forgo their formal vestiture. Even the Queen is joining in. Last month she did away with her crown and opened parliament in a jaunty hat; an act which, in Queen terms, is basically the equivalent of rocking up in a leopard-print onesie and some R2-D2 slippers.
Traditionally, plebs like us have always taken sartorial cues from our betters. John F Kennedy’s fondness for a single-breasted, two-button suit was such that he influenced an entire Brooks Brothers collection. When Prince George wore a dressing gown to meet President Obama, that dressing gown reportedly sold out in minutes. But now that our leaders can’t be bothered to dress up properly any more, we’ve basically got carte blanche to slob around like apes.
Obviously, some will be dismayed by this. Uniforms have a purpose, they’ll say. The way you dress signifies status, they’ll say. MPs are only supposed to go open-necked on one occasion, they’ll say, and that occasion is whenever they have to suffer through a grotty cheapskate electorate-pandering staycation, and must unhappily pose with a chip on a freezing British beach next to their miserable spouse for a waheying tabloid photographer. Without a crown, how are we supposed to know that the Queen is important? By watching her travel to and from her giant palace in a golden carriage? Really? And if members of the clergy are dressing like the rest of us, who are we going to teach our kids to be a bit careful around?
But these people are to be ignored. These are people who still wish you could identify someone’s profession by their favoured style of hat. In dress-down Britain we have no need for such outdated ideas. The old rules have been ripped up, and new ones have been formed in their wake.
Remember that old Frost Report sketch with John Cleese and the Two Ronnies, each dressed as the upper, middle and lower classes? That is an anachronism now that ties are optional, but we can still achieve a similar snapshot by looking at our new sartorial overlords: the stars of The Grand Tour. For instance, Jeremy Clarkson looks down on his colleagues because he sometimes pairs his horrible floral shirt with the sort of blazer you buy out of the back of a newspaper. James May looks up to Clarkson because he only wears a horrible floral shirt by itself, but down on Richard Hammond because he doesn’t look like someone’s forgotten uncle waitering his way through a perpetual South Asian gap year. Richard Hammond knows his place.
But even this is redundant. Even though they look like three dads in a disco, the Grand Tour team are still guilty of wearing clothes that reflect their relative status. Nobody does that any more. In dress-down Britain, fancy clothes are not things to be worn. We’ve moved beyond that. We have more intimidating ways of denoting status now.
Just look at the Queen. Oh, sure, she deigned to opt for a more casual opening of parliament in June, but that’s only because she made sure her crown trailed around after her in a vehicle all of its own. By any stretch of the imagination, that’s even more eye-wateringly ostentatious than if she’d just put the bloody thing on her head.
Make no mistake, this is going to be the next big trend. Who would do anything as time-consuming as visually identifying themselves as a figure of authority when they could just sling their fancypants outfit in a car and be done with it? Sure, you’re wearing Birkenstocks to a formal dinner at the Swiss embassy, but nobody cares because you’ve told them about the cummerbund you’ve got doing doughnuts in an Uber out the back.
And with all our formal garments freed up in cars, that will allow us to give ourselves over to our true selves; the selves that haven’t brushed our hair and are wearing yesterday’s pants inside out because all the others are in the wash. The selves that still don’t really know what a Windsor knot is.
This change is inevitable. We abandoned wigs and gowns for formal wear when they started to look stuffy and old-fashioned, and now we’re starting to abandon formal wear for exactly the same reason. Will the day come when we even see our casual wear as silly and restrictive? Of course it will, and that’s why I invite you all to invest in my new venture to manufacture and sell a range of tarpaulin one-size-fits-all muumuus. You know it makes sense.
