Hugh Muir
After 32 years here, my parents left Britain for Jamaica in 1987 – on the night of the great storm. Personal effects preceded them, in a giant sea container.
So Dad didn’t leave much behind, but one item in particular stayed with me. It was a suit: a tailored suit, heavy, baggy, with wide shoulders and lapels like the wings of a 747. Dark green with a barely discernible check and prominent turn-ups. The Windrush collection. Watch the archive of Jamaican men emerging on to Southampton dock in the 1950s. That’s the suit. The guy in that footage seeking lodgings against a backdrop of signs saying “No Blacks No Irish”. That’s it. I went to Fleet Street in that baggy green suit, and wore it until efforts to disguise the ravages of time became futile.
A suit to church, a suit to school for open evening; Dad didn’t really do casual. I have a black and white photo of him, besuited on a bank holiday beach, looking out to sea.
There was something about that generation and their suits. Walking through the headwinds of postwar Britain, big, stylish suits gave them confidence. Nature, nurture? I don’t know. But I wear a lot of suits.
Imogen Fox
My dad’s taste in clothes belies his age (advancing) and background (modest). I’m honestly not sure there are many 70-something men from Bolton who would know what Céline is. Of course, he has a head start: he reads my catwalk show reports and trend pronouncements when I’m pretty confident that none of his peers do. But it’s definitely a two-way street with me and Tony Fox when it comes to style: we have a shared love of navy blue and denim, our Christmas Day outfits are interchangeable and we both keep an overly beady eye on what people wear.
My dad has taught me how much nuance matters in fashion. How the roll of a sleeve or the amount of collar on display can change how an outfit looks and feels. This kind of minutia matters all the more when you can’t afford posh clothes; upgrading an outfit with subtle styling is something my dad does well. He once told me that in his youth he became frustrated that local shops weren’t selling jeans as tight as he would like (he predates Topman), so he adjusted a pair while he was still wearing them with a bit of ham-fisted sewing and no regard for how he would take them off again.
He taught me by example that if you want to spot trends you have look for fashion in everything – not just the obvious places. His armchair criticism of the World Cup football pundits in 1986 has had lasting impact – that same skill is now an unofficial part of my job description. He’s always been spookily ahead of his time, too – I remember him banging on repeatedly about how it was OK for Italian men of a certain age to carry their stuff about in sleek leather pouches long before manbags became a mainstream thing here. He’s also imbued in me a fashion mantra/excuse when I find myself getting frisky near some expensive shoes. “Buy cheap, buy twice, love” is word for word my dad’s unlikely answer to any fashion question. It may not be good for the wallet but it can be excellent for the wardrobe.
Simon Hattenstone
Dad, who would be 100 next January if he were still around, was a smart dresser. As a kid I just thought he was a stiff. Back in the day, most men wore suits, but nobody wore them like Dad. He had a long wardrobe, lined with suits. On top of it, he kept his “change”. There was always a ridiculous amount of change – and a crown that his father had left him.
Perhaps we’re all defined by our fathers. He rarely spoke about his dad, who died before I was born. The only thing I ever heard him say was that he liked working in bed. After Dad died, my uncle told me their father had suffered terrible depression and spent long periods in the psychiatric hospital.
Maybe Dad never wanted to look like he was working in his bed clothes, and he certainly didn’t. Immaculate suits, white shirts, always a tie. Everything perfectly pressed, scrubbed, ironed, coordinated. Gerald – or Jerry, as his friends called him – had style, even if I didn’t appreciate it.
He left school at 14, and ended up running a clothes shop till Thatcher got the better of him. I always thought Dad must have reinvented himself in some way – he ended up talking in this very urbane way. But the voice was impossible to place. Not posh like an aristo, more like he was acting out what he thought a businessman should be – slightly gravelly (but that could have been the 60 fags a day) and extended vowels.
When he came home at the end of the day his suit was just as immaculate. He then slipped into something casual for an evening in the armchair – another suit. Sometimes, when he was feeling really outre, he’d take his tie off. But not often.
I dressed in opposition to Dad. Well, you’re hardly going to truck around in a suit as a teenager are you? Once I went into the tailor’s room at the back of his shop with a new pair of drainpipes and asked if they could narrow them for me. They did, and when I finally managed to get them on, you could see the blood clotting in my legs. Dad must have thought I looked ridiculous, but he never said so.
I still dress in opposition to Dad, who was a lovely, generous man. Jeans, T-shirts, brothel creepers or DMs. Fifteen years ago I interviewed Jennifer Saunders and she took the piss out of the cut-off jeans I was wearing. She told me I was mutton dressed as lamb, that I was trying to hold on to something I’d lost a long time ago, if I’d ever had it in the first place. Well, I still dress like that. Occasionally, I dream of slipping into a grey pinstripe, walking around with my hands in my cavernous trouser-suit pockets, feeling comfortably middle-aged. But I don’t have the confidence to do it, and in my heart I don’t want to.
Stuart Heritage
My dad is supremely disinterested in fashion. His outfit of choice is whatever conservative sweater-and-slacks combo my mum has most recently bought for him. And that’s probably for the best. Left to his own devices, my dad would leap at the chance to swan around like a walking migraine, snapping up all manner of enormous zigzag-strewn mail-order MC Hammer trousers from the bumfy catalogues that fall out of the Mail on Sunday.
And yet I’d still like to look like him. Not necessarily in terms of how he dresses, or his baldness – although God knows that one’s coming – but the eyebrows. Those great big German eyebrows.
My dad has the single greatest pair of eyebrows I have ever seen. They’re majestic. People stop him in the street to ask about them. We’ve caught people surreptitiously trying to take pictures of them. In fashion terms, they’re a bold statement piece. He’s got those, so everything else is allowed to be an afterthought.
The eyebrows blossomed late. He was pushing 40 when they arrived. I only hope that I end up with them, too. I’d be so proud.
Rhik Samadder
I remember my father in suits, always. Whether at a garden centre or sports day, it was always full tie, overcoat, smart shoes. Impeccable. The one time I saw him in shorts on a seaside holiday, he wore them matched with a suit jacket, like an Oliver Spencer catwalk. I thought he was so uncool. Why couldn’t he relax? Now I, too, find myself searching out brogues, high-buttoned waistcoats, vintage lounge suits. Perhaps it’s not the same. After all, he emigrated to Britain from India, in the mid-60s. In a country that isn’t sure it wants you, you dress to prove you’re making an effort.
Thanks to him, I don’t have to follow suit. But as time passes, I find myself wanting to. He died in 2007. The other memory I have is of his hats – trilbies in autumn and winter, panamas in summer and spring. They still lie around our house, in odd corners, drifted like tumbleweed. I found one the other day: Dunn & Co, of Piccadilly, faded, the inner band padded out, with pages from the Telegraph, 1967 – shortly after he arrived – so it would fit his small head. I do that, too. Funny, the things we inherit.
Morwenna Ferrier
I remember the first time I met my stepdad, Philip. I was about five and, naturally, thrilled that my mum was dating Phillip Schofield, that Philip being the only one I was aware of.
I was pretty disappointed to see a man – albeit one who looked a bit like Bergerac – with thicker hair, dressed in Levis and a checked shirt, smelling faintly of hay and fertiliser.
Right up until he died in 2002, he was working as a haulage contractor, which meant he traded hay, straw and cattle. His wasn’t a bad smell – in Somerset, it’s normal to smell slightly livestock-y – but whenever I’m down that way, and I unwind the car window, I think of him. Other things remind me of him, too, but smells linger. I also think of him when I see a slightly uncool checked shirt. Those and loose-fit jeans were his trademark look. If it was really hot, he’d switch to a polo shirt, but mainly it was the shirts, all 50-odd of them, in every colour combination possible. He bought his shirts from M&S, Farah and Next. Pretty standard high street stuff.
Occasionally, though, he’d buy one from Mole Valley, a subsidised co-op for people who work in agriculture, where he could he could buy his shirts along with his parts for his mower.
The checked shirts were always rolled up to his elbows, always thinning around the roll after being ripped on trailers and/or gored by bullocks, and he always had two or three buttons undone, so he had his own twist on the trucker’s tan, a permanent brown V and forearm. No matter the weather, that’s what he wore, and no matter the season, he was always tanned. He once, oddly, bought an ugly shirt from Thomas Pink, after a “trip down to London”. Every time he wore it, he complained about how expensive it was; needless to say, he wore it to tatters. He could pull it off because he was a good-looking man. That was one of the few upshots of him dying young: that he was handsome. If he were still alive, he’d be ever so wrinkled.
Sometimes the look was completed by a boilersuit, which in retrospect was quite Balmain SS14. Rain and sheep-dipping don’t lend themselves well to denim, which is something I think about every time it rains. We used to wear boilersuits, too, when we went out in the lorries with him on our school holidays, which was a pretty strong look for an eight-year-old. It may also explain why I like loose-fit stuff: tracksuits, jeans below the hip, massive shirts, massive vests.
I remember finding myself in the back of a trailer with an angry bullock at market, wearing a giant boilersuit and those frog wellies everyone had as a child, terrified, needing a wee, wondering how on earth I’d unbutton the boilersuit while Philip went into the market to sort the paperwork. That was a dark day.
On special occasions, Philip would slip into Farah (again, he used to get them cheap), some off-yellow chinos and a shirt in a smarter check, but we’re talking Christmas and date night, here – twice a year, tops. And even then he still smelled of hay.
Helen Seamons
My dad’s style was one that stemmed from practicality rather than trends. He worked outside for most of his adult life (he died just less than a decade ago) so multiple layers in winter, shorts in summer – accessorised with the most stonking sock tan line – were the main components of his “look”.
He always looked neat, even in shorts he wore a belt and tucked in the T-shirt.
He taught me how to tie a good tie knot. Half or full Windsor were the only acceptable ones in his book. (Again, neat.) To this day, when I tie one on shoots I hear his instructions in my head: “Right over left ...” And when I see a “weak” knot I tut to myself, knowing he would also disapprove.
For a man who wasn’t really into fashion, he took a lot of care in his sartorial maintainance. He drummed into us to look after things: hang stuff up, don’t throw it on a chair. Sunday nights saw him buff our school shoes to a high army-parade-worthy shine. (I haven’t quite nailed the first part. Sorry, Dad!)
I blame my hoarder tendencies on my dad. He did an annual switchover of summer to winter wardrobes, thus maximising the amount of clothing he could hang on to. (My mum kept the same wardrobe year round.) He also had one-and-a-half actual wardrobes to her half (coats and three-piece suits “for best” spilling into hers); he had his own neatly packed suitcase when we went on a childhood family holiday while my brother and I would share my mum’s.
I have definitely inherited the inability to pack light. Like him, I try to be prepared for all eventualities and I am still using my mum’s house as a storage unit for clothes that might be useful in a few seasons’ time.
Padraig Reidy
The plundering of my father’s wardrobe started when I was a teenage mod. Sky-blue fitted Levi’s shirts, a vintage Fred Perry, long forgotten but dragged back to life. It continues even now. He recently offered up an old sailing sweatshirt, knowing it was just my thing. It’s had a lot of wear already.
It’s no surprise, in hindsight, that I would end up taking style cues from my dad. Physically, I am very much his son. The same build, same colouring, same eyes, same hair (still all there). I am temperamentally more like my mother: no bad thing.
My father’s two great sporting passions are cycling and sailing: sports with an incredibly strong aesthetic sense. I don’t think he’s ever read a style magazine in his life, but those worlds have definitely had an impact on how he dresses: clean lines, simple colours, the occasional bold stripe.
I ask Pat what his attitude to clothes is. “Handy and, if possible, appropriate. Sometimes like to look well,” he replies.
Advice worth a few years’ subscriptions to GQ, I think. In style, as in life, I could do a lot worse than follow my father’s example.
