When I think of the questionable fashion choices that litter my past – the time I sported two bumbags as a 10-year-old, the roomy skater jeans I liked to wear halfway down my backside, that summer when I really, really got into leather wrist cuffs and backpacker-ish beads – there is one ill-advised look that always sticks out. In fact, among some of my oldest friends, it has almost taken on a mythic quality: a folkloric garment shrouded in legend and whispered rumour.
It would have been around the late 90s and, as a 16-year-old, I had successfully badgered my mum into getting me a pair of wincingly tight, metallic silver jeans from the Littlewoods catalogue. I looked, in my eyes, incredible. Bold. Vaguely futuristic. And it was only when I saw my kind friend Chris’s gaping, faintly horrified expression – having risked a split crotch by sprinting to catch the bus for a night out – that I thought something might be up. “Jesus,” he said, unable to mask his disbelief, “you look like the Tin Man.”
Despite the evidence to the contrary in this story, I’ve always thought of myself as, mostly, quite an assured dresser. I was lucky enough to have two innately stylish older brothers who provided useful visual guidance, stacks of style-minded men’s magazines, plus whatever clothes I could sneakily liberate from their bedrooms.
This fortune gave me the confidence, as a tween, to chafe ever-so-slightly against the “Ben Sherman and Reebok Classics” hegemony of the time. Having siblings who were willing to take risks with their look basically meant that (the odd clanger notwithstanding), I always understood that there was nothing wrong with experimenting a little bit.
But there’s something about climbing to the figurative base camp of your mid-30s, as I have now, that makes you reappraise everything that has come before. Obviously these days, men’s fashion has never been a bigger or more varied industry – in June, Euromonitor was the latest market researcher to find that it is growing at a faster rate than women’s fashion. But, squinting warily at old pictures on Facebook, I can’t help but wonder if my unabashed interest in cultivating a personal style occasionally manifested as, well, misguided overconfidence.
Trends and personal phases are partially to blame, of course. Midway through my teenage years I became a skateboarder and soon found myself weighed down by enormous hoodies, baseball caps and chunky scuffed-up trainers. This gave way to the UK garage years – tight Reiss T-shirts, tighter jeans and Patrick Cox loafers worn without socks – which slowly evolved into a more casual university look with looser, paint-spattered Diesel jeans, clunky statement belts and, at one point, a thoughtlessly grabbed vintage T-shirt that looked like it said “IRA” on the back.
Grooming-wise, this was also the time that – save one turn-of-the-millennium night when I briefly twisted my hair into little Craig David-style buds – I started to tweak the neatly trimmed look I’d had since my double-bumbag days. As I emerged from university (and increasingly frequented sticky-floored indie club nights), I grew my hair out into a kind of knotted demi-fro that was heavily indebted to (read: shamelessly stolen from) Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke.
It’s here that I think my life as something of a charity-shop peacock truly began. I lived in winklepickers, tweedy blazers, pocket squares, deliberately moth-eaten, plunge-neck T-shirts and jeans so skinny they often ripped if I overdid it on the dance floor. There was a cherished, patterned cravat that I’m pretty sure I found on the floor outside a house party.
In isolation (and the context of the guitar-mad mid-noughties), there was nothing wrong with any of this. But it was just all too much. The volume was up way too high. In thrall to a certain scene or look, I had surrendered all subtlety and true individuality in favour of a kind of box-ticking maximalism.
So how did I shed those fussy adornments and arrive at the quieter, workwear-focused uniform I tend to employ today? Well, fatherhood – which brings with it clothes that are often accidentally accessorised with a smear of mashed-up food – has definitely made my taste more utilitarian and less prissy. Taking inspiration from well turned-out colleagues in their 40s – all turned-up selvedge denim (finished with tightly woven bands) and Red Wing boots – certainly helped. And, in swapping Albam chore jackets for All Saints blazers, I’m certainly broadly in line with the times.
But I think, more than all that, it’s the hard-won self-knowledge that can only come with age. Rather than swinging wildly from one trend to the next, I’ve found a groove that suits and reflects me. I no longer feel vaguely deficient if my look doesn’t neatly conform with what’s on a particular shop mannequin or musician or off-duty footballer. My hair has morphed into a low-maintenance, ragged low-top and I let my beard grow out when the mood strikes me. I invest in quality key pieces – slouchy shirts, Breton-style tees, go-with-anything white trainers – rather than haphazardly splurging on youthful fast fashion wheezes.
The clothes, as per the often misattributed Mark Twain quote, do not actually make the man. It’s the other way around. And as soon as you understand that, well, you might even be able to pull off a pair of shiny silver jeans.
Do what feels right with Philips: whether that’s finding your own style or finding a grooming routine that works for you. Find out more about Philips’ shavers here
