Felipe VI’s suits reopen an old debate: classic tailoring versus modern designs for a new masculinity

The guy who makes the most bespoke suits on social media isn’t a tailor, but anyone would say he’s making as much money as if he were. Answer to the name of @dieworkwear and if it is appearing on your timelines as a ghost of the last tailor shop, encouraged by the algorithm even if you are not a follower, there is no need to panic either. Yes, they may have finally realized that the drop in the shoulders or the buttoning of their jackets are not appropriate, that the length or width of their pants are inappropriate, even that the collar of their shirts is not appropriate, but everything that is fixed. Although the pocket is not enough to pay for a genuine prestigious tailor.

Real name Derek Guy, this tweeter from the San Francisco Bay Area is a longtime acquaintance of the blogosphere that brought fashion as much joy as pain in the early 2000s. Our character once dressed conscientiously to impress to a girl and, from there, he began to take measurements of well-dressing. “It was a time when I had to attend many weddings, and that’s how my interest in suits arose,” he conceded in an interview with GQ last January, with his fame recently triggered by a social media scuffle with a luxury watch brand. . “Also, I watched a lot of old French movies and listened to jazz all the time,” he concluded. Enough to display the red flags of sartorial brother-in-law.

Kiton tuxedo from the 2023 collection.Ryan Gosling at the European premiere of Barbie on July 1 in London. Joe Maher (Getty Images)

For that matter, Guy knows what he is talking about, as he has shown since 2010 in Die, Workwear!, the blog that still feeds advice such as “wardrobe essentials” or “the most exciting of the season” without a fixed periodicity, which today It’s more worthwhile to be an editor on the Put This On portal and write on assignment for The Washington Post, Esquire or The Business of Fashion. On the social network formerly known as Twitter, he has close to half a million followers, including not a few sacred feathers of journalism and fashion news. That was precisely where the current episode of men’s floor horror erupted that has brought the suit (and, by extension, the man’s shapes) back into the menswear conversation. All for a praise to the cutting and confection of Felipe VI.

The trill regarding the lucid presence of the King in the final with a Spanish accent from the past Wimbledon had his that, because what the tweeter came to say is that it is rare to find such a level of tailoring these days, especially in a rich man . Picked up by international newspapers and magazines in just a few hours, the comment/thread (more than 30 million views since July 17, 160,000 likes) was understood, however, as a compliment to the impeccable figure of the monarch. Patrycia Centeno, an image consultant and analyst and an expert in visual language known on networks as @politicaymoda, had the idea of ​​taking a few buts out of it and fell for a good courteous trolling. And that she was right. Guy would return to the fray at the end of July with the same premise, but in a negative way, making Sunak’s elections ugly: that the older British prime minister in times past prefers to wear mass-made suits when he lives a stone’s throw from Savile Row, a mecca of the tailor-made excellence of the empire, has him baffled. Same with the ankle length of his pants.

Lanvin suit from the fall winter 2023 collection.Nick Jonas, at Wimbledon last July. Neil Mockford (GC Images)

The thing about Sunak and his jibarized shapes is, in reality, the paradigmatic example of the evils of the current standard suit, of increasingly reduced proportions that infantilize the silhouette. Since Hedi Slimane shrunk his pattern at Dior Homme to rejuvenate it, in 2001 (banishing both the rigidity of the executive power suit and the fluidity of the volumes detached from the body imposed by Giorgio Armani in the eighties), the slim fit is also tyrannical dress law. The problem is that the cut originally conceived according to a certain slippery ephebe canon does not give (the) size according to which anatomies. Hence the parade of rickets and bursting sewing in recent years, the endeavor of those men who let the suit take them, instead of wearing the suit themselves, as long as they comply with the precepts of what is fashionable, or so they believe. .

There are, of course, established conventions for wearing the tailor. The jacket, better with two buttons, double-breasted or not, that goes down to the hips covering the rear, the shoulder seam just where the arm begins without pulling the armhole, the sleeves above the wrists to show the cuffs of the shirt (no more than one and a half centimeters), the collar of which must coincide with the lapel (and never, ever, be loose at the nape of the neck). The pants, at the waist, even a little more, preventing the shirt from sticking out when the jacket is closed, the hem limiting the instep. The shoes, with laces. The tie, neither too wide nor too narrow, barely touching the waistband. And if you bet on the suit, the buttoned vest. Of course, if there is a phenomenon of our days that understands that the rules are to be broken, fashion takes the cake: today there are almost as many sartorial modalities as there are designers and brands.

Traje de Vetements. Gio StaianoFormer soccer player David Beckham, with the Inter Miami club crest.Michael Reaves (Getty Images)

It also happens that the suit and its use are not what they used to be. Sales of formality had been in free fall since 2015, with a continued decline of 8% (according to a study by the consultant Kantar), largely due to the flexibility established in work attire, the sport fever of recent years and the teleworking imposed by the days of confinement by the covid. If they have come back in 2022 it is due, fatigue from so much streetwear apart, to that fluid and unprejudiced review that is getting them to dialogue with the interests of the new generation of consumers, as encouraged by Kim Jones in Dior Men, Anthony Vaccarello in Saint Laurent, Demna in Balenciaga and his brother Guram Gvasalia in Vetements or Thom Browne, whose whims have permeated classic firms, from Kiton to Zegna, passing through Brunello Cucinelli. Tailors can rest easy: the new masculinities are not going to deprive them of the rich.

Emma Corrin wears a Ralph Lauren suit during a Ralph Lauren party at Wimbledon.Darren Gerrish (WireImage)

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