GQ's own Style Shrink column has long advised that for a man to "look the business", rather than dress for the job he already has, he should dress for the one for he wants. But how do you dress if that is by every measure the "top job"? And, for that matter, the incumbent doesn't necessarily share your choice of attire.
For anyone facing this dilemma - and for the purposes of this particular argument it will, necessarily, be very few of you - look no further than our own HRH The Prince Of Wales - heir to the throne and, by most every yardstick, the best-dressed royal this country has ever produced.
You don't have to be one of his loyal subjects, or indeed British, to think so, either: when Outkast's Andre 3000 came to London to pick up GQ's International Man Of The Year and the Most Stylish Musician Of All Time awards in 2004, he told us: "Prince Charles is my No.1 British style icon."
Another keen observer of contemporary sartorial mores, Christopher Bailey, the chief creative officer of Burberry, agrees. "The Prince Of Wales has impeccable personal style," he says. "It is a style that marries the real traditions of menswear with the relaxed attitude of his generation: his ability to connect with people through his natural charm, his easy-going manner and his elegance, resonates with a global audience across generations."
It's a quality that seems naturally suited to anyone graced with the title of Prince Of Wales. If Beau Brummell established the basic concept of a modern male dress code, it was the Prince of Wales, later to become Edward VII, who gave it the royal seal of approval, adding the dinner jacket, the "Prince Of Wales" check and the tradition of leaving the bottom button of one's waistcoat undone along the way. Later on, the present Prince Of Wales' great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor (the former Edward VIII), recreated the fashion for men's fashion, single-handedly inaugurating a penchant for bold, less formal attire that can still be divined today. But it was "Bertie" who first brought royal patronage - and therefore lustre - to London's Savile Row.
Throughout his career as easily this country's most visible sartorial ambassador, Prince Charles has evoked the "extreme good quiet taste" The Outfitter magazine recognised in his grandfather, King George VI (inherited in turn from his own father, George V). For if dressing effortfully is considered a little untoward, then it's even more important that an heir doesn't overstep the sartorial mark. After all, looking too good could be construed as showing too much interest in matters beyond the royal purview. Thankfully, the present Prince Of Wales could hardly be accused of that. Along with his charitable work and tireless royal duties, Charles is best known as a meticulous, though quietly dapper, dresser. "He is interested in traditional style," says cultural historian Peter York. "But there's a definite style that he's going after. He wears things other people don't wear - relatively light colours and pale and mid-greys that are quite dandified in their own way. But there's nothing arch about it. It does require a fair amount of resources to keep it going, but I don't know anybody of his age who does that look."
Patrick Grant, owner of Savile Row tailor Norton & Sons and the British-made E Tautz ready-to-wear line, agrees: "Prince Charles has always sat tantalisingly on that boundary between hip and square. The haircut and the double-breasted suit would pass muster in either camp, but you always get a sense that he is holding something back, that somewhere not far from this there is the spirit of the great reveller Edward VII, fighting to come out."
If there has been a tension between the proto-playboy of his polo playing, Eurogentry years and the securely dignified globetrotter of today, then it's been immaculately maintained. No one balances the precise equation of the sleek and formal with the nuanced and lively quite as, well, magisterially, as Charles.
For this, he has, to some degree, his forebears to thank, as well as his father, with whom he shares an innate sense of civilised discretion (along with a penchant for the tiniest tie-knots tightly harnessing a soft, semi-spread shirt collar). But as York points out, The Prince Of Wales hasn't achieved this alone: alongside his valet, there are literally hundreds of craftsmen and -women who have worked to create and maintain the royal wardrobe.
In the early Eighties, the Queen bestowed upon her eldest son the sovereign honour of Granter of Royal Warrants. A consumer "Kitemark" of sorts, it's awarded for services to the royal household, but carries with it far more than mere royal patronage. A Royal Warrant (granted to a company, but held by an individual) enshrines a relationship that goes beyond the simple provision of goods and produce to represent a true collaboration.
One of Charles' suppliers is James Sugden, director of Johnstons of Elgin, makers of estate tweeds. These "are not articles of commerce, they are his private property," explains Sugden. But whereas the Prince's more flamboyant great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor, enjoyed sporting these exclusive patterns in ever more iridescent hues, the current Prince Of Wales is less interested in their sartorial star power and more concerned with their survival. "He's just very interested in keeping up the traditions," says Sugden. "He likes proper tweed from Scottish wool that will last 30 or 40 years and he is really involved in recreating them. Manufacturing in Scotland is an endangered species and I think his interest has created a huge amount of business. When his Highness [launched the Campaign For Wool in 2008] wool prices were very, very low and his personal interest in his own tweeds helped save the industry and create jobs."
As Sugden points out, Charles is "not being philanthropic; he's very supportive" - an important distinction when you consider the "buying power" royal patronage represents. But Sue Simpson, retail director of Royal Warrant holder James Lock & Co, suppliers of hats and caps to the Prince Of Wales, points to another aspect of the Prince's influence, one perhaps not traditionally shared by his forebears. "He wears a lot of regimental and top hats," she says, "but the thing we supply most often would be tweed caps, which he likes to have made in his own tweed. Not in great numbers, but he likes quality, he wants something that will last."
It's an attribute that is mentioned by John Hunter Lobb, head of the four-generations old boot maker in St James, who notes that the Prince was fitted for his first pair of black oxfords in 1971, "and I have a feeling he was wearing them when he came and took a tour three or four years ago," says Lobb. He also confirms that the Prince's shoes are still made using that original last - an indication of how relatively few pairs he's had made over the past 40 or so years.
It's the same story with his suits. According to Anderson & Sheppard, "when Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005, he did so in the morning suit Anderson & Sheppard had made for him 13 years earlier. And every winter, [he] is spotted in a gorgeously draped double-breasted A&S overcoat, of herringbone tweed with patch pockets, that dates to 1987."
Originally introduced by his father to Turnbull & Asser (who continues to hold the Prince's Royal Warrant for shirt making), more recently Charles has also enjoyed the more relaxed tailoring enshrined in Anderson & Sheppard's softly draping bespoke suits. "The Prince Of Wales prefers double-breasted jackets with simple jetted pockets in a lighterweight
cloth," confirms head cutter and managing director John Hitchcock. "Occasionally, he will order single-breasted sports jackets with three buttons and pocket flaps. All the cloths that he has ordered come from British mills with tweeds coming from Scotland. "He likes his clothes to be cut in a classic style, to be made to last and to be comfortable. The way that we hand-tailor our clothes, sewing the sleeves and shoulders in by hand, makes the jacket comfortable and easy to wear all day. The fullness in the chest and the sleeves also allows for easy movement. We help to look after the clothes and to extend their wear with steam pressing, general repairs and any necessary alterations."
This commitment to sustainability underlines both Prince Charles' belief in "best practice" and the secret of his perennial style - consistency.
For a man who grew up - in public - during the Seventies and Eighties, it is almost inconceivable to imagine that there aren't some ghastly fashion disasters lurking in the archives. But you'll search in vain. "I don't think he ever responded to the beat of the street," agrees Peter York. "It just never happened, did it? I think he was quite a formal young man. Whereas that other Prince of Wales, Edward VIII, became set in a rather dandified way early on, Charles has been rather different from his contemporaries.
And Charles is to some extent a late bloomer. It's now that he's come into his own."
For York, the Prince's dress sense remains uniquely "job-specific", with a twist: "There is a royal way of dressing that arouses all sorts of responses, but I can't think of anybody anywhere who does that particular look.
It's very different from that racy, traditional dresser Prince Michael of Kent, who has favoured the non-ironic kipper tie with a gigantic knot for the last 30 years." "He is a standard bearer for the way a gentleman should dress," believes Steven Quin, director and Royal Warrant holder
at Turnbull & Asser. "We have lots of customers who reference how the Prince dresses. He has been a great ambassador for the whole industry." "He has followed in an old tradition, but he dresses very nicely," agrees John Hunter Lobb. "It's very classical, but it's practical and simple, and so it goes on and on."
For Patrick Grant, it's that indelible "rightness" that keeps Prince Charles, if not exactly in league with fashion, then forever forefront in the minds of the fashion-conscious: "When we launched E Tautz, we made a book of images of the men we admired. [Not] many got more than one entry, but there were two of young Prince Charles; one of him hopping out of a sporty little MG, the other in full evening dress with the busty flower-child Margaret Trudeau, then wife of the prime minister of Canada. "He was a cool young man and now he's a stylish older man, dressing with great dignity and understatement, but always with a little flourish," continues Grant. "Regimental ties tied with the neatest little knot, a neckerchief when skiing, a carnation and a pocket handkerchief. He even rocks a leek on his lapel on Saint David's Day - not an easy look to pull off with élan..."
Originally published in the July 2012 issue of British GQ.
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