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Mind your language

Dot Wordsworth

Wednesday, 16th January 2008

Dot Wordsworth on the dubious sales tactics of menswear catalogues

Can men really think they’ll be taken for clubmen and gents by sending a cheque for £30? The market envisaged has clearly been around a bit: The Waist-Eze corduroy trousers possess ‘discreet elastic insets in the waistband and “give” for driving or sitting’. Yet the buyer is imagined to possess a social insecurity of an alarming size. The super twill trousers ‘will pass the adjutant’s most rigorous inspection’. My husband has not yet reached the stage of hanging round Hyde Park in search of adjutants, but he might be taken in by NEW flat front moleskin trousers ‘as fiery as the sun-set in Turner’s “Fighting Temeraire”, as rebellious as Clockwork Orange or as cruel as a Ronny [sic] Scott sax solo’. Yes, I’d like to see him in bright Fox, Loden or Indigo.

If he isn’t fooled for a minute into thinking he looks cool or rebellious in loud trousers, he’d probably invest £40 for a pair of striped or spotty braces. ‘In mediaeval times’, the catalogue enthuses, ‘Knights wore their colours emblazoned on their tabbards’. The suppliers ‘believe that these fantastic braces follow in that tradition. Six bold colours are sure to announce your presence at any occasion’. Any occasion? Thumbing them at Mansion House or twanging them in church — I can see it’ll happen.

Despite the concentration on social cachet, there is no lack of haberdashers. Hugh Massingberd always enjoyed the word ‘trouserings’, and here the ‘shirting’ of one of the shirts ‘has a super soft “handle”.’

On one item the catalogue does get my warm approval: the so-called item ‘weekday trousers’, which are ‘smart enough so you won’t need to change before you pop out for the paper’. Not much chance of that. So I’ll settle for his sending off for a pair of those so long as he keeps away from ‘The “Denis Compton” of blazers’ no matter how ‘generously tailored across the shoulders, chest and under the arms’.