Mind your language | 19 January 2008

I caught my husband perusing a menswear catalogue. I don’t know where he got it. It can’t have been sent to him. It was the kind that leans towards nightshirts and Barathea blazers. The language used was extraordinary. The ‘striking set of gentleman’s pure silk-club ties’ — ones with thin stripes — would be, it assured the purchaser, ‘sure to receive the nod from the doorman’. If by chance it matched the real tie of the club in question, perhaps more than a nod.

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.