A reader asks - how do I dress now that I'm past forty years of age? (Part 1)

Image The Sartorialist

A reader commented recently as follows, raising some interesting points about style and fashions for the middle aged and older man:

How should I dress once I've reached 40?

I'm well past 40 and it's still a question I ask myself at the age I am. Trouble is, I still think I'm 21 but I know I can't and shouldn't dress like a much younger man. To be truthful I'm envious of the clothes that are available to the young man of today.

I really don't like the terms classical and traditional it makes me think of frumpy* old men and I don't want to be frumpy. T'other week I was socialising with a group of friends dressed in a tweed jacket, jeans, brogues a scarf and with a pocket hanky. The females admired the look - gosh, I was wearing a scarf just for the look, Mediterranean style - but the men thought I looked academic. Oh no! I looked frumpy. I had been considering a tweed suit but maybe not now.

* My wife's terminology

I'm finding the blog useful keep it up. 

Regards

David

My first thought was, 'who's this guy, who dresses well well enough to excite female comment, yet isn't satisfied with his sartorial choices?'

Older men see style in binary terms

But then I saw the deeper seriousness of your comment. You have defined the schizophrenic approach men take to style as they get past 40 years of age. We want to stay and look young, but suspect that this is unacceptable. After all, an older man is expected to behave as such and fears ridicule if he doesn't.

Image The Sartorialist

In the face of these concerns most men give up and adopt a sartorial grunge, wearing ill-fitting clothes without a vestige of style. That's the slippery slope that I found myself on 18 months ago when I started this blog to explore style and fashion on middle age. I don't pretend to have found a stylistic Shangri La, far from it, but have a few thoughts which I offer for you to reject or accept as you like.

Older men think about style in binary terms. We see a choice between either young men's fashions, Top Shop etc, or the sort of shapeless tweedy neutrality available from too many Sunday supplements, high street chains and catalogues. We see nothing in between.

Style with a twist 

In reality, the older man, choosing carefully, can buy into the younger/fashionable/stylish (whatever term you want to use) end of the market without looking like mutton dressed as lamb.

Classic with a twist - Image Stockholm Streetstyle.com

The term I've used for this style is classic with a twist. It gives the older man the comfort of wearing a classic outfit that doesn't delve into the wilder reaches of the menswear fashion catwalk, while showing, at the same time, a sense of personal style.

Finding this look takes work as we have to trawl through the racks of poor quality or too young-looking clothes to find what we want. I would like high street retailers to market 'classic with a twist' more widely. After all, middle-aged men are a relatively large and affluent market, so retailers are unlikely to lose out here.

I've talked enough, so I'm going to split this post and, in the sequel, say more about what I mean by 'classic style with a twist', giving examples and sources where you can go to explore the style further for yourself. Meanwhile, some on the images here will give you an idea of what I mean.

However, the last thing I want to do is give you rules for dressing. The advantage we have in middle age and beyond is that we have the confidence to create our own styles that owe nothing to an unhelpful and youth-obsessed high street - let's do it!

Meanwhile, see my article in Menswear Insight [link broken, magazine closed down] in which I explored this question in more detail. See part 2 of this post here and part 3 here.

Photograph Niall McDiarmid