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Why men are disasters at off-duty dressing - Telegraph
Fashion is a kind of pulchritude, let us hope that


Why men are calamities at off-duty dressing
Today presenter Evan Davis's startling civvies are further testimony that style-conscious men fail when they try also hard.
BY Jasper Gerard |02 November 2009

Fool marks for effort: Evan Davis Photo: Rex Features

Gordon Brown in 'holiday' attire Photo: Ian Mackness

Richard Madeley Photo: albanpix.com

In his TV show, the late Kenny Everett would often activity an ageing rocker dressed in leathers and fetters who delighted in the appoint Sid Snot. In compare, one likes to picture presenters of Radio 4's Today programme creature as sober-suited as they are sombre-sounding.
The nation, then, was a little surprised yesterday to be confronted by photographs of Today anchorman Evan Davis apparently trying hard to send Everett's symbol back to life. Short of spying the Queen in a shell suit or the Archbishop of Canterbury dressed as the sugar plum fairy, we could scarcely have been more perturbed.
Surely, some of our more serious public figures aren't allowed to do accidental - and that includes the man whose job it is to say several periods and, preferably, while jabbing a finger: "So minister, what have you got to say about that?"
In Davis's defence, when he elected to primp like the drummer of the Grateful Dead, he was not almost to analyse the newspaper or barbecue contestants on Dragons' Den , but to potter down to his corner mart for the Sunday papers. Any public diagram can be caught out, as Cherie Blair could testify after being snapped bleary-eyed in her nightgown prologue the door to a florist; or Silvio Berlusconi in that John McEnroe-esque bandana.
Davis is an realized, engaging psyche, a product of Oxford and Harvard, who is as cozy in the saddle of a motorbike as in the studio discussing quantitative easing. The tabloids - which like to tell us at normal intervals that he visibly boasts a pierced breast - are giving us a very unsubtle reminder that Davis is (aboveboard) gay.
But few Today listeners have the slightest amuse in his personal life. That is the point. We like our radio and TV news presenters to resemble blotting periodical, devoid of character and indeed interest, hence the impressive survival of Huw Edwards.
I memorize interviewing Fiona Bruce and coming away frustrated, emotion I had failed to acquire any kind of purchase on her personality. I tried to lure her into expressing a political attitude and she replied flatly: "That's a absurd question. You know full well I can't maybe answer that." And then I realised that her studied blandness did her honor; I would have been preferably unsettled to ascertain that she harboured extreme political views or emulated a cult or dressed off-screen as a dominatrix.
It might fall to presenters such as Bruce and Davis to destroy the news to us that we are at campaign or about to be hit by a typhoon.
I remember my disappointment when I first saw John Humphrys, James Naughtie et al casually dressed meantime presenting Today . Yes, these clubbers of political reputations must rise at an hour when different sort of clubber has barely gone to bed, and they could sit there in the altogether as always the listener need understand. But 1 likes to assume Today types wore in dark pastel stripes, gravel-voiced and grave.
Sure, we no longer expect presenters to wear black tie after the watershed, or to adopt the clipped vowels of a Path�� newsreel, but nor do we anticipate to watch them togged up seemingly for a bikers' convention.
Sandy Gall lives approximate me and it has been one enormous happiness to detect him as dedicated and for attractive as he appeared ashore News at Ten ,Kate Spade Coney Island Stevie Satchel - Quilted, still a regular visitor to Afghanistan, where he oversees a charity to help the nation from which he reported with such distinction.
Davis, in contrast, runs the risk of no longer being taken seriously - ironic, considering his comprehension. Listeners ambition no more erase that picture of him while he's on ventilation discussing, say, pills policy, than we would ever take Gordon Brown seriously if he were "papped" in a floral dress. Indeed,Garden-ing Bag (Garden-in-a-bag). Geddit-_475, the Prime Minister's rejection to ever lose the suit, even on holiday - hell, he probably has a bath in it - is one of the few undoubted boons of the Brown years. Even John Major stretched to a beige sweater, but Brown's motif of downtime is probably chewing his nails. Still, acknowledge him this: at least the country is no longer compelled to learn Tony Blair's moobs, still less his faux "off duty" tight pants or his "I'm just on holiday, me" sandals.
Men are rubbish at civilian dress, as was only too remove amid the alarm that swept the shadow cupboard during the first attempt to rebrand the Conservative Party as person, when guiding figures were mandated to rotate up for a bonding weekbring an end to ... "beautiful casual". The terror show of golfing sweaters, advisable slacks and Barbour jackets must have assured four more years for Labour.
Women have long been trained to understand raiment, whatever one makes of Cheryl Cole's extraordinary closet on The X Factor . Because they have no obvious uniform, they really must think about what to dress every morning: how formal should I appear? How many individuality ought I exhibit? Legs - yeah or no? Ditto cleavage. Men equitable grab the first suit to hand and however shirt looks vaguely steeled, or defect that, neat. The merely sartorial decision we have faced in a decade has been "tie or no tie?" and we're still attempting to bring ... to an end that trauma. Plant us under a palm tree and it goes hideously bad, literally. Tabloids take marble rejoice in highlighting celebrity cellulite on women, but it is the masculine tight Speedo/beer belly combo that has readers spitting out skinny lattes in hatred.
Men are excused for looking boring off duty at all times they have clearly made absolutely no exertion. But it is men who have tried that are ridiculed; particularly those who have virtually surely thought not only about their wardrobe but - ugh - about someone more generalised, is their "image".
So we can adopt those lurid suits in which Jonathan Ross peacocks and preens and which Savile Row have to often be trying to purchase up and flame, but his off-duty male sack? Still aggravate, Bruce Forsyth, who tin see unsettling enough without the counting of his favoured at-home baseball hat.
The responsibility to dress appropriately does not fall exclusively to the outstanding. If you bumped into your medic at Homebase, you might withstand tutting whether he is not in his white coat, but how would you feel about a gold lam�� jacket with a fag hanging out of his mouth?
Much the same goes fjust aboutlicitors, stockbrokers,defense of the silver screen_9060, shrinks and police commanders. I placarded at a gathering locally, heeded by several teachers from the village school, how thoughtful they were no to grow drunk or make a spectacle. At a party, you might no be going, yet you might still be introduced as a teacher, alternatively indeed a Radio 4 contributor.
When you see some pillar of the community breaking our unspoken sartorial laws, you surprise about them - not out of stuffy disapproval, but for you are trying to work out what message they are sending: are they too cool for school? Are they challenging, belatedly, a teen fame for nerdiness? Are they suffering a mid-life crisis? Or are they simply frustrated X Factor contestants?
None of which is a reflection we want to have about the cove who introduces the shipping prediction.