Fancy pants
Nick Foulkes wants to wear checked trousers with a dinner jacket. Will he pluck up the courage this year?
Ihave a problem with violently checked trousers. I love them and yet I am afraid of looking like a roaring middle-aged hooray or an extra from a Ralph Lauren window display if I wear them with a dinner jacket. My favourite is a singularly aggressive pair in black, red and primrose yellow made at what was then Kilgour French & Stanbury. For all I know this may be the full-dress golfing and bicycling tartan of the Clan MacThruttock; if so, my apologies to the Elder and the Younger of this noble clan, as a Foulkes I have no legitimate claim to their bilious check. They would be splendid with a dinner jacket. And yet I cannot bring myself to slip them on when the invitation demands black tie.
The thing is that being neither Scots nor a golfer, I have few opportunities to wear such things. Occasionally I wear them with a dark half-lined cashmere blazer and that is about it. However, this does not stop me from adding to my store of checked trousers. As well as what I imagine would now be called my vintage Kilgour pair mentioned above, I also have another gentler pair from Kilgour in blue and violet, a pair from Brooks Bros in New York to introduce a note of preppiness and a couple of slightly hairy tweedy ones from Etro which look great with a solid-coloured tweed jacket.
As men-y bands of festive binge drinkers thronging the streets filming each other with their mobile phones for YouTube signal that the end-of-year revelry is upon us, I would dearly love to make my contribution to the seasonal cheer by giving my many pairs of checked trousers an outing, but I am concerned about doing so in a built-up area. Much as lawyers look for legal precedents to bolster their arguments, so I study the sartorial habits of the Duke of Windsor. Consulting the 1997 catalogue of the sale of his effects I find that he had plenty of checked trousers. However, in winter it would appear that he favoured the full checked evening suit, such as the fabulous green-and-white checked 'Lord of the Isles' number from 1951 or the Rothesay hunting tartan with the shawl collar dating from 1897 that he inherited from his father. George V used to wear it for tea after shooting, which was very chic; I feel it is almost worth accepting an invitation to shoot just to be able to change into something bright for my apres-shooting cup of Orange Pekoe.
Moreover the Duke kick-started a trend for tartan in the 1950s with this very garment, wearing it in the evenings at the mill that was his French country retreat. He was justifiably proud of the fact. 'One of our guests mentioned the fact to a friend in the men's fashion trade, who immediately cabled the news to America. Within a few months, tartan had become a popular material for every sort of masculine garment from dinner jackets and cummerbunds to swimming trunks and beach shorts.' Sadly it is too late to order my Rothesay hunting tartan in time for this year's parties (but I am considering a bespoke tartan bathing costume for next summer).
I have had time to review my seasonal shirting requirements and have once again turned to a regal authority. Among my favourite dress shirts is a vintage, and this time it really is vintage, number from the early Seventies. Inside the collar it carries the label 'Le Roi, the After Six Shirt'. The front is a fabulous farrago of crochet and lace, the buttons and the placket buried under a forest of frills. The frills also jut from the cuff, and I like to think it is this touch that prompted the royal nomenclature, as such a cuff is also known as the King Charles cuff — a fact that was explained to me at Turnbull & Asser some years ago when I went there and placed an order for a peach-coloured crêpe shirt in the Austin Powers idiom.
Anyway, the other day I was chatting with fragrant chemisiere Emma Willis at her eponymous shop when conversation turned to frill-fronted dress shirts with King Charles cuffs; one thing led to another and before I knew it I was commissioning a voile dress shirt with just these features in a fetching shade of violet. It was only when I returned home that I realised it was a match for one of the tartan trousers I mentioned earlier, and I am sorely tempted to bring these two outlandish items together. Maybe this New Year's really will see me wear a dinner jacket with toning frilly shirt and tartan trousers and who knows, perhaps it will spark a trend in frill-trimmed bathing trunks.
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