There is nothing like England in the summer… for bringing out the worst of what lurks inside wardrobes of men ‘of a certain age’. I suppose one could be charitable and ascribe this to Byron’s famous observation about ‘The English winter – ending in July to recommence in August’.
And indeed there have been years during which I did not need to switch from tweed to linen. Summer in these islands is more of a game of meteorological Russian roulette than ever, so I suppose that many men my age have just given up on summer clothes, gambling on the fact that if the sun does break through the clouds for half an hour they can wear the antique cargo shorts, knackered deck shoes and size(s)-too-small polo shirt that are kept crumpled up at the back of the wardrobe for just such an emergency.
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‘The cargo short is one of the greatest barbarities’
Setting aside the fact that cargo shorts are one of the greatest barbarities ever to be inflicted on mankind, the chief problem is – as the name suggests – that they expose rather too much late middle-age male leg. Tom Ford’s maxim that shorts should never be worn in town and instead be reserved for boats, beaches and games of tennis is, on the whole, sound advice. Whatever the temperature, whenever I am in a city, even a tropical or equatorial one, I will be wearing, at the very least, full-length trousers and a long-sleeved shirt.
This is a considerable concession to casualness that my younger self was not prepared to make. I came across photographs taken in 2009, when I was in Havana discovering the as then unlaunched Cohiba Behike, and I saw myself dressed in a white linen suit, voile shirt, linen tie and Panama hat. I looked like I had just come third in a Man from Del Monte lookalike competition. Although it pains me to say it, the tie pushed it over the edge. I think there should be a second Fordian commandment that one should never wear a tie while visiting a Cuban cigar factory. But at least a fully fastened shirt conceals various scraggy bits of neck and chin, as well as some worrying parts of the upper thorax that expose themselves when an open-necked shirt is worn.
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To put it bluntly, late middle-aged male décolletage is not a pretty sight. William Somerset Maugham knew this well: his sun-fissured skin hung in folds on his face, and his neck would not have looked out of place on a rooster. But when he sat for his marvellous 1949 portrait by Graham Sutherland, he wore a nut-brown shawl-collared jacket inside which he had wrapped a large crimson scarf, which gave him a neck again.
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The joy of losange
I looked at my cashmere winter scarves: too big and warm. Then I consulted my collection of silk squares, but they have a tendency to bulk up in a way that makes it look like I am wearing an Hermès neck brace. Although I didn’t know it at the time, what I needed was a losange, a rhombus of silk worn at the neck.
The revelation came last summer, when one of my most elegant friends introduced me to the Hermès losange. I think his was a linen and silk mix; he was wearing it in a way that suggested he had given thought to his ensemble and made the conscious decision to eschew a tie in favour of a losange rather than just unfasten his shirt. It was perfection.
Neither bulky carré nor anorexic bandeau, it opened a new world of solutions for concealment of my late-middle-age décolletage. The shape is no accident – it has a different kind of drape around the neck, creating a new visual language of folds and cascades.
I have now become hopelessly obsessed with the losange. Although, annoyingly, some escape me as they are often stocked in womenswear – I would have missed a delightful Toile de Jouy losange at Dior, had a kind friend not drawn my attention to it. This rhomboid wonder is a sort of Swiss Army knife of neckwear that should be available to men and women alike. It is all in the geometry.
The pointed ends with their acute inner angles lend themselves to a multitude of styling options: it can be worn as a cravat, an ascot, scarf, bandanna, tie, belt, face mask… it is, in short, equal to almost any occasion and I believe it will prove to be more than a match for the heat of the tropics when I return to Havana later this year, or, should we ever see one again, the British summer.
This feature first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 95. Click here to subscribe
