by Andrew Ward

When Bertie Wooster's Aunt Dahlia commissioned him to write an article on "What The Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing" for her magazine, Milady's Boudoir, he reflected afterwards that "if I had had the foggiest notion of what I was letting myself in for, not even a nephew's devotion would have kept me from giving her the raspberry. A deuce of a job it had been, taxing the physique to the utmost. I don't wonder now that all these author blokes have bald heads and faces like birds who have suffered". Well I hope that after writing this I won't have a bald head and a face like a bird who had suffered, although I can't make any guarantees about your head or face after having read it, and if they respectively end up bald, and like a bird who has suffered, then you will at least not have to worry about what the well-dressed man is wearing; you'll have bigger fish to fry. We'll see.

Anyway, university students, if I can remember that far back, are taught that before embarking on an essay it's useful to define one's terms. Assuming that you are not so sunk in sin and lost to drunken excess as to have forgotten the meaning of the words "man" and "wearing", what chiefly concerns us here is what it is that constitutes being "well-dressed". A common mistake is of course to confuse being well-dressed with being extravagantly dressed or overdressed. You will, I am sure, recall that in chapter 7 of his memoirs, Casanova complains that "A man in court dress cannot walk the streets of London without being pelted with mud by the mob, while the gentlemen look on and laugh". You may have similar and painful memories of your own. But resist the urge to blame the mob– being pelted with mud is, surely, a sign that one is not in fact well-dressed. The mob are always refreshingly keen to volunteer their advice in these matters– to paraphrase Sir Thomas Beecham, having witnessed a camel defecate on stage during a performance of Aida, they may have deplorable manners, but they are at least honest critics – and it's advice worth taking. Oh we can all return home, the jeers still resonating in our ears, and indignantly attempt to convince ourselves that we are feared and resented for our innate sensitivity and superiority, and that that's why the mob have pelted us. We are not understood in this miserable epoch, but one day we shall be free to wear purple nail varnish and snorkels on the no. 43 bus. Alternatively we can consider the possibility, however slight, that maybe we went out looking like a cock. Does Terence Stamp ever get shouted at? No. Pierce Brosnan? No. Pete Burns? Yes.

In short, it is in fact so easy to be a well-dressed man that one has to wonder about the motives of those who aren't well-dressed. But this is, of course, not our concern; our concern is to win the respect of the mob, to exhibit a gay diablerie, and, if we're honest, to gain the attention and approval of the opposite, or the same – there's nothing wrong with it – sex. And I hope and trust, and know, that I have equipped you to do just that.

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ANDREW WARD
Writer

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