In Good Company: The Scruffy List
...At the top of my ‘scruffy’ list come the teenage lads who imagine that lashings of aftershave and a comb will take them anywhere. Long hair, a pair of jeans, a graffiti covered jacket and battered training shoes; or a skull-cut, baggy clown pants and big boots, are the eternal uniform of some of our youth...
Enid Blackburn wrote this column more than 30 years ago in another time of financial constraints.
Our average spending increased last year by 17 per cent, despite the squeeze. So says the government’s new family expenditure survey. Apparently we are gradually increasing the number of electric gadgets and installing more heat.
The biggest item of spending was an average of £21.83 (or 23.2 per cent of weekly earnings) on food. More families are running second cars, but the lowest household expenditure was recorded in Yorkshire and Humberside.
Another survey indicates, however, that husbands are spending less on clothes than their wives are. Official figures reveal that last year men spent an average of £1.35 per week on outer clothes compared with £2.16 by women. And it shows – doesn’t it girls?
If fashion was once ruled by class with the proletariat wearing the overalls and middle-class trying to look like the classically courtured upper class, nowadays it’s all a question of age.
At the top of my ‘scruffy’ list come the teenage lads who imagine that lashings of aftershave and a comb will take them anywhere. Long hair, a pair of jeans, a graffiti covered jacket and battered training shoes; or a skull-cut, baggy clown pants and big boots, are the eternal uniform of some of our youth.
When I was at school, clipped heads and ugly black boots were the trademarks of boys from a nearby orphanage – they hated it.
Next come the over-forties, the Desperate Dans of pub land. Life for these tubby trendies is a trying business; trying to squeeze their excess into tailored shirts or trying to zip the underflow into those crippling tight pants. Trying to cover the mushroom-top Previn hairstyle brushed well down into the eyebrows.
This obsession for hair manifests itself in horrifying ways. Wild sideburns and untamed beards are allowed to grow rampant. Oddly enough this group are liberally soaked in aftershave, too.
Although joggers who live and breathe in track suits all look middle-aged, once they stop and allow their circulation to settle down, some are quite young. Next in line are the turgid young executives. I would guess that this group spends the most on working gear. Being exquisitely tailored all day they like to wear as little as possible socially. Light slacks, flimsy slim-fit shirt and a bunch of car keys. If they have time they’ll throw a couple of gold medallions round their neck to complete the picture. They like to relax and let their hair breathe at parties, hence the burst of brush from his recklessly plunging neckline.
For style with distinction and good taste, look to the over-fifties. Whether it’s a fine wool sweater or chunky suede trimmed tweeds, these are the smarty pants that would feel naked without a tie. Denims will ever represent working gear, greasy overalls to this lot.
For weekday jaunts it’s sports jacket and Terylenes, and for weekends a three-piece suite, well brushed and pressed. The only perfume emanating from this model is shaving soap.
It’s a long time since the days when boys wore skirts until they were three years old and went into their first long trousers the day they started work.
The first suite I ever saw my dad wear was a navy blue with white pin stripe. With it he wore a dark orange overcoat, a grey trilby hat and copper-coloured shoes. It was an incongruous get-up known as a demob suite, but he looked like a film star to me.
If you want to learn a thing or two about grooming, look around at some of our pensioners. Note the mirror-like toecaps and the clean cut hairlines. Some of the suits may be well worn, but you can’t beat the pleat of solid worsted.
