I was packing up to move flat recently and I came up against a very menswear-y conundrum. Which pale blue shirt should I get rid of? I think I had eight in total, which is fundamentally silly because I rarely have call to wear a proper ‘business’ shirt, and when I do, I only wear one at a time (I’m a traditionalist), so I shouldn’t need more than two. Three, tops.
But one is from Corneliani, and to get rid of that would be an affront to the Neapolitan garm gods (even if it hasn’t stretched all the way across my tum for at least a year now). And there’s a Bengal stripe button-down from Arket that I wear about three times a week, so that’s going nowhere. There’s a chambray Connolly number that I got for a song at a sample sale, so that has to stay for its sheer good-value. And a collarless Dunhill number is simply too nice to wear, but if no one is going to, then it might as well be me that doesn’t. Right?
They’re really good blokes though, pale blue shirts. Like that guy at work that always buys the first round, with crisps, even though he can only stay for one drink. Let’s call him Ian. Whadda guy. Ian rides a Brompton to work, but you wouldn’t know, because Ian gets changed downstairs and doesn’t waggle his steaming, lycra’d hips through the office. He gives blood on the reg, and flips his mattress twice a year. Ian has only ever had one carrier bag (A New Yorker tote, natch) and he eats meat occasionally, but only that which he buys from the local butcher.
A pale blue shirt is the Ian of menswear. Or at least, it can be.
My love is strongest for soft-collared, subtly textured, stripy blue shirts that you can wear stuffed under a scruffy blazer, or peeking out from a crew neck knit, or oversized, with pale denim, chunky black lace-ups and a baggy overcoat, so I look a bit like Chandler Bing. Super easy wearing, bookish – which is how we’d all like to be described, right? – and ‘understated’. A word I use all the time, but one that perfectly illustrates how I want to dress. As the Merriam-Webster says, “avoiding obvious emphasis or embellishment”. That’s understatement, bebe.
Of course, a blue shirt can offer power, too. Look at yer men Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), Marc Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), or Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000). They all wore pale-blue, white-collared ‘Winchester’ shirts with red ties and dark pinstripe suits. That is not a 2020 vibe. And if you see a man with a strong jaw wearing one, don’t let him talk to you about business cards. Or video tapes.
But I want pale blue shirts that serve as an antidote to all that master-of-the-universe wankery. I point you in the direction of David Hockney, one of the greatest proponents of the pale blue shirt, and a supremely stylish dude in general. Hockney’s ability to be meticulously scruffy at all times constitutes a very British take on the Italian tradition of Sprezzatura, which was once described to me as ‘studied carelessness’. (Essentially, you ensure that little details are executed incorrectly – an upturned collar point; the tail of a tie waggling low beyond one’s belt buckle – in the name of style.)
Scruff is what you’re looking for when it comes to pale blue shirts, I’d say. See Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), and even Phillip Seymour Hoffman from the same film, playing Freddie Miles. Both spend much of the movie wafting around the Italian Riviera in pale blue button-ups. And you must consider Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name (2017), which is still the best menswear-y film of the past few years. Hammer hammers home the potential of a pale blue with aplomb, wearing his creased, loose and open at the chest, with little shorts and a bicycle. Top summer down-dressing, Armie.
At his most recent show in Paris – Autumn/Winter 2020 – Simon Porte Jacquemus demonstrated that a pale blue shirt, worn scruffily, can be properly, fashionably cool, too. Look 30, missed by some, perhaps, amongst all the Hadids and Provençal skin on show, was super simple, and super-what you should be wearing when the warmer months eventually roll in. In this era of coronavirus, the time when we can once again mooch about on a sun-dappled terrace seems a long way off, but at least we can dress for the occasion.
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