Soon Enough, We'll All Be Dressing Like Surly Private Schoolboys

Of course, I understand: getting your menswear into a good school is just so so important. We totally appreciate how big a decision this is for a parent. One needs a school that suits one's wardrobe, naturally, but also a school that consider one's lifestyle and one's inner skillset. No two wardrobes are the same. No two schools, either.

Well, fortunately, this is a really great catchment area. To the suburbs, there's Thom Browne's School for Nice Pastel Boys: lots of seersucker, a little avant-garde, perfect if your son is into the theatre or the dramatic arts. For years, the American school's founder has riffed on upstate country club culture, with uniforms that look like they belong to a greyscale flashback scene of a Wes Anderson film. Indeed, Mr Browne's signature is very much inspired by his own schooldays at Indiana's prestigious University of Notre Dame. The man knows a good uniform when he sees it (even admitting in an interview with Vogue that he doesn't wear anything but a three-piece suit).

Across town however, there is St. Prada's, which opened a mere two days ago. Now this school is a bit different. For the big Spring/Summer '21 window (which has been WFH since that little pandemic problem), it released a fashion film comprised of five vignettes that touched upon each pillar of Prada's curriculum: minimalist gym whites seemingly part of the brand's sports-led Linea Rossa offshoot, sculptural coats, buttery knits and all that business. But the most adhesive chapter was the film's opening, in which Prada debuted a procession of haunted, pupil-like models dressed in the uniform of a very exclusive Catholic school in New Milan, circa 2043. Everything was black and white. Everything was impeccably austere. Everything, really, was just great, with little deviation between men's and women's.

Getty Images, Prada

Clockwise: Thom Browne, Prada and Ami

There has been an appetite among parents for international schooling, though. After all, multilingual menswear has much better career prospects, and they'll learn to remain remarkably composed on their third bottle of Côtes du Rhône and the like. Very important. So, across in France, there's Ami: the primary-hued Paris institute with its love heart school crest and chunky knits and quietly punchy suiting. And for those seeking a classic-focused syllabus, Lemaire – the brainchild of designers Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran – is fluid, the sort of effortless uniform that doesn't need accents or vibrancy, using billowing, bookish, librarian-ish designs instead. That strain of uniform is getting very popular.

For while 'trends' and 'seasons' may have had their meaning diluted in recent years, the school uniform as menswear grail has been something of a sleeper hit. I didn't see it coming. And yet, after years of Thom Browne peddling his own strain of private schooldom, Prada pulled the trigger on a move as clonable as its class of wiry, sullen neophytes. Blazers were sharp, rigid. Trousers neatly cropped at the ankle atop clunky leather shoes, like the uncomfortable, unforgiving hooves you were forced to wear on the first day of Year 7 – but much cooler, and more effortless, and more Italian-kiss-of-the-fingers. White shirts were fastened at the top button. Nylon became proper fabric proper.

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It may seem counterproductive to resort to the stuff that was specifically designed to sap our sapling selves of all personality. Self-expression with uniforms so often results in safety pins, permanent markers and a strongly-worded letter home to an exasperated mum. That's not very cool. But as the Gregorian calendar renews itself each year with alarming speed, I'm increasingly finding myself leaning on a uniform: black, fail-safe, the stuff I like and the stuff I know likes me.

That's finding a personal style. Which in itself is the slow process of building a uniform. Turns out, however, that Prada and Thom Browne have already done the hard part. And unlike the draconian measures of your local secondary, their school uniforms are far better. Whatever your choice today sir, one thing is clear: your precious menswear is in very, very safe hands indeed.