10 Men

10 Men - Issue 57: Spring/Summer 2023

Uniform dressing is something I have always been acutely aware of. As a very young girl, I remember watching my wonderful Dad being fitted for bespoke suits by his tailor (everyone had their own favourite tailor back in the day). It made me understand the power of uniform dressing. I appreciate the precision and care he took to make sure his appearance was always immaculate. He always wore a shirt and tie even though he didn’t work in the City. We were handsomely paid to iron his shirts and polish his shoes, a ritual my sister and I shared on a Saturday afternoon after Greek school.

I think I too have unwittingly adopted my Dad’s uniform dressing. I’m mostly in Alaïa with a peppering of The Row. This uniform means I waste no time at all deciding what to wear, which seems at odds, I know, with the job I do.

Now, uniform dressing comes in all sorts of guises but, reassuringly, the industry feels like it’s smartened up. After almost two and half years of a pandemic where we all slouched in tracksuits and channelled our best TV slobs, Wayne and Waynetta, there was an increased focus on tailoring seen at all the shows in Milan and Paris. So now, after this deluge of casual wear, the industry is sharpening up.

In this issue, I wanted to explore the different ways this has manifested. We have our Features and Online Editor Paul Toner, who documented his experiences of wearing a different suit every day for a week. At 23, he represents a generation for whom suits are strange. The discussion of uniform dressing just doesn’t end with suiting. It has and always will mean something different to everyone. The brilliant Richard Gray discusses his eternal uniform: jeans with a three-finger turn-up and various iterations of a Junya Watanabe cagoule. Whatever your uniform tribe is, we hope we have found a way to explore it in this issue.

UK cover price: £8.00