Whenever I travel to fashion week and someone asks where I’m from and I reply British there’s a pause. It’s happened enough times that I could probably write it out in dialogue form and you’d recognise those irritatingly awkward seconds where they go: “Ooh British style!” Picture the scene. Generic dude ironically sporting National Health Service spectacles and holding a pretentious third-wave coffee concoction I spent too much money on says this to me.
And I want to say: “Actually I’ve never once seen a single person under the age of 100 wearing a bowler hat let alone tweed in Britain.” I mean sure, royals wear them at Trooping the Colour and old people collect them as hobbies down Cowley Street in Oxford but does that genuinely count? The last time I was struck by this in Milan I actually spluttered on my espresso as he followed up with: “You guys must wear loads of tweed!” I’m from Manchester bro. There wasn’t a tweed jacket in the entire Manchester until I bought one as an adult.
My grandad had a tweed patch on his flat cap that he wore down the bookies on Saturdays. It’s 2024 and despite rapid globalisation the perception of how British men dress is still firmly stuck in an old Ealing comedy or Hugh Grant’s pre-makeover wardrobe.
Ask any person outside the UK and they’re picturing hot water bottles, mum jokes and men dancing with fruit at festivals.
British men literally cannot wear a bowler hat and tightly folded umbrella without signalling to the world they hate modern fashion. Our style identity has been shattered into little pebbles and reformed into something far beyond what these outdated cliches represent. So let’s discuss what it actually means to dress British in 2024, from a British man who thinks about it way too much.
Firstly, modern British style is extremely regional. Putting aside temporary London-centric hype trends, there’s just as much style diversity in the UK as there is state-to-state in the US. London doesn’t represent everyone’s idea of how British men dress like Fifth Avenue represents everyone’s idea of American style.
Manchester has post-warehouse worker dystopian style mixed with electronic dance music. Liverpool style is verging on too dandyish but I’ll fight anyone who says Liverpudlian men aren’t the best groomed in the country. Newcastle boys will wear shirt sleeves in December before they abandon an outfit (medical professionals have told me this).
In Birmingham there’s a cool hybrid of South Asian culture mixing with traditionally British styles. Scottish style varies wildly but in Glasgow you’ve got great weatherproof clothes that don’t sacrifice craftsmanship (obligatory mention of the best art school in Europe being located in the city) meeting a love of flaming disco trousers. Covering a menswear event a few years back in Leeds I distinctly remember being hit by how differently “smart casual” was interpreted out there compared to London.
Everything had more weight. It was built to last and fewer fabrics felt overtly trendy – the jackets wouldn’t necessarily keep dry in a cloudburst, but they’d look good gracing thewalls of Castleford Market after being laundered. It wasn’t unfashionable by any means, just fashion with less priority on looking fashionable.
If there’s onething that unites modern Britain style in my opinion, it’s class. Yes, the great British patriarchy train wreck we all love to talk about. Don’t get me wrong, everyone from tourists to Japanese showroom guys rave about how classless London has become (“young lords and knights!”).
But our relationship to our clothes as indicators of social standing still pervades every decision we make when getting dressed. Our visible income is much trickier to read than it used to be. The old school quasi-Hollywood(reg break for sarcasm) dress codes of “you can spot someone from their shoes” are being delightfully subverted.
Brick Lane junkies thrift finding vintage Burberry cheque shirts to wear with Canada Goose jackets while the middle classes buy industrial workwear from Brock Collection and waxed canvas from Stenn. It’s wonderful. Workwear is an interesting microcosm of modern Britain as something that was once the literal uniform of the working class is now being worn by literally everyone.
Garments like the staple wax cotton jacket have been co-opted by brands like Universal Works, Albam and Labour and Wait as the backbone of their identity. There’s something inherently British about that shirtless_MC Hammer vibe adopted by so many brands that pride themselves on functional clothes with little to no nonsense. All that said, let’s not forget our knack for subdivision into ultra-specific youth subcultures that manifest into visual uniforms.
Yes, every country has a renegade youth scene – France has their backpacking hipsters, America has their streetwear wearing skateboarders. But Britain has always gone further than most. From suedeheads to skinheads (pre evil-right-co-opting skinheads) to punk rockers to rail cruisers to Casuals to Madchester to rave and jungle and dub reggae and speedos and grime and baggy Topman and Adidas thirdBar originals and ASOS modelled ripped jeans and… you get the idea, we love these small impermeable gangs and identifying both whether you’re inside them or looking in.
Post-internet our tribes may have less centre of gravity but you’ll still spot a Stones Island tee worn with CP Company fatigues on both football casuals and grime fans. Teenagers will still wear mini rip-offs of Supreme cos they saw it on Jacob Elordi. It’s a pleasing cottage industry that blends the mainstream and street together in a way that’s very Britain.
Proof this patchwork Tromaville ethos still applies: I was in a pub last weekend and managed to spot eight different tribes just by scanning the room. Post industrial cyber-warehouse-Sunderland-in-a-Powerpoint-presentation dudes in black cargo shorts and limited Pegasus tennis shoes. Neon green=fashionable kids who found FSU sponsoring Pizza Hut warm up jackets and carried them to mainstream acceptance.
Mods reborn wearing Jaeger golfing trousers and Fred Perrys with freshly cropped haircuts. Weekend festival “crypto bros” sporting Decent Geek bucket hats and 70s nylon fleeces as if it’s not bizarrely ridiculous and backwards. Everybody’s a magpie when it comes to British style.
Speaking of traditionally British… suits. Yes, Savile Row still proudly persists sewing individually handcrafted £20k suits in techniques that would’ve been lost had it not been for a cadre of talented traditionalists keeping them alive. But that’s not how most British men interact with tailoring or “smart” clothes.
If you want to know what British men are wearing today, Suit Direct and Slaters have your customer personas foreshadowed better than anything else. Suit sales have dropped off a cliff since offices got lax with COVID and men no longer need to wear suits in the same capacity as they used too. When they do wear suits now, they’ll wear them with trainers 99% of the time.
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Hell, midmarket suit brands that were rendered basically obsolete by COVID like Charles Tyrwhitt and even T.M. Lewin are struggling. Thankfully, British style still demands “smart” clothing, it’s just morphed into its own unique hybrid.
Smart-adaptable, if you will. Clothing that can transcend situations without looking out of place. Overshooters that work in the office and at the pub.
Trainers that are smart enough for most offices but also comfortable for your commute. We may have killed the suit, but we invented suit substitutes. Which brings me onto my final point about what sets British style apart from most of the world.
We tend to mix high and low, formal and informal in a way that other countries don’t. Italian men will never dress like British men because they’re too sewrealabout sewing. Ditto the Americans with their focus on rigid classifications of streetwear vs casual wear vs formal.
We’ll happily wear Japanese selvage jeans with a vintage football top and locally-made waxed jacket and limited edition sock hop trainers. We don’t mix expensive things with old stuff as a boast, British culture is just built on plundering every subculture we’ve ever had and putting our own spin on it. Workwear + sportswear + military surplus + Savile Row = modern British style.
Or at least, that’s how I see it. British weather is a contributing factor as well. No country outside Scotland* demands the layering expertise and denial of mother nature that we do.
Weather is our co-fashion designer. I firmly believe the seasons have made us better dressed. If you live somewhere that has four distinct seasons you’ll learn this rapidly: everything you wear has to come with a backup plan.
Brands that cater to these entries win. Private White V.C. and their crowdpleasing cotton Ventile jackets. Albam and their now ubiquitous overshirt middlayers.
Universal Works doubles down on their easy-breezy overshirts. Folk and their Sherlock Holmes worthy hidden detail quotient. You name it.
Spend any length of time in Italy or America and you’ll notice their highstreets don’t typically cater to actually putting a proper coat on in winter. Another tell-tale sign of true British style is lack of showiness. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got logoheads and posteriors wearing Eddie Borgo Forum giants on Milan bridge photo shoots as much as anywhere else.
But by and large British men don’t care to show off their wealth through clothes. If there’s a designer hoodie we’ll wear it from Palace and not Hood by Air. If there’s a highquality brand we’ll wear it but hide the logo under three layers of stitching no one else will notice.
Quality British style is for the wearer and not for public consumption. Which is perhaps why an inherited sense of “stealth wealth” still permeates lots of what we wear. Tell someone their coat is nice and you’ll get “Oh this old thing?
Haven’t opened my wardrobe in years. Probably picked it out for me years ago, truth be told.” Said shirt is actually a limited release they camped outside for at 5AM on release day. We don’t care to flaunt what we have, we’d rather someone who cares enough about clothing to notice admire it without us having to say a word.
A lot of what I described about British style is why I think British men still have this veneer of indifference to fashion. Talk to us about football or craft beer or whichever niche hobby we adore and we’ll ramble on for days. Ask us how we like our jacket and we’ll either change the subject or outright lie about spending £200 on it. “Oh yeah loft shopping huh?” British men know a lot more about what they’re wearing than they let on.
It’s a badge of honour we wear knowingly.
Is everything I said perfect? Of course not.
We still sneer at men who dress in a way that’s too far outside of the norm as “gay” or “try-hard”. We still live in a world dominated by Mango, Primark and Zara. We’re too damn sarcastic for our own good more often than not.
But what we lack in boldness we make up for in authenticity. There’s something genuine about how British men dress in 2024 that I don’t think you’ll find replicated anywhere else. We’re practical.
We’re individual. We’re regionally obsessed. And we definitely don’t wear bowler hats.
