Regional British Style Dialects: From Scouse to Scottish

I love British menswear. I love how much it differs when you leave London. Er, no wait – fuck that.

I love how much British menswear differs when you leave London borough by London borough. Over the last fifteen years or so of studying how men dress, what I’ve loved most is how unabashedly regional British style still is. Instagram would have us believe that everyone dresses the same now, that national identity in style has been washed away by global brands and trends headquartered in LA and Seoul.

But spend any time travelling around the British Isles and you’ll see how wrong that notion is. Styles fragment like linguistic dialects the further you travel from our dubious capital.

I went to Liverpool for a friend’s wedding last month (my university roommate Jamie, finally getting hitched fifteen years and roughly 4,000 terrible shirts on).

Got a day to kill before the rehearsal dinner so I did what any self-respecting nosy bastard would and went for a wander people-watching. Any Geordie will tell you that northern lads have got style dialects as thick as thieves, and once you know what you’re looking for you can spot a Scouser a mile off. Sharp as a Sheffield steel folding knife, too – they take pride in how they look.

Haircuts and styling enviable across the board; trainers always butter fresh even on a school-run morning; jeans you know they’ve had since their fucking youth rebellion that still somehow look chiselled to their thighs. Talked to this barber down Baltic Triangle way who did me and my mate a trim before the big day. Polite Welsh fellow called Mikey who told me his fade wouldn’t get him past the door of an east London barber’s (says him, not me) but was matter-of-factly chat-show-host normal up there. “Scouse lads have always took pride in themselves” he said whilst using electric shears to sculpt another lad’s beard like he was performing open-heart surgery. “Got to look smart, y’know.

Don’t want to be seen leaving your house without a haircut.” He wasn’t wrong, either. Hyper-aware of detail that people from other regions lazily dismiss as vanity. But it runs deeper than that.

Pride. Community. Identity.

Standing out, rather than standing alongside everyone else. Northern lads across the board – if we’re defining ‘Northern’ as anyone who’s not a southerner, which for my purposes we now are – have their own sense of style that differs wildly from place to place. When I was up in Newcastle last autumn for a menswear event, despite hovering around 3 degrees with horizontal rain all weekend that looked to have been torpedoed through every waterproof jacket England supplied the Geordies with before standing on them to ensure maximum efficacy, kids were still walking about in fucking t-shirts.

Proud as you please, too. Love that refusal to kowtow to “logic” like getting hypothermia might ruin your day that Newcastle has. There’s something wonderful about it.

Apparently it’s a blend of old-school masculinity – the football shirts, the arms like Porky’s chicken – are welded to surprisingly fastidious grooming habits and attention to detail that you don’t see elsewhere. Biceps the size of my leg twiddling their perfect quiffs; ring fingers dotted with enough product to detail a Chevy Impala but still sculpted and meticulous beard lines. Northern lad stereotypes of your neighbourhood TER_REGEX rantaholic about these Newcastle guys taking care of their fucking selves.

My hometown of Manchester falls somewhere in the middle. Oasis will forever cast a large shadow over how we dress in this city – I went to see them at Maine Road in the ’90s, seeing parkas hadn’t happened yet but everyone still had an Old-Tec and Timbs and still does. Some chip-on-your-shoulder teenager always will discover their dads’ copy of The Stone Roses and give Madchester makeovers a new lease of life.

But there’s also strangely prevalent workwear influence here. I always chalked this up to cotton moody-bohemian meandering down our Irwell but chat to any lad about his footwear and I’ll bet you money you’ll find someone with Ramones-worthy Dr. Martins.

Massive unlaced boots; deliberately-too-large coats and jackets; clothes that look ruggedly thrown on when everyone knows they took you ages. Anthropologie “studied nonchalance” doesn’t know the half of it. Had lunch with my dad in this new café in Ancoats last time I visited.

He rocked up in what can only be described as an ancient waxed Barbour. Told me how good it looked. I told him how good it looked.

He looked at me blankly. “Isn’t that old?” he asked. “Yeah mate, I’ve had it donkey’s.” Fuck knows where he got it from but he clearly loved it. Knows it’s cool as fuck without shouting about it. There’s something innately anti-fashion about a Manchester lad wearing a seriously great pair of trousers and hating you for noticing.

Up in Scotland last I did a story on some incredible young designers Glasgow’s got going. Utterly changed how I saw Scottish style. There’s nothing wrong with your tweeds, tartans and whisky kilt trauma that tourists and Laurent-Perrier-buying Londoners lust after, but modern Scotland’s got an edge to how their young lads dress I admire.

Partly it’s colour – I don’t know if Scottish men have less to prove about not looking gay/feminine/etc. than their English equivalents but they seem more likely to wear a print or step outside of the pallete of greys, navy, beige and white you see everywhere else. Glasgow also loves its texture in a way other UK cities don’t appear to. Don’t get me started on knitwear.

I’ll never forget seeing this guy on Buchanan Street who had properly bulbous jeans – the kind that engender hatred from EasyJet teens in velvet tracksuits – and was wearing them with a navy wool coat. Didn’t look silly or off-key the way that colourblocking usually does in London – we’ve been fucked over by so many ‘stylists’ trying to convince us nude Nike track tops and green wide-leg trousers are a good look – but like the most subtly rebellious lad who’d never invite you in his house, much less let you inside his head. Asked the guy behind the counter at my Airbnb what he made of it.

Mid-token Scottish accent: “Glaswegians don’t care what anyone thinks is trendy in London.” Cheers for that, then. Edinburgh too – just dial the quirk down by about twenty per cent and you’re there. Money in Edinburgh.

Old money. It has far quieter subtly about how our lads dress, but spend long enough chatting to anyone and you’ll find the leather loafers have been resoled three times; the raw denim jeans were actually selvage before that was cool; the cream hoodie is from Woolrich but was hand-knit by his nan. Up until I moved south I’d never realised how spendy Edinburgh really was.

Got caught in a storm whilst there once and took refuge in this ancient boozer off the Royal Mile. Local geezer behind the bar eyes my drenched state and legs it to the back office, returning with this thick wool jumper. “Put that on love, ye’ll catch your death” said not like he was asking. Thick, taught Norwegian-esque knit in a Fair Isle pattern I’d never seen before and cared less to google.

Tried to give it back on the way out. “Nah love, I’ve had that for thirty years it’ll last me another”. Aye right. Still have it now.

Gift wear. Brighton’s another weird duck entirely. Flew down there for a shoot last summer and noticed from the get-go how London style, let off the leash by miles and miles of pubic sand decided to play.

Experimentation I don’t see anywhere else. Care-less about what women think masculinity should look like; more willingness to try things that’ll invite stares on the street; bright colours on men that don’t spell gay fourteen stories down. Women painting their nails on Brick Lane barely raises an eyebrow south of Brighton pier.

High-end trainers worn with old men’s bowlers. Vintage Hawaiian shirts worn with Carpenter Brothers trousers. It’s a wonderful relief of British style snobbery and myself-until-I-lived-there stupidity.

Talked to this dude who owns a vintage shop run out of the front of his house. Middle-aged lad called Tony who looked like he was about ninety but ran rings around me. Made me try on this fucking absurd shirt from the 1970s covered in, I can only describe as, psychedelic chickens.

At home I’d have looked a right prat. In Brighton, somehow nobody gives a shit. “Not everything’s for ladies or gays ya know” said Tony solemnly as if informing me of some great revelation. “Men invented black and forgot how to have fun.” Scouse aside, rural style dialects are probably my favourite. Mainly because they’re the least trendy – stick to clothes that look good and last a long time rather than whatever Hoss isn’t wearing in topbro’s this season.

Caught up with Vijay last year in Devon – he of the mysteriously pristine shirt you’ll remember from university who now runs his family’s hotel business in the English countryside. Pub we went to was basically a masterclass in how to dress if you work outside and haven’t updated your wardrobe since the early 90s. Think moleskin trousers broken in till they’re softer than a baby’s arsecheeks; your grandad’s shooting jacket you’ve wanted to rob him of since puberty; a tattersall shirt worn under a lambswool v-neck jumper; fucking well everywhere.

The sort of green-and-yellow waterproof every metropolitan dickhead buys on their yearly trip to the country because it looks like a chicken farted on their Duffer of St. George jacket. The difference between those clothes and a country lad wearing those clothes is the latter own them as actual clothes, not costumes you wear at the weekend.

Very old chap at bar who’s jacket had been patched so many times the original material was barely there wore it like it was carved out of his skin. Fit like a glove because it was. Welcomed the rain instead of grimacing at how he was about to get splattered in downpours because he’d worn it out in worse.

Welsh lads. What a bunch of legends. Went to Cardiff recently for someone’s stag do (don’t do stags, by the way.

Absolute nightmare.) Got separated from our group one night and ended up in this countryside pub miles away from anywhere. Sat down next to this older gentleman who looked quietly striking wearing these non-descript tweed cap I didn’t think people were brave enough to wear anymore, a plain old t-shirt, pair of jeans and lovely shoes. Got chatting and he politely inquired about my jacket (rammed-overpriced Japanese workwear piece I found myself thoroughly embarrassed wearing ten seconds after stepping outside) and then produced his own from the armchair he was nestled into – a chore coat bought in ’76 and worn to work down the steelworks ever since. “Still as good as new” says.

Er, no. Better. Laughed in the face of mothership brands and ‘wearable-in-bed’ fabrics.

Had more character in its left pocket than my entire wardrobe.

Feigned smile, suddenly very aware of what I was wearing. He noticed.

Chuckles. “Yeah lad, yours will one day. Once you’ve wore yours out.” That’s what’s great about British regional menswear for me. This idea that someone somewhere is rolling their eyes at what ‘mainland’ Britain perceives as the height of style whilst simultaneously crafting their own, evolving dialect that’ll most likely never be talked about on the internet.

We love to bleat about “authenticity” in this industry yet have no interest in the actual authentic clothing of Britain’s rich tapestry of regions. Countries who hold on to styles you never see featured on Instagram not because they want to adhere to a trend or carefully curated aesthetic but because that’s how their community dresses. Works.

So next time you find yourself journeying across God’s green British Isles, take note of the local style dialect. It might not teach you how to speak British like a local but you’ll learn more about the region’s history, identity and attitudes to class/work/gender/etc than any other. And if a Welshman offers you a jumper, accept it.

Trust me.