Introduction
In a way this has been a long time coming, in all of my articles so far I’ve mentioned the words “timeless style” without explaining it in any detail. So over the course of this article I would like to explore the notion of timeless style, take a look at the men who embody it, debate whether it’s better to be stylish or trendy and just what the difference is. I hope you enjoy it.
What is timeless style?
Timeless style is easy to define yet hard to explain; simply it’s a sense of style or a way of dressing that will never go out of date or become unfashionable. In my opinion though timeless style is so much more than this. Like many things in menswear it is elusive and seemingly unattainable – men don’t have the same amount of choice in our wardrobe as women do, so we compensate with rules and what seems to be unreachable aspiration. Timeless style is generally only accessible when wearing certain clothes which embody the whole persona (more on this later).
So how exactly does a piece of clothing become timeless? After all, every piece of clothing at some point in its life has been part of some kind of trend – such is the cyclical nature of the fashion industry. In answer to this question, I personally think that for an item of clothing to become timeless it must have some kind of impact on popular culture – whether that be someone cool wearing it in a film, an artist painting it or a singer writing a song about it. If someone who has a lot of public support (and approval) wears a particular piece whilst doing something iconic then the item is well on its way to being cemented into the wardrobes of the world’s most stylish men. Of course this has to happen on more than one occasion for it to truly become timeless and last generations.
I’d like to craft a simple story to explain what I mean: An item of clothing is in fashion, so people of taste and influence begin to wear it, inevitably these items of clothing begin to appear in popular culture, the popular culture itself (be it a film, photo, concert, person etc.) is judged to be timeless, and in a chain reaction so does the item of clothing associated with it. To sum it up in an even shorter way: Fashion gives way to style.
The Men Who Embody It
Now, throughout the last 60-ish years many different men have embodied this sense of timeless style. I’m going to list some of them and then talk about the common characteristics that they all seem to share: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Sammy Davis Junior, Miles Davis, Jonny Depp, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tom Ford, Jamie Foxx, Aaron Johnson, Douglas Booth and Alex Turner. Now this is just a very brief and varied list of some of the men I believe have a sense of timeless style. Obviously they don’t dress in a timeless way every single day, but that is because developing a timeless style requires more than just considering the clothes you wear. All these men seem to share a number of personal characteristics; the first – and KEY – being confidence. Most of them have to be confident because their jobs push them into the public eye, but if you take time to watch them (their actions, how they speak, their mannerisms) you will notice they have a sense of true inner confidence which just oozes out of them. With this confidence comes an innate sense of style and fashion – knowledge of what always looks good on them and in what situation. These men are all undeniably “cool” .Cool seems to go hand in hand with timeless style; cool people make an item timeless and timeless items make people “look” even cooler.
As a visual example, take a look below at some of the icons mentioned. You could take each and every one of these out of the generation they lived in and put them in another and they would look just as good and still have that aura about them. Whether you took Marvin Gaye in his denim shirts and workerwear from the 80s, Sammy Davis Junior sharply dressed in his suit from the 60s or James Dean in his trademark leather jacket or trench from the 50s – each and everyone of them would still look just as great today if they dressed exactly the same way. They had an innate sense of style which transcended generations and every cyclical trend we have seen in between. The same rules would apply if you took Clooney, James Franco or Jamie Foxx back 3 generations.
