MEET THE NEW SUIT: IT’S A SHIRT
Luke Walker recognised the gap in the clothing market when he saw it
— not enough expensive shirts. “If you’re used to spending £160–£200 on a formal shirt to wear under a suit,” he says, “then there wasn’t the equivalent casual shirt, in terms of quality and make.” Walker, a designer with haberdashers Drake’s, proposed a shirting collection with the same eye for detail and feel for luxury you would expect on Savile Row. Except these would have “a more current aesthetic”, ie “not designed to be worn with a tie”. Walker, and his brand LEJ, were onto something. Men’s shirts are pretty anachronistic, if you stop to think about it. Button-down collars were invented for playing polo during the Raj, shirt tails came about as an 18th-century substitute for underwear, while French cuffs were the height of fashion… in the Thirties. Hardly anyone bothers with a tie any more, yet “smart” shirts are not designed to be worn without one. Lose the tie, gain a gaping neck.
LEJ is among several niche brands updating the shirt for men. There’s also Alec I-K, whose slouchy shirts have shawl collars, ribbed cuffs and “14 points of difference” from traditional shirts. Inspired by handpainting and dying in India, shirts by 11.11 / Eleven Eleven have band collars and loose, kimono-style sleeves. Casablanca’s tropical-print silk shirts have helped it become one of the brightest names in menswear.
Walker’s big shirts feature pointy, outsized collars, flap chest pockets and a roomy pleat, and are cut from materials like white Irish linen, bone silk canvas and blue selvedge chambray. His inspiration comes from Lucian Freud, Peter Lindbergh and James Bond. “There’s a brilliant series of Freud pictures by Cecil Beaton up at Chatsworth, when he was decorating the rooms with big murals, and he’s wearing these fantastic, big, heavy military shirts,” Walker says. “Peter Lindbergh always wore big shirts, two big pockets, and he stuffed them to the brim: notebooks, pens, light meters.”
These are work shirts, then, for men who work anywhere except an office. Happily, there’s more of them — of us — than ever.