The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
The wardrobe whisperer
Alex Bilmes helps a shorts addict into something a little longer
QMy husband wears shorts the whole year round – summer or winter, rain or snow. He insists his legs ‘don’t get cold’ and doesn’t seem to notice the strange looks he gets. He luckily has a job (computer coding) where dress codes are casual and I’m now blind to it. It’s just that there are occasions when shorts just don’t cut it: like work meetings or going out for dinner. How can I ease him out of his shorts habit? — Amy
ADear Amy, I must say that this is the first time a reader has asked me to help ease her husband out of his shorts. (This is a family newspaper, Amy, and we’ll thank you to remember that.)
The first thing to emphasise to your exhibitionist other half is that while shorts may well be comfortable, even practical, they are not dignified. Even if your beloved is lucky enough to have the most statuesque legs since Michelangelo’s David, not everyone wants to gaze upon them. There is a time (childhood) and a place (the playground) for everything but, as Corinthians reminds us, once maturity is reached, one must put away childish things.
Writing in Esquire a few years ago, my late friend and colleague AA Gill delivered what remains, to my mind, the definitive line on shorts. ‘Shorts are silly,’ he wrote. ‘Men in shorts are silly men.’ I don’t mean to be rude – although Gill certainly did – but he’s right. There is a man of a certain vintage who lives near me, an extreme case like your husband’s. He wears dangerously brief denim cut-offs whatever the weather. I’m sorry to tell you that each time my children spot him, yomping up the hill in the rain with his shopping bags, or taking a
breather on a frosty bench, they point and laugh. ‘Look!’ they cry. ‘There’s Old Shorts Man!’
But it is not only fear of ridicule that should help persuade your husband, or any man, to cast aside his shorts. It is the ready availability of an obvious alternative. To be clear, these are called trousers. If it’s comfort that is the apparent barrier to entry, then my suggestion, for these warmer months especially, is cotton chinos, in navy or beige. I get mine from an Italian company called Incotex, available online at Mr Porter. They are not cheap. But they are classic, stylish, comfortable and hardwearing; mine have lasted years.
You can find chinos everywhere, at every price. M&S has them in organic cotton for £35. Arket does a handsome pair, in multiple colours, for £55. For year-round chinos, Carhartt WIP’S rugged Sid trousers cost £90. If you want to treat him to something special, APC’S chinos, in soft Bedford cotton, are £210. Most spoiling of all, Giorgio Armani does beautiful cotton ones for £370. One thing all these trousers have in common? They cover the knees. Perfect for work meetings, going out for dinner – and everything else. OK, fair enough: tennis. Everything else, apart from tennis.