From Doublets to Hoodies: How British Men Forgot How to Dress

So back in the Tudor era, getting dressed was basically a whole event. Henry Cavill in that show

is wearing doublets so stiff and structured they look like they were engineered by architects.

Embroidered fabric everywhere. A ruff around the neck that is literally just a decorative collar

situation that serves zero practical purpose but somehow was considered completely normal and

actually very fashionable. The whole outfit is basically your LinkedIn profile but make it textile.

Before you even spoke a word in a room, your clothes had already told everyone your net worth,

your family name, and how seriously they should be taking you. Fashion was not self expression

back then. It was a power move.

 

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock carries that same old British energy even though the

character is technically modern. That long structured wool overcoat. The precision of every

single layer. There is this very specific thing that old British men’s fashion does where it

communicates that the wearer has thought about absolutely everything and is not to be taken

lightly. It is intimidating in a very quiet way. The clothes do the threatening so the person does

not have to.

And then the 1900s just absolutely cooked all of that.

 

Two world wars meant fabric rationing which meant the excess was literally illegal for a period.

Women started working real jobs and realised corsets and twelve layers of petticoat were not

going to work out. And then the sixties happened and young people in London collectively

looked at everything their parents stood for and said actually no thank you. Carnaby Street

became the centre of a fashion revolution that was essentially just young British people deciding

to have fun for the first time in centuries. The repression had been building for so long that when

it finally broke it came out as the Mod movement and then punk and then New Wave and the

whole thing was genuinely unhinged in the best possible way.

What is wild to me is that Britain went from being the country most obsessed with rigid formal

dressing to producing the most boundary breaking fashion subcultures on the planet. The same

culture that invented the top hat and the frock coat also invented punk. That is not a

contradiction. That is cause and effect.

And now we are here. Barry Keoghan is out here wearing looks that are somehow avant garde

and effortless at the same time and it feels like the natural conclusion of all of that chaos. Tom

Holland exists in this space where slim fit casual wear and good sneakers is genuinely just the

default. The goal now is to look like you did not think about it even though everyone absolutely

did think about it. A really good plain white tee from the right brand costs more than some

people’s rent and that is its own kind of class signalling when you think about it. The

performance of nonchalance is still a performance.

But here is the thing I keep coming back to. The shift is not really about clothes getting more

relaxed. It is about what we are asking clothes to do. Tudor fashion was communicating

permanence and hierarchy. Gen Z fashion is communicating that you are not going to be put in a

box. The overcoat still exists but now it is thrown over a vintage graphic tee. The blazer still

exists but it is being worn with cargo trousers and Sambas. The bones of the old wardrobe are

absolutely still there underneath everything. They are just being used to say something

completely different now.

Henry Cavill in full Tudor regalia and Barry Keoghan in a deconstructed fit are both making a

statement. They are just speaking different languages to different rooms about different versions

of what it means to be a man who got dressed today.

That arc from the doublet to the hoodie is honestly one of the most underrated stories in British

cultural history and I will not be taking questions at this time. 

 

-Devangshu Purohit