ARCADIA


Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) may have been talented, but his summer wardrobe could have done with an upgrade


PLEASURE DIVIDEND


VERY LIGHT RELIEF


Nick Foulkes


I AM ALWAYS on the lookout for innovations in bespoke tailoring. And this summer I have come across something quite remarkable. It was suggested to me by my friend


Lorenzo Cifonelli that he make me a season- al jacket in lightweight pink wool. Of course I consented, and not just because Lorenzo is


a preternaturally giſted tailor. I have long been of the unshakeable opinion that there are not nearly enough pink jackets for men, a shortage that I ascribe to the notion that in childhood pink is the colour worn by girls. I have long campaigned against this sort of pernicious and antiquated gender stereo- typing. For more than 40 years I have been passionate and tireless in my advocacy for the righting of this egregious sartorial wrong. Until a century or so ago, pink was the ac- cepted colour for boys (probably, as a deriva- tive of red, the colour of the planet named for the god of war Mars, it was considered macho). Girls, however, were dressed in blue, as it was held to be more delicate. But somehow mid-century the gender- specific colours were switched, and as a


child I always considered it a monstrous in- justice that my gender disqualified me from wearing pink. Of course I love blue, but pink is such an optimistic colour. My advocacy be- gan in my late teens, when I became the proud possessor of a pink sharkskin suit that was, even then, about 50 years old. (This was long before vintage had been invented; in- stead we talked about second-hand clothes.) It was clearly made for someone of con-


siderable physical stature – I could have fit- ted my entire skinny teenage frame inside one of the giant elephant legs that comprised the trousers. Similarly, the jacket was of such Brobdingnagian dimensions that it even made David Byrne’s ‘Stop Making Sense’ suit seem positively close-fitting. How I loved that suit. Had they made an episode of


ALAMY


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