The photograph above is of my dad’s darts team heading off on their annual outing to Blackrock, taken outside his pub on New Lodge Road, Belfast in 1965. What dates this image - apart from it being black and white - is the way the men are dressed: each of them wears a suit, shirt and tie.
Most of the men in the photo worked either in Belfast Docks or for Belfast Corporation, so suits were kept for Sunday Mass or special occasions. My father, standing on the far right of the photo, never left the house without a tie as he believed, as a publican and councillor, it was essential he looked what he called ‘presentable’.
As time passed, one of Father’s biggest gripes about local politicians wasn’t their politics but their clothes. The local news invariably ended with him lamenting, “Will ya look at the state of that... Calls himself a politician, he looks like he’s gonna sign on the bru.”
All this came to mind following the recent ‘controversy’ around Dan Walker’s decision to ditch his tie whilst presenting the Channel 5 news. Such was the uproar that his dress decision garnered as much comment as what he was reporting. Walker has subsequently returned to wearing a tie, no doubt due to those who argue that a collared shirt without a tie looks unkempt.
The wearing of casual clothes at funerals remains a peculiarly Catholic phenomena - I’ve yet to see anyone wearing a soccer top at any Protestant funerals
Tie wearing is no doubt a generational issue as even I unconsciously defaulted to the norm by wearing a tie in the profile picture above, even though I wasn’t asked to do so by this newspaper and never usually wear one.
Despite that, I’ve long believed that male attire reached its pinnacle during the 1950s and 1960s. The original cast in Frank Sinatra’s 1960 movie Ocean’s Eleven took ‘cool’ to a new level, leaving George Clooney’s cast in the 2004 remake looking frumpy in comparison.
Suits and ties will no doubt continue to be worn. For example, I always feel obliged to wear one when attending baptisms, weddings and funerals. This doesn’t always work out as I once found myself at a funeral where I was alone in being dressed in a suit and tie apart from the undertakers.
Everyone else in the congregation appeared to be wearing jeans, jogging bottoms and GAA tops; you’d have been forgiven for thinking the local pitch was our destination rather than the graveyard. The wearing of casual clothes at funerals remains a peculiarly Catholic phenomena - I’ve yet to see anyone wearing a soccer top at any Protestant funerals I’ve attended.
I’ve long believed that male attire reached its pinnacle during the 1950s and 1960s. The original cast in Frank Sinatra’s 1960 movie Ocean’s Eleven took ‘cool’ to a new level, leaving George Clooney’s cast in the 2004 remake looking frumpy in comparison
The other venue where I thought it advisable to wear a suit was on my solitary visit to the High Court in Belfast. Thankfully, I was only there over a licencing issue with a business I owned although if you’d met me on the way into that imposing building, you’d have thought I was up on a murder charge.
I was so nervous it wasn’t until I returned home that I realised I’d put on the wrong suit trousers. Maybe the judge took pity on me, having watched me take the dock wearing a black jacket with dark blue trousers.
I should have known better, having frequently accompanied my father on his annual trips to his tailor to get measured for his suit. This was a time when craft and skill were still the norm, with ‘off the shelf’ remaining a comparatively new idea. In my parents’ bedroom were two small wardrobes, one for my father and one for my mother, in which were a selection of three or four outfits which were washed and recycled until threadbare.
Today, clothes are both cheap and disposable, having been made in sweat shops across the world. No longer do trousers travel down two or three generations of brothers, nor are skirts shortened for younger sisters. I admit to being part of the problem in owning more clothes than my parents probably bought over their whole lifetimes.
Out of necessity rather than choice, their generation, born in the 1930s, were the original recyclers. Some of their frugality remains with me as I find it difficult to throw clothes away using the excuse, “No, those trousers aren’t done, I’ll wear them in the garden.” My wife says I’m turning into a hoarder and is worried I’ll end up entombed in the corner of a bedroom beneath a mountain of old clothing like a north Belfast version of Tutankhamun. I hope the archaeologists who discover me appreciate my sartorial style.
