King Charles is Britain’s “menswear monarch”, says Samuel Hine in GQ. His longstanding love of clothes is not only a source of pride for traditional firms like shirtmaker Turnbull & Asser and shoemaker John Lobb, “who undergird London’s status as a fashion capital”. The King has also long exemplified an approach to dressing, now very much in vogue, that minimises waste. Charles has a tweed Anderson & Sheppard coat he’s worn in four separate decades; he turned up at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in a morning coat he first wore in 1984.
Though he claims that he’s only fashionable “once every 25 years”, Charles is clearly “deeply comfortable in clothing”. Most elites dress to conceal: oligarchs favour “anonymously expensive dark suits”; politicians roll up their shirtsleeves to try and suggest an affinity with the working class. But the King “wears clothes in a manner that speaks of an interiority”, rather than any kind of fashion diplomacy. “He embraces pattern and colour with the mind of an aesthete”, and can pull off traditional items, like double-breasted blazers or tartan kilts, as if he’s “stepping out in a pair of PJs”. The message is simply that Charles is “dressing to delight and satisfy himself”.