An exercise in the subtle art of assembling an outfit. I went to a friend’s wedding in Saffron Walden yesterday; I decided that for once it would be nice to go to a formal summer event and not be roastingly hot, so I bought a creamy off-white blazer. The intention was to find a shirt in a nice cheerful colour—salmon, egg-yolk, maybe teal—so the overall effect would be summery: Ascot, Pimms, champagne and strawberries.
But despite a lot of trawling through the sales, I couldn’t find one that was right (not too light, not too dark, in a colour I liked and which suited my skin tone), so I ended up wearing the jacket over a very dark brown shirt. I felt the result, especially with sunglasses, was Italian disco circa 1982; my friends’ suggestions were ‘Colombian drug lord’ and ‘Cuban gigolo’.
Not that I have a problem with that as a look; better to look like a Cuban gigolo than, say, a German software engineer. It was a smidge out of place at an English summer country wedding, though.