Well Dressed Gentlemen

Well it’s been a while since of blogged. Been too busy moving house, working and eating. How sad. I don’t even have a few minutes to write…must be the Singapore lifestyle getting to me.

Anyway my last post was from Hong Kong, and I want to discuss something that has continued to stay in my mind.

Men in suits.

Now, typically in Singapore, the average office worker will arrive wearing pants (usually of the plain variety – pinstripes are a rarity), and either a short sleeve shirt (for those who are based in more ‘industrial’ type industries – I guess the short sleeves allow ventilation of the forearm) or a long sleeve shirt (normally of plain description, nothing too bright) and in some rare cases, you might find the odd “stylo milo” (Singaporean term for fashionable) wearing cufflinks. Now you ask...what about suits? Lets just say if you are 'caught' wearing a suit, Singaporeans will look at you as if you are a green alien. I should know. I wore one to my job interview.

Lets contrast this with the average Aussie office worker. Now, depending on season, the Aussie who works in Professional Services will typically wear a suit and tie, but nothing to “bling bling”. At most, you might find a pin-striped shirt underneath that plain coloured (usually navy, grey or black) pure wool suit. Cufflinks might be found on perhaps 5% of “suiters”. However again, the bulk of the population will generally wear just a shirt and tie, depending on season.

Coming back to Hong Kong. Now these guys really know how to dress. It’s as if they’ve all just been reading FHM Mens Collections and jumped out of some page in the magazine and onto the sidewalk. I have never seen sooo many guys in one city wearing qwwality suits, with sensational shirt fabrics, matched with the right contrast of tie and cufflinks. Truly wondrous. So it was no surprise to me than upon my visit to the tailor, I was presented with a sensational array of fabrics and colours. I was in metrosexual heaven. Well, apparently London is just the same. I’m sure I’ll verify this for myself one day, but for a city based in Asia (the land of shorts and t-shirts), it was certainly an eye ball opener.