My wife hates it when I do this. Bad enough that I wear 'old man' shirts (she means Viyella Tattersal) without disgracing the family name further (says she in her bloody crocs). Ralph Lauren tortoiseshell specs, tan Brooksgate duffle coat with a college scarf, Shetland and OCBD, woollen Brooks trousers, chocolate brown dessies. Just a slight tweaking. Shorts can also do it.
As the nerd said upon turning his Daddy's shotgun upon himself "Goodbye, cool world".
I always come back to this:
http://www.hollowearth.org/images/jazz/bill_evans/bill_evans_portrait_in_jazz.jpg
Show me the nerd. There's no nerd here.
Ah ha! Now there's a black and white photograph of Billy Boy in my big fat jazz dictionary, wearing what looks like a grey v-neck and striped shirt. Pared down, pared down, and then pared down some more. Better than all the bells and whistles in this wide world.
Mornin', Jim. Watch the cornflakes go soggy now...
On those occasions when I'm out and about being very tweedy perhaps with BD, tie, specs etc and attract those "look at that nerd" looks from someone it always prompts a cheshire cat grin from me as all the while I'm visualising brogueing (a new verb!) him in the nuts very hard. Very, very hard.
Staceyboy
A little, diffident, modest bump for this thread which attracted next to no interest from the forum 'Mods' back then and will almost certainly fail to draw much attention now. But, in a sense, is the look not Essential Ivy League? I well remember those Ralph Lauren spectacles and am still wearing Viyella (at this very moment, in fact, having just returned from my morning walk: an old lady was leading a younger, blind lady, up a very stony path). I had on a McLochland chunky cardigan with football buttons and looked as unlike some pimpled member of a Brit yoof culture as you can imagine.
‘...will almost certainly fail to draw much attention now.’
That’s because nobody aspires to dress like Robert Peston or Glenn Gould.
I had to look Glenn Gould up. I imagined he might be a former West Ham manager, presenter of a TV quiz programme or retired pop singer/friend of Kevin Rowland.
He turns out to be none of these things.
I don't know. I'll be exploring further.
Peston is something of an oddity but I rather like him.