Ah! another slurp of Antarctica down the hatch and some smoked turkey rolls being eaten right now. My answer is that you are probably right about the fashion stores: they stay in business because many men would be prepared to wear old sacks and string, if that's what their friends were wearing. In fact, there's probably a fortune to be made out of old sacking, if only Abercrombie and Fitch got around to it. I think that the rich, tough guys (as described) would readily enough admit that they like good clothes but they would not see the topic as something for discussion in real life. As, indeed (generally), it is not; well, it is not, in my experience: hence, the fora and all the photographs with obscured faces, asking whether X tailor has done enough to flatter: flat seats, prominent calves and dropped shoulders, and whether Y shoemaker has disguised fallen arches, hammer toes, bunions and other natural abominations. Down to 3rd January 1972, most youngsters just followed their fathers' (and, in my case, even more so, grandfathers') leads but they were leads given by silent example, and copied in simple admiration. Once families started routinely fragmenting, the leads were no longer there and so youngsters invented their own ideas and, generally speaking, aided and abetted by various fashionisto tossers, what a varied and extreme mess they made of it; until we reach the stage where all the world wonders where it all went wrong.

Not having enough Antarctica lager is part of the problem.

But that is easily fixed...