Dress code

Just been to see my tailor.

There seems to be a perception among people I meet at Sunday lunches around Sussex that the City is full of immaculately-suited gentlemen with bowler hats and furled umbrellas straight out of Mary Poppins. True, the denizens of the Square Mile are still a great deal more smartly dressed than most of the population, but that’s hardly saying much. Insurance brokers, fund managers, market makers, a lot of them don’t bother to do more than pull a couple of high-ticket suits off an Armani rack and treat them with the same level of care they’d show a football sock.

My tailor hasn’t entirely understood the deterioration in standards either. Though his custom must be much reduced, his conversation suggests he still thinks I am typical of my breed in my sartorial concern. ‘About time you had a new suit or two,’ he said this afternoon. ‘Got to keep you looking smart for your clients.’

I haven’t the heart to tell him the wealthiest people on the planet go to work in jeans and t-shirts. The only clients who still care how I dress are those whose fortunes are in rapid decline. Hardly worth trying to impress them.