Death of the pinstripe

Society bible Tatler claims the pinstripe has had its day, a victim of the City's demise and Aldi's £25 version. Here two writers join the sartorial debate.

YES, says Nick Curtis

A pre-university job for an insurance company's mortgage division put me off pinstripe suits for life. Once the province of the City banker, they'd been annexed as the raiment of floppy-haired Yahoos making a fast buck. Now, of course, neither of these two groups is looking too smart or clever, and sales of stripy suits are through the floor. It wasn't Aldi's £25 version that killed the pinstripe: this was a clear case of suicide.

While postwar men's fashion moved on in just about every other area the pinstripe stayed as resolutely stuck in the past as the sock-suspender and the bowler hat. Any attempt to wear a pinstripe suit without a tie and polished black shoes is doomed, the sartorial equivalent of screaming, "I'm craaaazy, I am!" (yes, I'm talking to you, David Tennant). You can't wear them in the country, or at the weekend, or to the corner shop, without looking like a dork.

Checks, tweed and even chalk-stripe material can be adapted to any cut of suit (I've got a ritzy, scarlet-lined charcoal chalkstripe myself, made for me by a Hong Kong tailor). But the pinstripe must always be safe, sober and boring, boring, boring.

There is a reason for this, of course. The pinstripe was a uniform. It declared that the wearer could be trusted with your money. Ha! Today, we're all pointing to the last remaining pinstripe wearers and laughing. The Emperor has no clothes!

NO, says Richard Godwin

There is something very unbecoming about a gentleman who follows the vagaries of fashion too closely. Past a certain age, he should follow his own style. Anyone who de-stripes in response to attacks on the pin, therefore, proves himself weaker than the man who styles out his vertical lines, however unhip.

Nonetheless, the pinstripe is a special case.

The recent anti-pin feeling that last week culminated in a hedge fund manager being called a "loser" behind his back is really directed towards its brasher cousin, the chalkstripe. The pinstripe (thinner, duller, more numerous lines) has always been the province of the provincial branch manager but the chalk is for the power-dresser. It says bish bash bosh, it took three henchmen to pour me into this thing, let's go and strip some assets - but these are not sentiments in favour in these austere times and the chalkstripe is "on its last legs", according to Tatler.

However, though it is worn by its share of bankers, chalkstripe itself is a fine, Gatsby-ish thing, ideally worn in three-piece, double-breasted suit form. It was the favoured look of the Prohibition-era gangster and of the Chicago jazz man. It cuts an elegant dash, oozes confidence and is slimming and lengthening to boot.

Bill Hornet, the gentlemen's outfitter, will not hear of its fall from grace. "Women love them. Men are impressed by them. You walk into a room in one and people will know who you are." What does he think of the striped two-piece I'm wearing? He pauses. "Erm, that's more of a faint pinstripe."

But I don't care - it is a fine, honest suit, old-school but with a modern cut, the jacket pairable with jeans as well as suit trousers. And it marks me out from the kind of people who take their fashion advice from Tatler.