Navy suit trousers don’t usually cause a stir, at least not in politics where they abound. Unless, that is, they hover two inches above the shoe, as Rishi Sunak’s did on a visit to a gas plant in Aberdeenshire on Monday. The prime minister might be wearing shorts in Disneyland right now, but images of his shrunken trousers flooded social media long before he boarded the plane, accompanied by armchair theories that it was surely a trick to make the 5ft 6ins PM appear taller.
Menswear critic Derek Guy disagreed. “Lots of conspiracy theories on why Sunak wears such short trousers … but my theory is simple … Sunak is a vaguely trend-aware guy, but just a little behind the times,” he wrote on Twitter, his preferred medium. “I don’t think he has a grand theory for how short sleeves and pants make him look taller”.
Derek Guy is a menswear writer, critic and prolific Tweeter based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Evasive about his age, he hides behind his Twitter avatar – a drawing of Nixon’s debonair attorney general Elliott Richardson – and describes himself “a guy who lives alone with a cat”. Guy, who writes on his blog Die Workwear, began writing about fashion in the mid-00s, first on blogs and then, in 2011, via Twitter. Back then, it was the medium through which Beyoncé announced her pregnancy and Osama bin Laden’s death was first leaked. “I was just making in-jokes to guys who were interested in clothing”.
Today, Guy has almost half a million followers, though notoriety came at a price, largely the algorithmically curated “For You” tab which landed him in the feeds of people who didn’t follow him. After calling out the marking up of a US watch company, he saw his following balloon. “It was very stressful [at the start]. I thought I was getting cancelled,” he says. “Now I just can’t keep up with the replies.”
Guy says he is as shocked as anyone by his sudden ubiquity, and that he still doesn’t know why his tweets have got so much traction. He also says he is a fashion nerd who only writes about menswear because he doesn’t have the required “language” to talk about womenswear.
baffling to me how the wealthiest UK prime minister in history could live just steps away from savile row, the single greatest concentration of skilled bespoke tailors, and end up paying $2k for a MTM suit with sleeves and trousers 2-4″ too short pic.twitter.com/0IYg87ZB1O
— derek guy (@dieworkwear) July 31, 2023
Still, in most other circles he has become as beloved for his granular takes on cashmere as his critique of male politicians on the 2024 campaign trail. His tweets are somehow censorious without being mean, with Guy insisting he only punches up. “I would never do it to some guy on the street,” he says. “[Critiquing fashion] is different to critiquing other forms of culture. I could tell you you have bad taste in music, but if I say your clothes are ugly I am telling you you are ugly,” he says. And while…
2023-08-05 03:00:37
Link from www.theguardian.com