adios, armani

So I read that Giorgio Armani is no longer providing the off-field uniforms of the English football team (see them looking sharp above). When I told my sister to guess which venerable English institution will take on the reins, she replied, half-serious, "Topshop?"

Her guess wasn't that far off (Topman would be a smidgen closer), but with all due respect to Topshop (and Topman), when it comes to institutions, there's no contesting Marks and Spencer really. After all, in Singapore at least, good old M&S stood for all that was quaintly English - biscuits, tea, jam, flowery granny dresses.

Obviously England has no lack of tailoring talent (see Savile Row), but I think the choice of M&S makes perfect sense when you consider that it's the masses who watch football. It seems like a far more patriotic and engaging choice than Armani,and the players agree - captain John Terry said: "We are extremely pleased with the outcome, as well as the look and feel of the suits we will be wearing."

Plus it's cheaper - the Armani suits cost 2000 GBP, while the new suits are estimated to cost about 400 GBP each.

As for the quality of the tailoring, it's not like these guys are buying their suits off the rack at M&S itself. The suits are going to be designed by Timothy Everest, who has been doing the Autograph line for M&S, and knows a thing or two about menswear. But I hope the suit doesn't really turn out to look like this -

That's not good. I mean, they used to look like this -

The Autograph suit is so....dowdy. Let's not do this to the team. It's bad enough that they seem completely cursed to never win the World Cup again, they shouldn't have to look like total frumps while they're at it too.



Picture from http://www.hellomagazine.com/fashion/2007/05/17/england-team-suits/