Is tweedy Dan Stevens a great dresser … or just the kind of man GQ likes?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/03/dan-stevens-best-dressed-man-gq

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Hey guys, who's your fashion icon? Tough question no doubt, and one you've probably spent a lot of time thinking about while slumped on your sofa, hands in your pants, accidentally watching another episode of Man v Food (NB, for the more discerning reader please feel free to substitute "reading EP Thompson" here). But don't worry yourself unduly: the latest best-dressed list from GQ is here to resolve that dilemma for you.

Every 12 months, the magazine that's halfway between a lads' mag and a catalogue for those with interminable wads of disposable income publishes a list of men they consider the best dressed. Their latest list is out today and sitting at the top is Dan Stevens. He's the guy who got killed off in Downton Abbey at Christmas and an occasional pundit on the BBC's Review Show. Stevens seems like a nice enough guy. I've never watched Downton Abbey (though I did watch Call the Midwife, does that count?), but I have seen Stevens on The Review Show and he's a well-read and apparently thoughtful man. What I struggle to do though, is see why he's "best dressed".

He's smartly dressed, that's for sure. He'll often be spotted out in a suit and tie, while his hair is consistently well brushed and not flying about like it's desperate to flee his scalp. At the same time, however, Stevens's look is not a particularly distinctive one: suit, tie, kempt hair, er, that's about it. Indeed, sometimes, as in the photo here, Stevens's urbane demeanour could even be said to be bleeding into "regional academic at a function".

Look further down GQ's list and matters become no less cloudy. The Prince of Wales is at No 8, despite having dressed the same way for 40 years. Dermot O'Leary is at No 5, even though he's obliged to wear his suit for work. Sir Bradley Wiggins, meanwhile, a man who, I think I'm not alone in observing, has a distinctive sense of style and managed to rock it like a reincarnation of the Small Faces at last month's Sports Personality of the Year awards, can only creep in at No 30. So what gives?

Well, tattoo me unsophisticated but I think this list might be less a rigorous totting up of an individual's sartorial choices and more a reflection of who the GQ staff feel best represents the Britain they think they live in. As the magazine's editor, Dylan Jones, notes of Stevens, "What can I say? We've all got a man crush on Dan". That presumably goes for Tom Hiddleston too, the ex-Etonian actor who's at No 2. He did a good Loki in the Avengers, although you wouldn't catch me in the outfit, yet he exudes the same sort of youthful tweedishness that you can also detect in Stevens.

Switch to GQ's worst-dressed list and a possible bias becomes even clearer. I bow to no one in my distaste for Ed Sheeran's music, but naming him the worst-dressed man of 2013 is just a little too easy. His occasionally attitudinal tunes are about not dressing in suits and, instead, plowing your own furrow/playing your acoustic guitar around a campfire. In at No 3 with a bullet, meanwhile, is Jon Cruddas, the Labour politician who actually dresses in reasonable suits pretty much all of the time but, you know, kinda believes in the power of collective endeavour and stuff and therefore probably wouldn't be a man Dylan Jones would want to do the conga with.

I once went to a media dinner and sat next to the editor of a chichi women's magazine. We'd barely finished our starter before she told me that "there are two types of men and you're the scruffy kind". So it could be said that I have something of a chip on my shoulder. Be that as it may, not only does this best-dressed list seem to neither have much to do with actual style and more to do with image projection but, in these times we live in, seems almost wilfully determined to laud a style of dress way beyond any average man's resources. As loth as I am to say it, I think I might be with Sheeran on this one.