Narendra Modi’s personalised pinstripe: tasteful or crass?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/28/narendra-modi-monogrammed-suit-tasteful-crass

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Good news, pub quizzers! If you can’t remember the name of the prime minister of India, and he happens to be doing the quiz too, just take a look at his suit! Helpfully, he’s had his name stitched into the fabric, creating both a chalk-stripe effect and an aura of class. While meeting with President Obama, Narenda Modi’s suit became quite the talking point, because life is so dull that a simple piece of cloth can liven up a meeting between leaders of two of the most powerful countries on Earth.

But we come not to mock. We come to praise. When was the last time a male politician got noticed for their clothes outside the pages of GQ? Why, it’s been nearly five weeks since photos emerged of William Hague wearing neon lederhosen. Months since Andy Burnham went out in only clogs. Years since Alan Clark stepped out in a python onesie. Instead, here we have sartorial commentary of the classier kind: the kind that pays attention to detail.

Detail is the devil that makes men’s clothing good or bad. Good menswear usually isn’t in your face; it’s meant to be classically powerful while understated, and suggest that the man wearing it could – yes, even in the 21st century – fix a boiler, pull a drowning child from a river and hold somebody’s hair as they cry and die. Details are added to display idiosyncrasies and to show that attention has been paid when dressing and will be rewarded when viewing.

Narendra Modi’s creation is noticeable. So the question becomes whether it was tasteful or crass, which is damned difficult to judge when it comes to wearing your own name.

Monogramming and labelling can easily smack of showboating: boastfulness and arrogance and too much pride in oneself. It can also seem a little defensive, as though the person needs to be reminded that they are someone, that they have worth, that they’ve achieved something. I, for instance, am a shrinking violet, lacking the self-confidence to blaze my name across my torso. If I had £8,000 to spend on a suit, it had probably have a pinstripe made of tiny genitals winding their way up to my rope-stripe necklace rather than a self-satisfied repetition of my own name.

But why do we feel this way? Having your own name or initials on your clothes is surely better than having other people’s, isn’t it? Than having glasses belonging to Mr Ray Ban, or Giorgio Armani’s signature scrawled across your shoulder blades like a disastrous tattoo? It was a perfectly normal sign of success in the old days to have your initials monogrammed on your possessions – why, in this narcissist day and age, is it laughed at when someone can have Bjorn Borg’s name splashed across their arse? Reminding people of your name has got to be better than people thinking you’re called Calvin Klein, or Miss Juicy Couture (“Of the Hampshire Coutures?”).

Narcissism today is much more well hidden: it is wrapped up in the people you know, the places you go, the brands you “engage” with – not in a recognition of your own success. You can be a sociopathic new-build dweller, gazing upon the human filth beneath you, but you’re so much worse if you’ve got your initials on your pen.

On the flip side, we’ve all probably inherited a small piece of jewellery from a grandfather otherwise not recorded – maybe a watch with a “JR”, maybe some cufflinks with an “FU”. These will be treasured possessions, lasting mementoes of a man who took pride in himself, took pride in what he could do, and took the time and expense to get it permanently etched. Monogramming is a flexible thing: we can use it to decry an idiot who would see it as part of their idiotic “personal brand”, and use it as a subtle sign of appreciation and care in an altogether classier person. We can feel nauseous at the fairytale fonts of initials on a new baby’s slippers, or we think it a lovely touch to have a name engraved on a silver hairbrush received as a christening present.

No, it has to be concluded that a true gentleman retains his initials on his possessions. It is not only important to be polite – and subtly reminding people of your name in case they forget it is most certainly almost that – but also crucial to be an individual, to mark yourself out in understated ways. Whether those ways die with you, or whether they’re remembered when you’re gone, they’ve done some good. And in the end, no matter who you are, isn’t that all we can aim for?