Style Icons: Charlie Watts

Charlie Watts, drummer for the Rolling Stones, is on Vanity Fair's international best dressed list and deservedly so. Charlie dresses the opposite of most men. When he’s working, he’s wearing a colored cotton tee shirt and trousers. On his own time, when you see him on a London street, he’s wearing a Savile Row suit sans necktie. And they are very nice suits, with a relaxed, comfortable feel to them, in solid colors like khaki and pastels in addition to standard English pinstripes. It’s a look that has taken him a couple of decades of dedicated shopping to perfect and it works well for him.

One of the things I admire about Charlie's style is that, unlike George Clooney, he usually manages to avoid the unfinished open collar look whether or not he's wearing a necktie. Charlie wears shirts buttoned to the neck, mock turtlenecks, and, one of my personal favorites with an open dress shirt, a scarf tied in a loose four in hand with the end thrown over the top of the knot. Out of the ordinary and familiar at the same time, it's a well dressed look that's been used successfully for 75 years.