I had been thinking about the late Duke of Windsor this week when I subscribed to a London Lounge Cloth Club tweed offering that is a version of a cloth used in a suit he wore after the war. And so it was that I found the photograph in this essay, dated seventy-one years ago. It shows the then Prince of Wales at a round of January golf on the French Riviera, wearing tweed plus fours.
Plus fours, also known as breeks, have virtually died out in the United States, but, as I like to point out annually, they remain practical for winter sports involving mud and the splashing though of same. The benefits are that one's washable socks get dirty but not one's wool trousers, and they are longer, hence warmer, than the bermuda shorts that are year-round golf garb for too many men in California. In addition, they provide another opportunity to wear tweed trousers.
Though it does appear that there is a new set of breek-wearing men in the United States, since a Barbour offering on Sierra Trading Post has sold out.
And that's the long and short of it.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Long and Short of It
Photo: Fox Photos/Getty Images
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6 comments:
I have those breeches. They really are great. Durable, warm, fully lined, washable.
typo...
great post though.
Fixed the typo, though I also managed to inadvertantly delete a comment by Mr. Brown so the two generally offset.
Practical...maybe. However frankly it makes the wearer look comical in my opinion.
They look longer than four inches below his knees, so perhaps plus-sixes or plus-eights rather than plus-fours?
As regards breeches looking comical, they can be made to work better if not quite so baggy and when worn with a heavy pair of walking boots, as some 'ramblers' do here in the UK. The bulkier footwear seems to make a better silhouette overall by balancing the bulk of the breeches. Let us not also forget gaiters which can serve a similar function by protecting the footwear and socks from wet weather, whilst continuing the line that has been truncated by the ending of the breeches.
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