Style Icon: Hubert de Givenchy

The fashionable pairing of designer Comte Hubert de Givenchy, one of the world's best dressed men in the second half of the twentieth century, and the actress Audrey Hepburn helped make Hepburn an enduring international star.

For all that he was elected to the International Best-Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1970, Givenchy was typically photographed in a dark suit, plain shirt and a discreetly dark necktie a la Cary Grant in Hitchcock's film North by Northwest. The only other style I've seen in his photos is a casual version of the same clothes: dark dress trousers, a plain dress shirt and a dark crew neck sweater.

Givenchy shows us that a man can be every bit as well known for his good taste over time as he might otherwise be for consistent outrageousness in his dress.

Best Dressed?

The September issue of Vanity Fair magazine weighs in with the 68th annual version of the International Best-Dressed List. As usual, it's a melange of well-dressed women (I like Charlotte Gainsbourg), publicity hungry celebs, and men that make you wonder who is selecting these people.

I mean, Count Manfredi Della Gherardesca looks fine and Gay Talese belongs but some of the men are wearing clothes that look like they came straight off the rack. Though that's a mere bagatelle next to Lapo Elkann's attention-seeking approach to dress.

In a way, it's surprising that the list isn't exclusively comprised of politicians, models and actors. If you think about it, they are about the only people that have a professional incentive to study themselves in order to fine-tune every aspect of their appearance, and hours of video they can watch in order to do so. Unfortunately, too many of them take the Elkann/Johnny Depp approach of wearing something calculated to attract as much publicity as possible.

In an era where there are few rules about situationally appropriate clothing, the criteria for best dressed are becoming schizophrenic. On the one hand there is classic style, where the ideal is the quiet blend that turns no heads. On the other are the costumes designed to generate attention. Give me a List of one or the other, but I don't think it's rational to include both.