Stealth Wealth Style Guide

Let me be clear: I am not a fan of stealth wealth.

Oh, I admire those with genuine stealth wealth style. The unobtrusive, casual, and subtle display of the good things in life is elegant and natural in that milieu. What I detest is the aping of these style markers by those without the budget to truly sustain it, and without the education and life perspective to match it.

When stealth wealth markers are deliberately sought out solely for their utility as stealth wealth markers (ie as a style choice), the resultant display radiates an aura of inauthenticity, of calculated deliberation, and of bourgeois social climbing. This is the very antithesis of true stealth wealth and these copyists are almost always easily detectable from their body language and from a moment’s conversation.

My own inclinations hew far more closely to a more foppish, dandyish manner of dress. I have a love of flair and eccentricity, which reflects my personal outlook on life, and I would get terribly bored wearing items consistent with a stealth wealth approach.

However, from browsing my site stats here, I know I regularly get readers arriving at this blog searching for “stealth wealth” as I have mentioned the term before. If you are one of those readers, I hope this article gets you to think about whether stealth wealth is the most authentic way for you to dress. Does it mesh smoothly with your lifestyle, your outlook, and your personality? If it does not, find your personal expression of style first, and then choose the clothing to match. Otherwise you will come across as fradulent, whatever you wear.

If the stealth wealth approach still appeals, its wardrobe can be remarkably concise. It emphasises quality and traditional good fit beyond range and scope, and eschews any major deviations from a unified personal aesthetic consistent with conservative, time-honoured cuts and silhouettes. Because of its relative brevity, it encourages spending more on each item, expecting that it will last a long time and benefit from the patina of age. It also rewards those who actively live in their clothes, not those who attempt to preserve them in aspic for fear of damaging them.

To start with, assuming an average professional career requiring business dress, I would suggest the following “starter” stealthy wardrobe:

• 3 suits – a solid mid-grey flannel, a navy herringbone worsted and a charcoal-grey worsted. The flannel will be used in the cooler months only. The navy and charcoal-grey should be in year-round weights.
• 2 odd jackets – a navy blazer in a year-round weight, and a slightly heavier tweed with a plaid pattern that’s interesting without being crazy.
• 4 pairs of odd trousers – chocolate-brown cords, light grey wool flannels, tan cotton chinos, beige or mocha linen. The cords and flannels are for the cooler months, the chinos and linens are for the rest of the year.
• 2-3 pairs of shoes – black cap-toe oxfords, brown wingtips, brown/dark-burgundy loafers, all made on a classic last with a minimum of excessive antiquing. Belts to match, so one black calf, one brown calf, and if you opted for burgundy loafers, you’ll also need a belt for that.
• 5 business-friendly shirts – cotton, predominantly white or pale-blue and certainly no unusual colours. If you opt for double/French cuffs on these rather than buttons, you’ll also need cufflinks, but one pair of sterling silver knots or double-sided gold/onyx ovals (depending on preference) will suffice.
• 5 more casual shirts – 4 cotton, one linen. Again, predominantly white or pale-blue, though larger-scale patterns and some more colour is acceptable.
• 5 ties – solid navy silk grenadine, solid grey cashmere, navy silk with a small-scale pattern (eg white dots), dark burgundy silk with a small-scale pattern (preferably different from the navy silk), diagonally-striped (“regimental”/”repp-stripe”) tie in muted earthy colours
• 3 pocket squares (optional) – solid cream/white, a multi-coloured pictorial design (the design itself won’t show when in the pocket, but many colours will give it versatility), one other of your choice that co-ordinates with the other colours you’ve chosen
• navy or maroon socks with a minimum of pattern – as many as you need

That’s it. If you are younger or have more casual occasions to attend, you will likely also need a pair of conservative, trim dark-indigo jeans, a pair of dark-brown sturdy chelsea boots and a smart casual jacket/coat of some sort. If you live in a cool climate, you’ll also need a dark business-friendly overcoat or two, and a couple scarves and pairs of leather gloves. Of course, you’ll also need a few other accessories like a discreet simple watch, pen, and so forth.

The cost of that wardrobe is somewhere around £15k, assuming mid-priced Savile Row bespoke for the suits and jackets, Jermyn Street-quality made-to-measure for the shirts, and good ready-to-wear quality for the rest (eg Edward Green or John Lobb Paris for the shoes, Drakes for the ties and accessories).

£15k is of course expensive. But this is stealth-WEALTH, after all. Running costs will be relatively low, as good items will last a long time, and their lifetime can be extended further by adding similarly discreet additional items at a slow rate over the years.

If you do it on the cheap, I really think you miss part of the point of the aesthetic. You may replicate the superficial look, but will it feel the same on you? Will the psychological effect on yourself and others be the same? Perhaps, but I think not in the majority of cases. You will obtain a very presentable wardrobe and look very smart, but something vital will be missing.

Too many apers of this stealth wealth aesthetic think that merely obtaining the look is enough. It is not. The look is completely secondary to the intent, and if they conflict you will never feel comfortable in your clothes. I would not be comfortable wearing stealth wealth because, at heart, while I can admire the look, I cannot not love it. It is too restrained for me, and I would feel that I was attempting to live according to someone else’s aesthetic if I wore it.

The photo illustrating this article is Chris Plummer, dressed for his role as banker (and former Nazi collaborator) Arthur Case in the movie Inside Man. Almost everything he wears fits the stealth-wealth aesthetic, with the possible exception of his tie-pin. The character has deliberately adopted the aesthetic as part of creating a new respectable life for himself.

Casual Friday

Regular readers know that I love clothes and the fun of dressing up.

Creating a style through one’s clothing choices is both enjoyable and an artistic/aesthetic outlet. I naturally gravitate towards a tailored style. It is often eccentric, and sometimes downright flamboyant, but it is usually a style within the approximate boundaries of classically-inspired menswear: jackets, dress shirts, ties, nice shoes, that sort of thing. This suits my personality and so tends to echo the impression I project to people through my interactions with them – conservative if need be, but engaging and with an eccentric edge.

When I quit full-time work, I knew that there would be more days where that sort of business or business casual look would not be appropriate, and so I’ve had to branch out a bit more. I must admit that I find casualwear much more challenging than more formal dress. I think it’s partly because my personality is more congruent with a tailored look and partly because tailored looks are more flattering to my less-than-sculpted physique! But it is also because the range of what can be worn casually is broader in terms of silhouette, cut, fabric and colour.

Tailored looks do also have breadth in these matters, but it is the degree of variance that is different. Tailored looks vary because of nuance, but casual looks vary because of gross differences in design. Casual clothing thus possesses a completely different aesthetic language compared to the dialetical differences between various tailored looks.

Foreign languages were never my forté and I still fall into the perennial trap of all those with poor foreign language skills – speaking slower or louder in one’s native tongue instead. So, there is still too much residue from my more familiar tailored style of dress. Perhaps in time I will become more fluent and then be able to introduce some interest into what are currently pedestrian attempts. Languages are always more interesting once you can move past basic grammar and syntax.

Universe to last forever; let’s fit more into it

Today scientists have told us that the universe will endure forever, becoming “a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching absolute zero”. Leaving aside the obvious jokes between the similarity of that fate and the environment of the average NHS meeting, I was struck by the contrast between this infinite expanse of time, and the increasing amount of multi-tasking we now each perform in an effort to squeeze more activity into every moment.

We spend half our waking lives accessing media, and because of multi-tasking we manage to squeeze 9 hours worth of entertainment access into a mere 7 hours of time. A big part of this ability to multi-task is down to the rise in mobile internet access via smartphones.

I’ve certainly noticed how intertwined my life has become with my phone, and not just in terms of internet access. Even small things like the ringtone can have an effect. Up until my recently leaving full-time work, I used one particular ringtone for many years. Unlike other doctors, psychiatrists here don’t carry bleeps/pagers even within hospital and in any case many do a lot of work out in the community, so most of the time we’re contacted on our mobile phones. Like Pavlov’s dogs, or rats in a Skinner box, I underwent a conditioning process by which I automatically associated that  ringtone with the day-to-day hassle of work.

One of the first things I did on leaving was to promptly change my ringtone, to eliminate that automatic negative thought of “Oh bother, what now?”.  Instead, now when the phone goes off to the strains of the Magnum PI theme, I have a much more enjoyable “Ooh, who’s calling?” feeling (still waiting for a Ferrari 308 GTS though). It’s surprised me just what a difference that change has made to my core attitude to my phone.

As in the contrasting news stories, the potential for the infinite can sometimes run up against the aggressive intensity of the mundane.