‘CONSIDER PARIS. HAUTE COUTURE, COLETTE, BRIGITTE BARDOT, SMOKING, IMPRESSIONISM, that outstanding upstanding eyeful of a tower, Napoleon Bonaparte, poetry, Marcel Proust, champagne and the guillotine. And in matters of men, from the classic, leisured flannels of Yves Saint Laurent and the precise mode of Hubert de Givenchy to the elegant simplicity of a Hermès jacket, the pencil slim of Dior Homme, the post-prep of Maison Kitsuné and the hip and slick of Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent, nobody does contemporary urbane nonchalance with quite the same je ne sais quoi. But the French gentleman, dandy or aristochap—a Champs-Élysées equivalent of London’s Savile Row or Rome’s finest? Mais non. The French gentleman’s philosophy of dress is distinct from the British aristocrat’s affected insouciance, or the swaggering peacocking of Milanese and Neapolitan…
