Edward
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This always comes round every so often. You shouldn't wear leather over forty, or jeans over fifty, or whatever. Next it'll be suits under sixty. The usual tedium of fashion bloggers who mistake their own tastes for "rules", or are ***ning for a reaction because edgelords, or engagement = profit, or both. Best ignored.
The irony is that for the last decade or maybe more it's been rare indeed that I've seen a leather jacket on anyone much under forty with any frequency here in London. In all my years of teaching (twenty-seven next month) at The Institution, I recall precisely one of my undergraduates who wore a leather jacket regularly. I don't recall if any others ever did, but he sticks out in my memory for it, which says a lot.
Jeans are much more universal, age-wise, which always surprises me somewhat. Even making allowance for the revivalist trends of the last two decades, there's a shocking lack of difference in what the males among my undergrads have been wearing these last twenty years and what I wore myself as an undergrad in Belfast back in the 90s. And Belfast then was hardly.... fashion forward. Let's just say I used to get shouted at in the street for wearing a hat. A basic cap at that. It always rather disappoints me that the kids haven't en masse eschewed denim for their own thing, tbh. Still, to be fair at least they aren't under the illusion all too many of my contemporaries are that it's somehow rebellious or cool to wear jeans to the office. I have colleagues who, in 2026 *still* take a childish glee in not wearing a tie. Do your own thing, fashion-wise and all, but seriously.... the Sixties just called demanding their "rebellion" be returned, before the Eighties said "Your rebellion? How dare you! Give us our conformity back!"
One thing I've never worn, even when they were the height of fashionability in the mid-eighties, was ripped denim. Always hated to look of ripped jeans. I'll patch and repair them for wearing doing dirty jobs or round the house, but I always hated the holey look.
The irony is that for the last decade or maybe more it's been rare indeed that I've seen a leather jacket on anyone much under forty with any frequency here in London. In all my years of teaching (twenty-seven next month) at The Institution, I recall precisely one of my undergraduates who wore a leather jacket regularly. I don't recall if any others ever did, but he sticks out in my memory for it, which says a lot.
Jeans are much more universal, age-wise, which always surprises me somewhat. Even making allowance for the revivalist trends of the last two decades, there's a shocking lack of difference in what the males among my undergrads have been wearing these last twenty years and what I wore myself as an undergrad in Belfast back in the 90s. And Belfast then was hardly.... fashion forward. Let's just say I used to get shouted at in the street for wearing a hat. A basic cap at that. It always rather disappoints me that the kids haven't en masse eschewed denim for their own thing, tbh. Still, to be fair at least they aren't under the illusion all too many of my contemporaries are that it's somehow rebellious or cool to wear jeans to the office. I have colleagues who, in 2026 *still* take a childish glee in not wearing a tie. Do your own thing, fashion-wise and all, but seriously.... the Sixties just called demanding their "rebellion" be returned, before the Eighties said "Your rebellion? How dare you! Give us our conformity back!"
One thing I've never worn, even when they were the height of fashionability in the mid-eighties, was ripped denim. Always hated to look of ripped jeans. I'll patch and repair them for wearing doing dirty jobs or round the house, but I always hated the holey look.
