A Melbourne member of an online men's style forum recently caused a minor ruckus when he declared that he couldn't bring himself to wear a pocket square - a handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit. His post generated more than 160 replies, including one from a Sydney member who insisted that he wouldn't dream of leaving the house without a pocket square tucked firmly in his jacket. Typically, he couldn't resist a dig at the more conservative Melbourne population.
"I like to blatantly fly in the face of the ubiquitous Aussie dagginess," he sniffed. "However, I universally only ever get positive comments for doing so. And all this in Sydney (so much for you Melburnians being supposedly "better dressed" than us Sydneysiders!
)" The Melbourne man had reasoned that the pocket square isn't appropriate business attire in Australia, and would label the wearer "eccentric". After all, how often do you see political or business leaders with pocket squares? Prime Minister John Howard, in fact, often wears one.
But gratingly, he sometimes falls for the sartorial faux pas of matching it exactly to his tie. The Melbourne man, wrestling with this important dilemma, was accused of being a "sheep" - even paranoid - by some posters. Others, from the US and Britain, sympathised with him, saying they felt they might look "too good" with a pocket square.
And so it went back and forth, with some posters resorting to pulling out big gun pocket square wearers, like Cary Grant and Gary Cooper, in support of their argument. The latest pictures of Brad Pitt at the Cannes film festival show him in a Tom Ford light grey shirt, white open-neck shirt - and a white pocket square clearly visible. Wikipedia devotes several pages to the pocket square, said to have been invented by Richard II of England as "little pieces (of cloth) for the lord King to wipe and clean his nose.
" Thankfully, it soon developed into a decorative accessory. When worn with a suit the pocket square can be anything but square. Wikipedia details many different styles, including the three-point fold, where three points of the handkerchief show; the Puff or (Gary) Cooper, where it is shaped into a round puff and the (Fred) Astaire, a puff with a point on each side, which seems a little extreme.
The best and most inconspicuous is a small white linen or cotton square shaped in the TV Fold style, where it is folded to run parallel to the breast pocket with about half an inch on show. If you are going to wear one make sure it is discreet and never, ever buy matching tie and hanky sets. And don't use bright colours or patterns, it's designed to compliment your suit, not detract from it.
Note to PM: if you're not sure what to buy, the default choice is white, which always looks good. A Melbourne member of an online men's style forum recently caused a minor ruckus when he declared that he couldn't bring himself to wear a pocket square - a handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit.
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