It offers the silhouette of a vest top but with more structure and looks good when you layer (just don’t use a cardie)
What with being neither a page boy nor a snooker player, I had not given much thought to waistcoats until recently. I guess I thought of them as belonging to a wardrobe that didn’t concern me: a world of braces, cravats and flat caps. Of Guy Ritchie films, wedding rentals and carnation buttonholes.
Well, I guess the joke’s on me now, because waistcoats aren’t novelty or naff any more. They are happening, and I need to get up to speed on how to wear them. The waistcoat has entered the fashion chat in the slipstream of the trouser suit. Women have been wearing them for decades, but until the last decade it remained a slightly niche move – not weird or eccentric, just a bit of a statement. It is only in the past few years that suits on women have become unremarkable.
These days, women of all stripes wear them: the Princess of Wales, as well as politicians, film stars on the red carpet, brides and moguls and mums. Ahead of the women’s Euros, which kicks off next week, M&S has released a collection for the Lionesses that gives a playful nod to Gareth Southgate’s famous waistcoat. This time around it comes buttoned asymmetrically. The waistcoat is either the third part in the suit look or an alternative to the jacket.
It needs to have a simple, round neckline, one that will map neatly on to the neck of a T-shirt, not a V-neck
This waistcoat moment is very different from the last one, when Kate Moss wore them in the 00s. That was an entirely different iteration: a spry, shrunken scrap of a thing, worn with skinny jeans and a ribbed vest. It was very informal, worn either tight and buttoned (no bra) or hanging loose from the shoulders over other layers, almost like a scarf. It was rakish, romantic and a bit Fleetwood Mac.
