The man who gets up in the morning and dresses for the office in a standard business suit, spread-collared shirt and suede shoes owes far more than he knows to the Duke of Windsor.
These elements of everyday dress are just a small part of the style legacy left by the duke, who reigned briefly as King Edward VIII before abdicating to marry a twice-divorced American “commoner.” Easily the most influential male style icon of the century, the duke was a fashion innovator who did much to establish the foundation of men’s dress in the post-Victorian era.
Now the doors to his treasured wardrobe have been thrown wide open. From Sept. 11-19, Sotheby’s will auction the remaining contents of the Paris home where he lived in exiled splendor with the woman he loved until his death in 1972. Along with porcelain, paintings, linens, furniture and many finds from the Duchess of Windsor’s closet, the auction will include 159 lots of the duke’s clothing and accessories, from tweed suits tailored on Savile Row to the lederhosen he wore on his honeymoon. The morning coat and striped trousers worn by the duke the day he married Wallis Warfield Simpson in 1937 carry an estimated price of $10,000 to $15,000.
Through Wednesday, Chicagoans have a chance to cozy up to some of the Windsors’ possessions during a preview at the Midwest branch of Sotheby’s, 215 W. Ohio St. This advance peek includes a midnight-blue set of tails from 1937 (estimated at $1,500 to $2,500).
Today, the duke’s lasting fashion influence can be seen in the style of Ralph Lauren and in much of what we classify as the English country look. While the duchess was no slouch in the style department, she was more of an ardent follower of fashion. The duke was a leader.
“He was very innovative,” said Kerry Taylor, Sotheby’s director in charge of costumes and textiles in London. “When he decided to experiment with something, it gave lesser mortals the courage to try to imitate him.”
He detested the high English waistbands on trousers and hated wearing braces (suspenders), so he devised a wide elasticized girdle that held up his pants. Later, he would have all of his trousers made in New York with American waistbands. For elephant hunting, he created a safari suit that allowed him to adjust the length of the sleeves and pants via buttons, to adapt to ranges in temperature and to provide protection in heavy brush. In the `20s, he wore a Fair Isle sweater golfing and singlehandedly restored the livelihood of the sweater makers off the coast of Scotland. When he first wore suede shoes – considered a more casual country shoe – with pinstriped suits, he raised eyebrows in polite society.
He had a way with tartan (he often wore kilts in the evening) and wasn’t afraid to combine plaids with stripes and polka dots. “What he did better than anybody has ever done is mix patterns together,” said David Wolfe, a New York-based trend forecaster with the Doneger Group, and a great fan of the duke’s style of dress. “You’d think that that plaid, that stripe and that check should never go together, except when he did it, it worked. And you could never figure out why.”
Comfort was a priority for the duke, who was raised in a very buttoned-up household.
“The thing he did was make clothes more wearable, more comfortable for the average person,” said Alan Flusser, a menswear designer and the author of several books on men’s dress. “He made fashion democratic in a sense.
Instead of a frock coat, he wore day clothes. Instead of a separate collar, he wore attached collars. I think the Duke of Windsor and then Armani took up the mantle of softening and loosening up men’s clothes. Those two are responsible for more in terms of comfort than any other people in the world.”
The duke was among the first to adopt zipper flies, which greatly perturbed King George V, his father. Zippers, at that time, were used mainly on luggage. He wore a soft collar in place of a wing collar with formalwear. His tuxedos, incidentally, were always midnight blue, not black. Depending on which version you believe, the color either photographed better than black or set off his blue eyes to their best advantage.
In the ’30s, the duke’s ability to change the course of fashion was unmatched. Handsome, eligible and frequently photographed, the future king exerted an influence that’s no longer possible in today’s celebrity-saturated world. Many of Hollywood’s finest dressers, from Fred Astaire to Gary Cooper, took their cues from the duke. And although his taste was considered a bit flashy in some circles, he had incredible flair.
“The one great figure who kept menswear from being monolithically boring was the Duke of Windsor,” said Richard Martin, costume curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the repository for much of the duchess’ wardrobe through the 1950s and some of the duke’s as well. “He became a modified Beau Brummel for the 20th Century.”
His boldest expressions of dress were reserved for sports. While golfing, he wore baggy plus-fours in his earlier years and brightly checked pants later on. For hunting, he came up with plaid stalking trousers with extra-wide legs for comfort and an extra-short hem to keep them out of the bogs. “I believe in bright checks for sportsmen,” he wrote in his autobiography, “A Family Album.” “The louder they are the better I like them.”
Ironically, the style most commonly associated with the Duke of Windsor is something that he claims he never wore in a necktie–the Windsor knot.
“He called it the `so-called Windsor knot,’ ” said Taylor. The duke did indeed like a thick knot, which he wore with spread-collared shirts, but he achieved it through ties made with a double thickness of fabric. “Some of the things he’s famous for he never actually wore,” Taylor said.
While Chicago will get a preview, the items will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York.
