Today the well-off 55-year-old is likely to be the worst-dressed man in the room, wearing a saggy T-shirt and jeans. The cash-poor 25-year-old is in a natty sport coat and skinny tie bought at Topman for a song. Young men are embracing the "Mad Men" elements of style in a way that the older men never did, still don't and just won't. The result is a kind of rift emerging between the generation of men in their 20s and 30s and those in their late 40s and 50s for whom a suit was not merely square but cubed, and caring about how one looked was effeminate.
Here, an argyle wool-cotton V-neck, $295 at Ralph Lauren; cotton shirt, $370 at Marc Jacobs; tartan trousers, $225 at Gant; Polo by Ralph Lauren silk tie, $115 at Bloomingdale's.
