Now everybody’s going in for gabardine

Esquire, August 1935: “We’ve been talking about gabardine for so long that the only expression we have left on the subject is a tendency to yawn now that the season has arrived in which the whole country seems suddenly to have gone goofy over it with a wide-eyed air of discovery. Well, you’d better excuse or ignore our boredom, because it’s very good although, like sex, it had been around for quite awhile before everybody began taking it up.

The light cream colour shown here is this season’s most desirable shade, in or out of town. The jacket looks very fine with white or grey slacks, and so do the trousers with a brown Shetland checked tweed jacket. This is the single-breasted model with a long lapel roll. Note the unflapped pockets and the side vents. The accessories consist of a brown and white candy striped shirt, plaid bow tie, brown reversed calf town shoes and a sennit straw hat with a club coloured band.”

A gorgeous colour gabardine and particularly fine with the suede shoes. Of course I would go with a long tie, perhaps in a woven brown, and lose the hat. Unflapped pockets also look wrong on such a casual suit – but then, as pictures like this show, rules fluctuate just like fashions.