ONE OFTEN HEARS WASHINGTON, D.C., shamed for its sartorial cluelessness. The putdown holds, more or less, that a fashionable dresser would be as out of place among the capital’s armies of shabbiness as a harlequined jester in a sea of black turtlenecks.
Dork chic–with, famously, its regulation leisure wear of khaki pants and golf shirts for men–is certainly the reigning philosophy of style in town. But I have noticed more than a handful of gents, all of them righteous types, who are absolutely obsessed with clothing. No trendsetting metrosexuals, even less their Gap-addicted lagging indicators, they are cuff-link aristocrats who know more about broadcloth than should be considered polite or appropriate for straight men. They have their own tailors and their suits are all custom-made-not bought at the store and then adjusted, but built from the hem up. Their jackets have full linings; hell, their linings have full linings.
