A friend sent me an article, accompanied by several photographs, from the July 5 Daily Mail about the celebration of the playwright Tom Stoppard’s 80th birthday. The photographs, chiefly of English actors whom I’ve watched with much admiration on PBS and in the movies over the years, confirmed my view that we are living in one of the unhappiest periods for human dress in memory, the age of shabby chic.

But for the occasion of Tom Stoppard’s birthday, this afternoon party might as easily have been billed as a Worst-Dressed Man and Woman contest. Assuming it was such a contest, allow me to announce the winners. The envelopes, please.