Carlos III, fashion icon (but from what century?)

Carlos III is discussed with everything except his privileged sense of fashion, worth the redundancy.

Less whimsical than his great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor, and less imposing than his father, the Duke of Edinburgh (two meters tall and stony military elegance), the monarch and his wardrobe full of hundreds of times patched suits enjoy, however, the respect of admirers of classical clothing.

The

press is clear: "We have the best dressed head of state in the world," admired

days after the appearance of Carlos III in Parliament -dressed in a morning suit with a black band- after the death of his mother last September.

I don't know if that much, but, after having been Prince of Wales for seven decades (castrated role where there are), and taking into account his regal blunders, it is in the closet where Carlos expresses himself more and better.

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True to his concern for sustainability, he is famous for cultivating "the world's slowest fashion": few clothes, made to measure on Savile Row, that he wears over and over again.

For the wedding of his son Enrique with Meghan Markle, in 2018, he recycled a gray morning suit from 1984 similar to the one he wore at the wedding of Felipe and Letizia.

The cult of the patch also reaches shoes (Masatomo, a Tokyo shoemaker, has been applying the

and his coronation.

For Saturday's event, the new monarch has had the ceremonial glove and three robes worn by his grandfather, King George VI, repaired.

One of them, the so-called

is completely covered in gold, but don't expect a festival of aristocratic opulence among the audience at the ceremony.

Then-Prince Charles, in 1999, surrounded by gentoo penguins during a visit to León Marino, one of the Falkland Islands. Antonia Hille (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty)

At some point in the seventies, Carlos III coined a certain 'sex appeal'.

Here, preparing for a horse race on Smith's Lawn, within the actual grounds of Windsor Great Park.Tim Graham (Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty)

Carlos has prohibited his guests from the galas previously dictated by protocol: nothing to do with his mother's lavish coronation in 1952, the first to be televised, and after whose parade of personalities of the new and old order, Cecil Beaton wrote in his diary : "Clearly the old aristocracy is still in charge" (this, after laughing at having caught one or two taking out the flask).

His idea of ​​a reduced monarchy has been followed by a mandate for simplicity in the

day dresses for women and suits, morning coats or uniforms for men.

But the ermine cloak is not allowed.

Some have called it "

A man attached to a suit (gray)

When dressing, Carlos is conservative without being totally reactionary;

content but not boring, and he is unmistakably English without being ridiculous.

A mix between Colonel Pickering and Professor Higgins, but with his own ingredients.

He always wears a small tie knot, and said tie, even if it lends itself to a bit of fun, never goes with the handkerchief in the suit pocket, often grey, double-breasted, with a wide lapel and a soft but reinforced shoulder.

His repertoire of suppliers is a who's who of elegant orthodoxy: shirts by Turnbull & Asser;

Anderson & Sheppard or Gieves & Hawkes suits;

shoes from Crockett & Jones and uniforms and tails from Benson & Clegg, a house specializing in naval tailoring.

Carlos in a kilt and with a cane Sheperd's Crook, in Aberdeenshire (Scotland).

True to its suppliers, the plaid shirt is by Turnbull & Asser.Tim Graham (Tim Graham Photo Library via Get)

Charles III dressed in a Barbour jacket walking across the countryside before taking part in the North Warwickshire hunting tournament.Tim Graham (Tim Graham Photo Library via Get)

Carlos III is famous for his enviable range of gray morning suits, but the suit of this color is the perfect example of the -admirably stagnant- idea of ​​dress code that survives on Savile Row.

Already in the fifties, when José Luis de Vilallonga asked for a single-breasted gray flannel suit at Henry Poole, another mythical tailor, he was met with a refusal:

'At Poole all our striped flannel jackets are double-breasted.

—But I want it open.

—Here

we cross them.

The gray morning suit is his best speech: here, the still Prince of Wales leaves the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid after the wedding of the then Princes of Asturias, in May 2004. Dusko Despotovic (Corbis via Getty Images)

frequently

to him – is now considered a good omen for the Savile Row industry, but it has been years in the making.

In part, it comes from the atypical

that, during his youth, he contributed to the classics, and that has been rediscovered by new generations, not necessarily monarchists.

Countless images of Carlos without a shirt, dressed in a polo shirt aboard his Aston Martin, with a Barbour (these photos were, in the eighties, guilty of a boom in the sales of this garment) and even with a shirt, V-neck sweater and

they have surfaced in magazine articles, Pinterest walls and blog posts dedicated to masculine elegance.

Today, a septuagenarian, and although he represents an antediluvian paternalism, the new monarch functions as a model of what his country's tailoring is capable of doing for some men: mainly, providing them with a uniform that ages with them despite the trends and without making them look like anonymous executives or the weather man.

Something that, allow me a bad thing, could be said of his children.

Carlos from England, in the year 2000, wearing one of his famous?

gray suits. Dan Callister (Getty Images)

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