In
Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s strange and stifling vision of English class, weird breakfast orders and high-society tantrums, Daniel Day-Lewis plays the frigid and aloof couturier Reynolds Woodcock, a man with complex views on work and relationships, offset by a truly beautiful wardrobe: wool overcoats, Anderson & Sheppard suits, spit-polished shoes and, the real star of the film’s costume design, silk cravats, worn neatly under Oxford shirts and tweed blazers.
Phantom Thread is set in the mid-1950s, an era when clothes, like upper lips, were stiff and, for gentlemen, neckwear was de rigueur.
While many mainstays of formal mid-century menswear the hats, the briefcases and, increasingly, the ties have fallen from favour over the years, as fabrics soften and workplaces become evermore flexible and remote, the silk scarf, worn as a cravat, tossed freely across the shoulders or tied bandana-style around the neck, as if its wearer were a golden retriever with lots