You’ve got to get dressed for unrest, believes Nick Foulkes, as he prepares (endlessly) to join the stylish revolution

“Of course, you know I am a revolutionary.” However well you think you know Charles Finch, he never loses the power to surprise. We were settling into one of the freewheeling filibusters that pass for editorial conferences when the proprietor of Finch’s Quarterly Review made this startling claim. It was a day or two after the public unrest surrounding the G20 summit in London. Much as I would have liked to participate, I had been unavoidably detained at the Basel Watch Fair. Nor had Charles been able to attend the riots in person as he had been in “gay Paree” supervising the acquisition of Mrs Finch’s summer wardrobe from Mlle Chanel’s eponymous dress shop on the Rue Cambon.

However, true to his inner Marxist, Charles had charged the rest of the editorial staff to venture forth and mingle with the revolutionaries: singing snatches of La Marseillaise and distributing little red books designed especially for the G20 by Tristram Fetherstonhaugh containing the collected thoughts of Comrade Finch. And so it was that our own Ulrike Meinhof (features editor Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis) and our token Antipodean republican (managing editor Felicity Harrison) left Finch’s Workers’ Co-operative (formally known as the global HQ) heavily disguised in berets and sunglasses to foment unrest. I think they got as far as Piccadilly Circus before they returned to Heddon Street for a spot of lunch and a little lie-down after their exertions.

As far as I could gather, their chief observation was that the protesters were not terribly well dressed. And having seen some of the television footage, I was bound to agree. Part of the point of being a revolutionary is the chance to dress up. After all, the first experiments with Communism were in the fashion capital of the world: Paris, which, ahead of the curve as ever, embarked on the Paris Commune in the early 1870s, after the Franco-Prussian War. And for all I know, Comrade Finch was not really taking his wife shopping at Chanel, but imbibing the spirit of the Communards – and hopefully seeking style tips from the delightful Anne-Marie Colban at Charvet.

Think back to any successful revolution or political movement aimed at regime change and there is usually a concerted sense of style at work. Garibaldi had his red shirts and his biscuits. Trotsky and Lenin had their beards. Molotov had his cocktail. Mao had his Mao-collared jackets. Fidel and Che had their relaxed combat fatigues (perfect for the jungle or the beach), beards and cigars (I think I even remember seeing a Rolex GMT on Che’s wrist).

To be taken seriously in the revolutionary line, one needs to have a look: a visual signal, an identity that is readily seized upon. Cromwell understood this well enough: the Royalist forces were the foppish, long-haired, lace-shirted Cavaliers, so he decided to go for the Roundhead look. Then there was another firebrand, Charles James Fox, one of FQR’s great heroes, who gambled and gourmandised his way through life in Georgian England. He was partial to the republican dress of the American revolutionaries, with their plain buckskin breeches and blue coats. I am not sure that it was wholly wise of our former colony to throw off the yoke of British rule, but at least they had a look.

I feel compelled to add here that these incendiary views are not shared by any of us at FQR. Whatever brand of revolution we advocate it must, at all times, be compatible with a respect and reverence for the monarchy. We are, all of us – even Felicity – staunch monarchists and we adore the Queen. God bless you, Ma’am.

But just in case one should be called to the barricades, it is helpful to have an idea as to what to wear and, at times like these, I cannot improve upon the advice of Harold Macmillan. The Earl of Stockton may not at first strike one as the most obvious of revolutionaries but he was, with the possible exception of Anthony Eden and Jeremy Thorpe, easily the best-dressed British politician of postwar Britain. And one of the reasons he disapproved so strongly of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was because of their choice of shirting. “You must be mad,” he is supposed to have said when he heard that Sir Oswald wanted his men to wear black shirts. “Whenever the British feel strongly about anything, they wear grey flannel trousers and tweed jackets.”

Accordingly, we have asked Messrs Rubinacci, Haste, Huntsman, Kilgour, Anderson & Sheppard to come to the aid of the party, and, when there is next a public demonstration against something or a march in favour of something else, we will sally forth in our revolutionary tweed – provided, of course, the next such revolutionary interlude can be timed so as not to clash with the Dresden Opera Ball, the SIHH, the BAFTAs, the Academy Awards, the Basel Watch Fair, the couture shows, the Cannes Film Festival, the summer holidays, the start of the grouse shooting season etc etc…

- Nick Foulkes is FQR’s editorial director

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