Revisiting my (minor) obsession with sloping shoulders made me realise that it looked like an obsession merely with the female form.
In fact my fascination began with the male form, at a time (the 1970s) when social rules of all kinds were being relaxed in favour of greater informality.
And so, in Whitehall at least, it began to be OK for a man to remove his jacket in the office, to work in shirt-sleeve order, even when ladies were present. No doubt the spread of central heating helped encourage this relaxation.
One thing that constantly amused me was that a man would always put his jacket on when receiving a summons to go to the office of a higher authority.
Even at the end of the decade men would always wear their jackets to formal meetings; chairmen of the more old-fashioned kind would, on an especially hot day, in a non-air-conditioned room, announce that ‘Gentlemen, you may remove your jackets.’
In my childhood police officers had always to wear their full uniform when on duty – this extended to wearing their heavy serge tunics while directing traffic during a heatwave. If the sun blasted down for more than a day or two the Chief Constable would magnanimously announce shirt-sleeve orders, & we used to marvel at the sight of the constabulary’s linen.
But the thing that most took me aback about the men in the office was that some of them had really sloping shoulders – something men’s tailoring was always very careful to disguise.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that shoulder pads became such an essential weapon in the wardrobe of women who stormed the workplace in such numbers in the 1980s.
Or that sloping shoulders continue to be just so OUT.
Checking the OED for the origin of shirt sleeve order, I came across the phrase shirtsleeve(s) diplomacy: management of political affairs which is characterized by lack of formality or sophistication.
These days the phrase is sofa government.
