Englishman in New York: Dan Rookwood on moving to the Big Apple

Last month our resident style columnist Dan Rookwood moved to the Big Apple. So how has one of London’s best-dressed gentlemen been received by the Wolves of Wall Street? And will he fit in better than his fellow Brit Piers Morgan?
Dan Rookwood20 March 2014

English or gay?’ says the woman on the platform at Union Square. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I reply, instantly betraying that I am at least one of these. ‘My girlfriends and I have a game we play when we see guys like you,’ she says. ‘They must either be English or gay. Or both. No straight New Yorker dresses like that.’

In London no one talks on public transport unless they are mentally or alcoholically imbalanced. Or Northern. In New York I am approached by strangers in the street and on the subway every day. They want to know where I got my suit, my coat, my glasses, my bag, my ‘look’. As the city’s famous song goes, I’m making a brand-new start of it in ol’ New York, but I certainly don’t expect it’s going to be easy. If I needed a reminder of what a brutal place this can be, on the day we arrive CNN announce they are axing Piers Morgan Live. (Not literally — now that would be a ratings booster.) King of the hill to bottom of the heap in a New York minute.

Until now I didn’t think I had a particularly distinguishable sartorial signature. Working in W1, you don’t stand out if you wear Savile Row suits and Jermyn Street shoes. And in these days when fashion is instantly disseminated globally via Instagram and same-day delivery services, I didn’t expect New York to be markedly different. But you take for granted the fact that London is such an internationally respected and revered menswear capital — until you leave it. I feel like a British three-piece envoy to the States.

In some respects, as the US editor of upmarket men’s etailer mrporter.com, that is exactly what I am. Although the site stocks brands from all around the world, Mr P has established a well-defined British aesthetic since it launched three years ago. And with the US now one of its biggest markets, it wanted a Brit in situ to fly the flag.

My wife Sam and I are determined to make the most of this opportunity. We’ve been in New York for just four weeks and we are absolutely loving it. We have to keep pinching ourselves that we are not tourists. I work on Fifth Avenue, not far from the Flatiron Building. Gambolling down the street, brolly swinging in hand, Sting’s lyrics are an ever-present earworm: ‘See me walking down Fifth Avenue/A walking cane here at my side/I take it everywhere I walk...’ Not that I’m Quentin Crisp, mind.

One stop across the East River on the Brooklyn-bound L Train and we’re in Williamsburg, which is where we’ve rented an eye-wateringly expensive one-bedroom apartment with nowhere near enough room for my 30 pairs of shoes. Still, my commute has reduced from nearly an hour in London to 15 minutes. Plus I've commandeered a store cupboard at the office as a wardrobe.

Williamsburg is a bit like Shoreditch except even more gentrified and middle class. The morning we landed, we had brunch at the Wythe Hotel, which we now realise is the epicentre of self-regarding hipsterdom. It was like walking on to the set of US satire Portlandia (YouTube it now).

People either really love Williamsburg (eg, us) or really don’t. It’s much-pilloried for being full of hipsters supping artisanal coffee and locally microbrewed craft ale from jam jars in a pop-up bar that opens tomorrow while competitively proselytising about bands that don’t quite exist yet. And all the guys wear buttoned-up lumberjack shirts, vintage denim, tatts and taches, beanies and beards. Not so much Mad Men as Plaid Men. This bewhiskered rugged outdoorsman look goes hand in hand with the resurgence of masculine brands steeped in generations-old craftsmanship, such as Red Wing, Carhartt and Filson. As a wearer of a beard and British heritage brands such as Barbour and Sunspel, I could buy into this as a weekend look, though I’m not so sure about wearing a beanie indoors. I was brought up to believe that is poor form. Also: itchy.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Williamsburg Bridge, the style seems fresher and preppier from brands such as J Crew, Gap and Banana Republic. The guys in my office wear varsity jackets, button-down shirts and skinny ties. And people really know how to dress for the polar vortex. While I gingerly negotiated the icy pavements in Church’s monkstraps, the locals stomped past in heavy-duty waterproof Diemme, Danner or Thorogood boots. And there are so many Canada Goose parkas in New York, there can’t be many unplucked geese north of the border.

Another thing I have noticed is that New Yorkers have no qualms about walking around all weekend in gym gear so that they can tell everyone they’re off to a class at Barry’s Bootcamp/CrossFit/SoulCycle/Equinox. I like a pair of Nike Flyknits as much as the next guy, but I do not wish to see his Lycra-sheathed bits while I’m eating my breakfast sausage, thanks awfully.

Incidentally, it’s true what they say: the English accent still really does go a long way. We jumped an hour-long waiting list at a restaurant the other night purely because the waitress liked the way Sam spoke. I’m not especially posh, I’m originally Scouse for God’s sake, but everyone thinks I am and so I find myself hamming it up and affecting Hugh Grant-esque mannerisms. (Who says ‘I beg your pardon’ in real life, for example?)

However, I do struggle to make myself understood. Voice recognition systems do not recognise mine. And the other day I had to repeat my bagel order five times. ‘Oh, you mean toona?’ When it arrived it was five times bigger than I could manage. I practically had to dislocate my jaw like a snake to eat it.

The temptation, of course, is to adopt the accent and speech patterns to make life easier. But I managed to survive four years in Sydney without picking up an Aussie twang. I cannot yet bring myself to adopt American spellings: I auto-correct my auto-correct. I have so far managed to resist ‘reaching out’ to anyone and plan to keep it that way.

And yet I am desperate to fit in otherwise I fear I’ll never really make it here. Critics attributed the end of the Piers show partly to his British bullishness and obdurate refusal to assimilate. Note to self: Don’t Be Like Piers Morgan. So instead, I’m trying to be the quintessential English gentleman at all times.

New Yorkers themselves seem to fall into two camps: startlingly rude or suffocatingly polite. I’m more comfortable with the British middle ground: insouciant indifference and minimal superficial small talk. Here people either close themselves off by wearing earbuds and an impenetrable scowl, or else they cannot do enough for you. When we bought a sofa at the weekend the shop assistant gave us his mobile number.

If people are nice to me here, my Pavlovian response is to slip them some money like a banker in a strip club. The tipping point is so completely discombobulating, Malcolm Gladwell could write another book on it. Restaurants, I get: divide the bill — sorry, check — by ten and times by two. (Though adding 20 per cent to every meal does rather give the lie to the oft-repeated ‘fact’ that eating out in New York is so cheap.) But how much do you tip cabbies, bartenders, the people who pack your overpriced groceries for you? Did I just give that busker $1 or $10?

Of course we’ll get used to everything, just like the thousands of other people who move to New York every day. And then it’ll feel more like home. But when it comes to my sense of style, you can take this boy out of London but he’ll always dress like an Englishman in New York.

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