Wes Anderson is an exquisite. You might expect the editor of Britain’s sharpest dressed men’s style magazine (incredibly, that’s me) to approve of anyone who fits that arcane descriptor for a dandified male. But there’s something about Anderson’s tweedy, elbow-patched affect that rankles.
For years I thought my antipathy towards the floppy bow-tied film-maker had less to do with the limitations of his movies, than with his fusspot personal style: the whippet-on-hunger-strike physique; the Pardoner’s hair; the bicycle-clipped Seventies librarian vibe that only Anderson’s fellow corduroy salesmodel, Jarvis Cocker, can comfortably pull off, because only Jarvis Cocker implicitly acknowledges the creepiness of a rich and famous middle-aged man cultivating the appearance of a jumble sale Brummel (Cocker is from Yorkshire, so he has history on his side; Anderson is from Texas where, unless I’m much mistaken, coming on like a seedy Alan Bennett impersonator has less clearly delineated provenance).
