For today's instalment, let's take our cue from taxonomy, the labelling of plants and animals. If patterns could be similarly classified into an inverted pyramid scheme minus the Latin names, plaid would belong to the kingdom of check. It would be further subdivided into various classes and orders from the Scottish tartans to Glen and Madras. Even buffalo check, much beloved in Canada, is generally acknowledged as a type of plaid.
So perennial a crowd pleaser has plaid become that it no longer goes in and out of style; it just is. These days, plaid could conceivably be considered a neutral by virtue of its ubiquity.
This explains why men seem to be increasingly comfortable sporting large swaths of plaid - not in kilt form, which is still a bit too Marc-Jacobs-eccentric - but as sport jackets.
I have noticed quite a few around Toronto, mostly on fashion types who are happy to peacock about in something more fetching than black, charcoal or navy. Joe Mimran of Joe Fresh fame, for instance, has one in dark green and deep blue, as does entrepreneur David Daniels. Occasionally, they will wear the whole suit. It's a dandified look that stops just shy of (unCanadian) flamboyance.
Which brings us to a brief word on sport versus suit jackets. In terms of fit, there's little difference. But as men's fashion expert Glen O'Brien makes clear on the GQ website, a man would never want to break up an office-appropriate glen-plaid suit and wear the jacket with jeans or casual trousers. Separating the pieces would throw off the sartorial balance.
As a rule, larger plaids are found on and better suited to sport jackets. And there's nothing wrong with wearing a sport jacket to work if your office culture is one that eschews neckties and monogrammed shirts. The key to pulling one off is to tone down all other articles of clothing, meaning a very crisp white shirt and pair of dark jeans or slim wool pants. A lace-up or classic loafer will do very nicely.
The fall 2010 men's wear collections that wrapped last month in Milan featured an abundance of plaid jackets, from the imagined uniforms of brooding Belgian artists at Kris Van Asche to those evoking London prepsters at Paul Smith. These are divergent species, to be sure, but the pattern weaves them together. Check marks for all.