I look at my left hand probably a hundred times a day.
There's always a watch on it. Some days it's a Cartier. Some days a Tiffany. Some days it's a Chinese clone that cost very little and happens to make me smile.
And then there's the ring.
It's a Schlumberger ring I first saw in a drawer in understock on my very first day at Tiffany. It wasn't particularly expensive, but it took me five years before I finally bought it, right before my move to Australia.
I've worn it on my wedding finger every day since June 2008.
I'm not married. That's simply where I wear it.
Every time I look at my watch, I see the ring. And every so often I still think about that first day, the drawer I found it in, the five years before I bought it, and everything that's happened since.
My Tank is much the same.
Are they the most elegant objects in the world? Probably not. Are they elegant to me?
Absolutely.
And recently that got me thinking about something considerably larger. What makes a man elegant? Not stylish. Not fashionable. Not beautifully dressed.
Elegant.
I'm not sure the answer in 2026 is much different from what it would have been in 1954.
The clothes have changed. The rules have changed. The way men live has certainly changed. But I don't think the essential qualities have.
Think of a man who drives a truck for a living.
He may own nothing with a label you'd recognise. But he keeps his word. He treats a stranger and his boss with the same respect. He does the right thing when there's no one there to see it and no credit coming for it. And with whatever he has, he presents himself as though it matters, because to him it does.
Now think of another man.
He has access to everything. The right house. The right watch. The right clothes. And underneath all of it, perhaps not very much worth respecting. As I see it, the first man is elegant. The second is simply well dressed.
And, of course, reverse the circumstances and the answer can reverse with them. A billionaire can be an elegant man. A truck driver can be an ass. Elegance doesn't belong to a class.
I spent forty years in rooms where wealth was simply taken for granted. Beautiful clothes and beautiful things were everywhere. I had access to the best of them myself, and I knew how fortunate I was. I never took that access for granted.
But all those years taught me something that a price tag never could.
The clothes are the easy part.
Anyone with sufficient means can be beautifully dressed. Money can buy extraordinary craftsmanship. It can buy access. It can buy a great stylist. What it cannot buy is character.
It cannot buy discretion. It cannot buy consideration. It cannot make a man keep his word when keeping it becomes inconvenient. It cannot teach him how to treat someone who can do absolutely nothing for him. And it cannot determine what he does when the room empties, and nobody is watching.
Those things have to belong to the man.
Perhaps that's where we've confused style with elegance.
Style is immediately legible. You can see the suit. You can recognise the watch. You can notice the shoes, the haircut, the car. Clothes are a signal anyone can read.
And I care about that signal. I believe how we present ourselves matters. Appropriateness matters. Grooming matters. Taking enough care to present yourself properly for another person or an occasion is, to me, a form of consideration and respect.
But presentation is only the visible part.
A beautifully dressed man can still behave badly. And a man in work boots can possess extraordinary dignity. The clothes may tell you how a man presents himself.
His standards tell you who he is.
That's the distinction I've become increasingly interested in. Restraint. Discretion. Keeping a confidence and keeping a promise. Treating people with respect regardless of their position. And holding to all of it when there is no audience to reward you for it.
None of those qualities belongs to another era.
They aren't nostalgic. They don't require us to dress like Cary Grant or live according to the social conventions of 1954. If anything, I think they may matter more now precisely because the world around us has changed so much.
We live in a culture that rewards exposure. More opinion. More display. More consumption. More attention.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that. But I sometimes wonder what we've allowed it to displace. Perhaps elegance isn't disappearing at all. Perhaps we've simply become better at recognising its exterior signals than its interior ones.
Style is something you can see. Elegance is something you sense.
And maybe that's why my ring and my watches started me thinking about all of this in the first place. Their value to me isn't really visible to anyone else.
Nobody looking at that Schlumberger ring could possibly know what I see when I look at it. They don't share its history.
I do.
And perhaps there's something in that. The things that mean the most don't always announce themselves. Neither do the qualities I most admire in a man.
So where does that leave me? Do I consider myself an elegant man? I don't know that that's mine to decide.
I dress the way I dress. I try to keep my word. I try to treat people properly. I have standards for how I conduct myself in public and, more importantly, for how I conduct myself when nobody is there to see it.
Sometimes I live up to them. Sometimes I don't. But I know what I'm aiming for. I'm trying every day to become a little better at being the man I believe an elegant man should be.
The elegant man in 2026 isn't really so different from the elegant man of another time.
The clothes changed. The world changed.
The standard didn't.
As I see it, clothes conceal what actions reveal.
Until next time,
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