Suits you, sir! How King Felipe won the style game

As the Spanish football team celebrated winning the Euros 2024, off the pitch, the Spanish monarch went global for being the best-dressed royal on the planet. Richard Godwin looks at how Spain became the new Italy when it comes to style and football

The Spanish monarch is quite simply in a class of his own (Getty)

Now that England’s acute despair has metastasised into the more manageable condition of chronic disappointment, we can hopefully all admit that Spain simply produced the classier outfit.

It was that daring flash of red that caught the eye – the brilliant use of width too. But it was the overall shape of the ensemble that was most impressive, everything measured with millimetre precision. Spain looked composed throughout, up to and including the moment the trophy was finally grasped. Yes, success is simply the kind of thing we do, was the basic message. In a word? Kingly. 

Contrast with our own princes. A perfectly solid effort, lads – but safe, too safe, too narrow too, no light and shade, lacking the confidence of born winners. And so it proved throughout the match. Our boys looked tense, nervy, sweaty under the collar, overshadowed by the occasion itself.

But let’s not fall to recriminations. There is no shame in losing to such an obviously superior performer – and Princes William and George were clearly no match for King Felipe VI of Spain. Who knows, perhaps our own royals will come good one day? 

For now, though, the Spanish monarch is quite simply in a class of his own. In football, as in menswear, Spain is the new Italy, the place one glances enviously for elegance and class.

It was the cult American menswear commentator Derek Guy (who has over 1 million followers on his X account @dieworkwear) who first championed King Felipe as the dominant force in the men’s fashion game.

After the 2023 Wimbledon final, Guy subjected the king’s outfit to a forensic analysis that soon went viral. “Very rare to see this level of tailoring nowadays, even on the wealthy,” he noted.

The overall effect, he explained, is one of command; Felipe always appears at ease with himself and the situation. But this dash belies the near mathematical precision of the cut of his suits: the lapels that end almost precisely halfway between collar and shoulder; the coats that end halfway to the floor; the trousers always in neat proportion creating a seamless whole (Please note, you earn extra tailoring points for calling it a “coat” not a jacket). 

The king holds the Euro 2024 trophy as he celebrates with the Spanish team (AP)

The “roll” of Felipe’s lapel fabric has come in for particular praise (most menswear is very flat these days). Also of note is the monarch’s excellent footwear – double monk shoes! – and impeccably stylish family too. Queen Letizia is similarly admired in womenswear.

You might counter that that’s all very well for the King of Spain. We are not all 6ft 5in heads of states of stylish Iberian tapas kingdoms that happen to be very good at football.

But Spain wasn’t always so stylish or so successful at football. Plenty of extremely wealthy men dress extremely badly – so it’s not just about cash. Moreover, plenty of men of lesser means imitate those men, too, resulting in a general menswear mess. Among the contemporary vêtes noires: too short coats, too tight shirts, too short sleeves, too tight trousers under too boxy jackets, all of which contribute to a general look of fluster and masculine distress. 

The king with queen Letizia of Spain and princesses Sofia and Leonor (Getty)

We could add a few peculiarly British errors to this litany. Skinny ties, for example, as notably worn by our ex-prime minister Rishi Sunak. As is so often the case, this trend is an overcorrection from a previous trend, the era of the “footballer-at-a-wedding” fat knot.

King Felipe? He opts for the four-in-hand method, classic, resulting in a wide but not too wide tie that hangs with just a little rake of asymmetry too. Muy bien.

Still, a tie of any kind is seen as pretty eccentric these days. In recent years, Zuckerbergian hoodies and Bezosian gilets have become normalised as workwear, to the point that most men only wear suits when impelled to do so. Certainly not at football matches.

With Prince William at the Euro final in Berlin on Sunday (Getty)

The pandemic era shift towards working from home only accelerated the shift away from formalwear. Gareth Southgate epitomises the move towards what is apparently known as “soft power dressing”.

He has long since dropped the waistcoat that became the unexpected sartorial hit of the 2018 World Cup for a £45 M&S x England white knitted zip-up polo shirt apparently chosen to introduce a more “relaxed” vibe in the camp. “When you’re working with young lads, you don’t want to be too stiff in what you’re doing or wearing,” he has explained

No doubt. But I can’t help feeling that sports casual has its limits as a philosophy. It only gets you so far: two consecutive finals, perhaps. The whole point of formal menswear, it seems to me, is not to be stiff. And it’s certainly not about following trends – massive flapping trousers one season, tiny drain pipes the next. It’s about the acquisition of wisdom and knowledge. 

What kind of a man am I? What kind of image do I want to project? In whom should I place my trust? A properly tailored suit is comfortable but it is not just about being comfortable. It’s about being commanding.