Written by Bent Van Looy.
I could be wrong, but I doubt many PS readers would pull out knickerbockers for cigarettes. God knows, at some dangerous point in my style journey I’ve tried (and failed, of course). Come to think of it, I only know one guy who can: my friend Tintin.
From his first trip to the USSR and America, the journalist is a tireless optimistLe Petit Vingtièmeit has loosely cut handles (as they are called in Flemish). Somehow, she managed to make them look like a sensible outfit, wearing a white shirt and a blue crewneck sweater.
Add white knee socks and light brown oxfords (think of them as a pair of suede Aldens), and you’ve got yourself a unique and recognizable uniform.
But our hero is also known to change his strict dress code. I love him in the middleThe Blue Lotusfor example, where he wears a short-sleeved yellow shirt on the plus-four (above), which, in the next panel, he wears with a red striped tie – without a jacket.
The latter is the kind of look its creator, Georges Remi, better known as Hergé (his initials GR said backwards), could rock like no other.
Remi (above) grew up in an aristocratic family in Brussels in the early 20th century. Like many boys in his neighborhood, he went through a clear dress code: long dresses as a child, shorts and shirts as a child, knickerbockers at school, and a favorite tailoring after that.
His family’s proximity to high society – mingling with the nobility and gentry – left a lasting mark on the way Hergé dressed throughout his life.
Her clothes are neither loud nor flashy – in fact, quite the opposite. I love the old photos of the man himself working in his studio, wearing a simple white iron shirt and cropped tie, sleeves rolled up with the work at hand.
The selection of a tie, a clip, belted chinos, and a smart Swiss watch showed a man who knew his clothes perfectly. And that love and knowledge shone through every page of the Tintin canon, where every character is clothed with love and care, except Snowy, that is, who – like most dogs – works naked.
It is a miracle that Remi, in his situationclairestyle is able to communicate complex codes of clothing with a single, flat layer of watercolor.
Check out the patterns, like Tintin’s cowboy shirt in the middleTintin in Americathat’s it, a simple check made with a ruler (above). Another artist would have tried to show his creativity by letting the pattern flow with the fabric of the shirt. Hergé, instead, gives us advice. Our mind does something else.
And, no matter how small the role, everyone is carefully dressed in clothes suitable for their station in society – from the baron to the bootlegger, the mobster to the marine biologist.
Take crime lord Al Capone (below) in a double-breasted suit, trousers pressed and sharp, wearing a bright tie on a pink shirt with a white stand-up collar, accompanied by a crony in a blue suit and an ill-proportioned, narrow bow tie.
There is a huge difference in condition there, defined by cut and style of stitching – no words needed.
Indeed, Hergé’s love of tailoring is evident throughout the Tintin books. He drew dozens of characters – gangsters, diplomats, and occasionally even Tintin himself – dressed in suits, mostly black.
The ubiquity of brown stitching in the world of Tintin probably has a lot to do with the times, with most comics written in the 1940s and 50s.
In came Tintin’s suit jacketTemple of the Sunin the same hue as the fabric of the knickerbockers – stitched at the back to show durability and performance (above). The shirt collar and fish mouth lapels on the coat are very Parisian, and different from what London or New York contemporaries would have worn.
Tintin mostly wore a white shirt and black tie (a classic combination that never fails), while Hergé was happy to take his side characters shopping, mixing brown suits with shirts, ties, turtlenecks and scarves in bolder colors.
But Hergé had a keen eye for casual wear and workwear. Think Captain Haddock, in his signature navy knit turtleneck sweater (below) – which he seems to be giving up for a while due to overly loud tailoring.Seven Crystal Balls(betraying that the Captain might be out of his depth, sarcastically).
And while Tintin clearly loves his uniform, he doesn’t mind dropping a few francs on high-quality outerwear when the need arises. Before going to Tibet, to scale the Himalayas in search of his lost friend Chang, our hero must have had the idea to buy a sturdy hiking anorak at Nigel Cabourn or Stone Island (above).
Often rugged and casual, Tintin is known to wear all manner of parkas and ponchos at the appropriate time. And when he’s home in Belgium, he walks around with Haddock in a cool Valstarino-style bomb.
And I can’t say the same about the long khaki raincoat Tintin wears on its coverKing Ottokar’s scepterwhich I like to imagine buying from Cohérence (above).
It’s a well-worn A-line model, very light, and flies well behind its wearer on his many trips. This coat always fascinated me as a child and symbolizes the point where well-tailored clothing meets adventure and power.
After searching for Tintin’s raincoat for most of my life, I managed to find an Italian coat from the forties similar to this one at the vintage shop ‘Ub’ in Florence. I couldn’t believe my luck.
Hergé’s style softened over time. Although his later years were marked by personal struggles, his clothes grew freely.
In his sixties photos, he embodies a kind of quiet luxury: scarves and foulards take on stiff collars, suede jackets and casual trousers take on formal suits (above). It is the wardrobe of the free man – curious, flexible, and in tune with his time.
Therefore, in his last published tour in the mid-1970s,Tintin and the Picarosour hero seems to be caught up in trends and ditches his trusty knickerbockers for a pair of flared trousers (below) as he walks into the forest of San Theodoros, never to be seen again.