Here's how to up your black

By GQ Staff

Perhaps it's due to the new gender-fluid mood. Perhaps it's something to do with menswear's newly invigorated passion for maximalism, but that most foppish of fabrics - velvet - is having a moment.

The shift in the fabric's fortunes (a fabric that has been championed in the past by professional showoffs ranging from Oscar Wilde to Hugh Hefner) was affirmed on Saturday when Prince Harry wore a killer single-breasted, black velvet tuxedo jacket with a chic peak lapel to his wedding reception. The James Bond mood was further bolstered by the fact that Harry drove his bride to the reception in an (electric) E-Type Jaguar.

Though Harry certainly owned the look on the day, we've appreciated the manifold virtues of velvet for a while. Giorgio Armani, the master of syrupy tailoring and the man behind the epoch-defining wardrobe of American Gigolo in 1980, has also long been a proponent of the fabric.

The designer fully understands the fabric's extraordinary ability to swallow the light and therefore look flattering on all frames, the softness of the cloth's handle (providing it's properly made) allows it to cocoon lumps and bumps on the body, rather than stretch over them - the depth of pile creating an illusion of smoothness which both flatters and flattens.

Though silk velvet is the superior stuff, it's more often than not prohibitively expensive, so cotton velvet is a good alternative. Produced by weaving a double thickness material which is then cut down the middle to create the pile, a well-cut velvet jacket is equivalent to wearing a hug (as Harry will no doubt attest, after Saturday).

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via British GQ