The Gentlemen Style: Gilet, Tattersall and a Waxed Jacket
The short answer: a quilted gilet adds a warm layer over tailoring without adding sleeves, so the jacket underneath keeps its shape and the whole figure keeps its line; a tattersall check gives a shirt a quiet grid that reads as country the way a plain city shirt never will; and a waxed cotton jacket turns rain from a problem into a texture. Three pieces, all built for weather, all of them at home indoors.
Guy Ritchie's 2019 film runs a marijuana empire out of English country estates, and the wardrobe takes the setting at its word. Costume designer Michael Wilkinson, who built most of the film's ensembles from scratch, dresses Matthew McConaughey's Mickey Pearson in custom suiting cut through with windowpane and Prince of Wales checks, and wraps Charlie Hunnam's Ray in the layered country uniform this article is about: Barbour jackets, tweedy waistcoats, knitted ties and chunky knits, by Wilkinson's own description. Where our last episode's corporate raider dressed to win a trading floor, this wardrobe dresses to own land. The room changes, the logic holds.
A gilet adds armour without bulk
A suit or a tweed jacket on its own does fine indoors. Take it outside on a cold estate morning and it shivers, and the usual fix, a heavy overcoat, buries the tailoring you paid for.
The gilet solves the arithmetic. A quilted, sleeveless layer over the jacket warms the body's core, where warmth actually matters, while leaving the arms free and the jacket's shoulders, lapels and cuffs on full display. The silhouette stays close to the one the tailor cut, the layers read from a distance as depth rather than padding, and the whole arrangement comes off in one motion when you step back inside. It is the country's answer to the question the city never has to ask: how to stay warm without disappearing.
What to look for:
- A slim quilt with narrow channels. Fat, puffy quilting turns armour into a duvet.
- Cut shorter than the jacket beneath, so the tailoring's hem still shows and the layers read as deliberate.
- Muted ground colours: olive, navy, dark brown. The gilet is a supporting act.
- Armholes cut generously enough to sit over a jacket without straining. Try it on over one, not over a shirt.
- Zip or press studs that open one handed. A layer this practical should behave practically.
Tattersall carries the country in
A plain shirt under country tailoring does nothing wrong. It also does nothing at all: at the fence it fades into the grey of the morning, and under tweed it reads as an office shirt that wandered outdoors.
Tattersall is the fix the English countryside settled on generations ago, a fine grid of coloured lines, classically two colours crossing on a cream or white ground, spaced wide enough to stay calm at a distance and sharp enough to reward a second look. The grid picks up the colours in tweed and knitwear the way a plain front cannot, it softens the formality of a collar without abandoning it, and it signals country as plainly as a pinstripe signals town. The film's check language runs all the way up its wardrobe, from shirting grids to the windowpane suiting on the man who owns the estates.
What to look for:
- Two check colours on a cream or white ground, drawn from what you wear over it: rust and olive under brown tweed, navy and wine under grey.
- Scale matters. A small, tight grid reads busy; a wide, airy one reads assured.
- Brushed cotton or twill for texture that sits naturally beside wool. A glossy poplin tattersall fights its own purpose.
- A collar with enough body to stand up under a jumper or waistcoat. Soft, unstructured collars collapse under layers.
- Keep the tie quiet if you wear one: knitted, solid, in a colour the check already contains.
A waxed jacket shrugs off the rain
A city overcoat fears the rain. Wool spots, shoulders soak, and the owner spends the walk calculating the distance to the next doorway.
Waxed cotton was the countryside's answer long before technical fabrics arrived: cotton impregnated with wax until water stands up on it in beads and rolls off. A waxed field jacket over tailoring keeps the rain out without rustling like a raincoat, it ages into a patina that reads as history rather than wear, and it carries its practicality visibly, corduroy collar, bellows pockets, storm cuffs, so that even dry and indoors it says the owner is equipped for weather. The marque most associated with the cloth, Barbour, is exactly the name Wilkinson reaches for in dressing Ray, and the association is the point: this is the jacket of people whose plans do not move for rain.
What to look for:
- Waxed cotton with a corduroy collar and a studded storm flap: the classic grammar, legible at fifty paces.
- Olive or dark tan. Black waxed cotton exists and reads urban, which defeats the purpose here.
- Cut roomy enough for a jacket and gilet beneath, but ending around mid thigh so it stays a jacket, not a coat.
- Rewaxing is maintenance, not a flaw. A jacket that can be rewaxed every few winters outlives a decade of technical shells.
- Check the pockets: a proper field jacket swallows gloves, a cap and a phone without bulging out of shape.
Layered, checked, weatherproof
Put the three together and you have a wardrobe that works in the opposite direction to the trading floor pinstripes of our last episode, built from the same understanding of how clothes read. The gilet adds armour and keeps the line, the tattersall carries the country into the collar, the waxed jacket makes the weather someone else's problem, and the man inside looks like he owns the ground he stands on, because dressing as if you do is most of the argument.
The film's empire is fictional. The wardrobe's logic is not: dress for the conditions first and the audience second, and the audience reads competence anyway. That is the quiet trick of country clothing, and it is why these three pieces have not changed in a century.
If you take one thing from this: buy the tattersall shirt first. It is the cheapest piece on this page, it works under every jacket and jumper you already own, and it moves an outfit from town to country in the time it takes to button a collar.
Frequently asked
Can I wear a gilet over a suit in town?
Over a casual suit or a tweed jacket, yes, and it reads as deliberate layering. Over sharp worsted business tailoring it reads as a compromise. The gilet belongs where the cloth beneath it has some texture.
Is tattersall office safe?
Under a jacket in most offices, comfortably, especially in autumn and winter with wool around it. The wider and louder the check, the further from the boardroom it wants to be. A fine, two colour tattersall with a navy tie passes almost anywhere.
Waxed jacket or technical rain shell?
The shell wins on weight and packability, the waxed jacket on everything else: silhouette, silence, ageing and the ability to sit over tailoring without looking like sportswear. If the jacket has to work with a shirt and tie even occasionally, wax wins.
How do I keep a waxed jacket from smelling like a garden shed?
Air it, never machine wash it, and rewax it properly every two or three winters, ideally professionally. The faint smell of wax is part of the cloth's character; a jacket that smells of damp has been stored wet, which is the one thing the fabric will not forgive.
Do these three pieces work without the estate?
Completely, which is the point of the episode. A gilet over knitwear, a tattersall under a tweed jacket, a waxed jacket over either: each piece earns its place in an ordinary city autumn. The estate is optional. The weather is not.