Soft Power: A Century of Flannel

For a hundred years, flannel has clothed powerful men in gentle wool: proof that true authority is never loud, but soft, warm and quietly assured.

Flannel is a paradox in wool: a fabric that is muted... chosen by men who roared.
Across a century of style, some of the most forceful, charismatic, and culturally influential figures reached not for the rigid, the glossy, or the overtly authoritative - but for flannel, a cloth defined by softness, warmth, and touch.

 

1920s - The Blueprint of Soft Power

 

The Duke of Windsor - The Prince Who Made Softness Sovereign (1925)

 

The Prince of Wales - wearing "Prince of Wales" check flannel suit - about to embark upon a tour of Africa (March 1925)

Credit: Chronicle

On the cover of The Illustrated London News in 1925, the young Prince of Wales appears in a pale flannel suit with the serene composure of a man entirely at ease in his own skin. Where most tailoring of the era was stiff and militaristic, his was supple, relaxed, almost intimate.

Here was the first great act of soft power: a prince signalling confidence not through severity, but through ease. In flannel, he wrote the opening chapter of modern style.

 

1930s - Soft Cloth, Strong Silhouettes

 

Clark Gable - The Seductive Strength of Soft Wool

 

Hollywood icon Clarke Gable in darkest charcoal flannel (Dec 1931)

Credit: PictureLux

Gable’s suits softened his swagger without dulling it. The cloth lent warmth to his screen presence, tempering masculinity with magnetism - power infused with charm.

 

Gary Cooper - The Gentleman of Quiet Authority

 

Gary Cooper brought something rare to flannel: authenticity. Tall, athletic, and naturally understated, he wore soft grey and brown flannel suits with the same unforced grace that he brought to his westerns. Cooper’s tailoring showed how flannel could be both elegant and profoundly relaxed. In studio portraits and candid shots alike, he personified a uniquely American refinement: quiet, honest, and unfussy. If Gable made flannel glamorous, Cooper made it real.

 

Fred Astaire - Softness in Motion

 

Astaire understood flannel better than almost anyone. Its softness allowed it to move with him; its matte surface looked refined on camera; and its drape complimented his famously fluid silhouette. His flannel suits proved that comfort and elegance were not opposites, but accomplices.

 

1940s–1950s - The Soft Armours of the Mid-Century

 

Winston Churchill - Chalk Stripe, Soft Wool, Iron Will

 

Few photographs in sartorial history possess the sheer cinematic voltage of Winston Churchill standing in a pin-sharp chalk-stripe flannel suit, cigar clenched, Thompson submachine gun in hand. Shot in 1940 during a visit to coastal defences, the image was intended as a morale-boosting curiosity - but it became something else entirely: a portrait of defiance dressed in soft wool.

Churchill’s tailoring contrasts brilliantly with the weapon he wields. It is the fusion of civilisation and conflict, of bespoke elegance and bulldog resolve. No single image did more to cement flannel’s symbolic power: cloth for statesmen, warriors, and men who understood that style could be a tool of leadership.

The suit itself is pure British chalk-stripe flannel: authoritative yet comforting, the textile equivalent of Churchill’s rhetoric - firm, warm, and unshakeably human.

 

Cary Grant - Softness as Superpower

 

Cary Grant wearing grey flannel blazer in "To Catch a Thief" (1955)

Credit: TCD/Prod.DB

Grant didn’t dominate a room - he glided into it. His grey flannel suits, trousers and occasional blazer (illustrated above) were the softest expression of mid-century style, making him irresistible, not because he looked powerful, but because he looked at ease.

His strength was charm - flannel was its perfect medium.

 

Gregory Peck - The Moral Weight of Flannel

 

Gregory Peck: "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" (1956)

Credit: Collection Christophel

"The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" turned Peck into the visual shorthand for American corporate dignity. His grey flannel three-piece was not ostentatious; it was earnest, decent, and meticulously cut. Peck demonstrated flannel’s greatest magic trick: its ability to look authoritative without appearing aggressive. It is power dressing at its most humane.

 

1960s - Agents, Outsiders & New Masculinities

 

Sean Connery - The Spy Who Chose Softness

 

Sean Connery attracts unwanted attention wearing his Anthony Sinclair 'Conduit Cut' flannel suit in "Dr. No." (1962)

Credit: TCD/Prod.DB

Connery’s Bond could have worn armour. Instead, he wore flannel. Anthony Sinclair tailored him in cloth that moved silently - soft to touch, but sharp in intent. Power disguised as comfort.

Throughout his tenure as the world's favourite secret agent, Connery worked the soft woollen cloth into the wardrobes of all but one of his 007 movies. (Read more).

 

Michael Caine - Soft Cloth, Hard Edges

 

Michael Caine photographed in light-grey double-breasted flannel suit (1965)

Credit: Stephan C. Archetti / Stringer / Hulton Archives

Michael Caine didn’t need the sharp severity of worsted to look dangerous. In one of the most enduring portraits of the 1960s he stands in a double-breasted grey flannel suit, fist outstretched, hair wild, gaze unblinking.

It is the perfect encapsulation of Caine’s persona: working-class roots wrapped in gentlemanly cloth. The softness of the flannel tempers nothing - it amplifies him, framing the toughness, intelligence, and irreverence that defined his rise.

Where others used flannel for warmth or elegance, Caine used it for attitude:

Soft cloth. Hard stare. A new kind of British power.

 

Steve McQueen - Seduction in Flannel

 

Steve McQueen wearing navy chalk-stripe flannel suit in "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968)

Credit: PictureLux

In The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Steve McQueen redefined what a flannel suit could be. His navy chalk-stripe three-piece wasn’t Wall Street stiffness but something altogether more dangerous: the uniform of a man rich enough to break the rules and stylish enough not to care.

The suit gave McQueen a sculptural silhouette that felt both patrician and subversive. Against a backdrop of exotic cars, polo fields, and Faye Dunaway’s chessboard seduction, the chalk-stripe flannel became a symbol of insouciant power: polished, athletic, and quietly predatory.

If Cary Grant made flannel charming and Connery made it heroic, McQueen made it sexy - the first time flannel felt truly seductive on screen.

Click here to read more about how the King of Cool was Crowned.

 

1970s - White Flannel & the Art of Soft Seduction

 

Robert Redford - Gatsby's White Flannel Dream

 

Robert Redford wearing white flannel suit in "The Great Gatsby" (1974)

Credit: Moviestore Collection

In The Great Gatsby (1974), Robert Redford wears what may be the most famous white flannel suit ever committed to film. Tailored to immaculate lines - soft shoulder, wide lapels, languid drape - the suit becomes a kind of costume armour for Jay Gatsby, a self-invented American prince whose elegance is as fragile as his dream.

Flannel gives the suit a subtle weight, a softness that photographs like powdered light. It lifts Redford from mere period correctness into pure romantic symbolism. This is flannel not as boardroom armour or matinee-idol charm, but as myth-making fabric - a vision of summer, wealth, hope, and inevitable heartbreak.

 

Bryan Ferry — The Rock Romantic in White Flannel

 

Bryan Ferry wearing double-breasted white flannel suit with translucent mother-of-pearl buttons (Oct 1973)

Credit: Jorgen Angel

If Redford’s white flannel was pure daylight, Bryan Ferry’s was midnight. His creamy double-breasted suit, worn with an unbuttoned shirt and an artfully draped polka-dot scarf, turned softness into seduction. It was the uniform of the louche intellectual - glam rock’s answer to Gatsby - and proof that flannel could be as decadent as it was delicate.

Ferry didn’t wear flannel for comfort. He wore it for effect. Soft cloth sharpened by attitude, glamour and a knowing sense of theatre.

Two white flannel suits, two entirely different temperatures: Redford glowing with innocence; Ferry smouldering with intent.

 

1980s - The Softest Rebel in the Boardroom

 

Gianni Agnelli - Confidence Softer Than Cashmere

 

Gianni Agnelli - the only man who could ever pair a flannel suit and hiking boots with aplomb. 

Credit: Marka / Universal Images Group North America LLC

No list is complete without  L'Avvocato. Gianni Agnelli’s flannel suits combined industrial strength with aristocratic ease. Whether in St. Moritz or at Fiat’s headquarters, his flannel tailoring delivered that ineffable Italian contradiction: the art of seeming perfectly put-together while caring not at all.

 

Soft Cloth, Strong Men

 

From princes to spies, rebels to romantics, flannel has clothed men who understood a simple truth: real strength is not loud, sharp, or rigid - it is composed, warm, and quietly assured.

Flannel is soft on the outside... its legends never were.