By Robbie Collin.

Transfer over, American Gigolo. Make room, The Gifted Mr Ripley. There’s a brand new menswear film on the town.

I say new. In reality the movie in query has been round for a decade, however regardless of attracting a sizeable cult following in that point – a minimum of Quentin Tarantino positioned it in his annual high 10 – it’s but to catch the attention or creativeness of the male fashion group at giant. 

And that’s in all probability as a result of the movie is The Intern: a frothy comedy through which Anne Hathaway’s e-fashion startup founder grants a piece expertise placement to Robert De Niro’s amiable 70-year-old retiree. Directed by Nancy Meyers, of The Vacation and One thing’s Gotta Give, it was marketed squarely at a feminine viewers, and little about its advertising marketing campaign screamed “epic males’s matches”.

But on the tenth anniversary of its launch, the movie is value looking for out: not solely as a result of mentioned epic matches are there in abundance, but in addition as a result of the movie is among the smartest I’ve seen about the way in which males costume, and why it issues. 

Meyers has at all times been fascinated by this kind of stuff, however often it’s her interiors, reasonably than the costumes, that find yourself plastered throughout viewers’ moodboards. As a filmmaker she’s obsessive about the areas – significantly kitchens – through which her characters nest. 

These areas are at all times styled to magazine-spread perfection, but in addition replicate their stylers’ values, aspirations and wishes, in addition to the viewers’s. (Watch Meryl Streep flirtatiously put together pains au chocolat with Steve Martin in It’s Difficult and also you’ll see what I imply.) Her movies enjoyment of supplies and craftsmanship. She likes to see a glance pulled off.

The kitchen of De Niro’s Brooklyn brownstone in The Intern is a magnificence – and that his life is orderly sufficient for him to have a chilly roast rooster on the prepared within the fridge for weekday dinners is a properly revealing (and really Meyersian) element. However extra spectacular is his wardrobe. 

De Niro’s character, Ben Whittaker, as soon as labored on the outdated telephone-book printing plant now occupied by Hathaway’s burgeoning enterprise – and when provided a placement there as a part of a group enterprise, it’s all of the excuse he must get his fits again into rotation. 

And never simply any fits – however delectable, classically tailor-made tropical wool numbers in heat gray and calming navy, usually in what seems like an ethereal hopsack weave. The cuts are timeless, with unobtrusive notched labels; the match is structured however by no means stiff. 

The shirts are crisp cotton with button-down collars – and in a single occasion, quick sleeves. The watch is an understated Omega Seamaster; the ties quietly trendy foulards and repp stripes. 

He carries a sturdy leather-based attaché case and a handkerchief: the latter since you by no means know when a feminine acquaintance might have to dry her eyes. “The rationale for carrying a handkerchief is to lend it,” he later explains to a youthful colleague. “One of many final vestiges of the chivalrous gent.”

Observe, nonetheless, that that is folded neatly in an inside pocket: there’s no sprezzatura, no flamboyance. Ben’s outfits radiate dependability and composure – that even goes for his pyjamas, of which we see three pairs over the course of the movie. 

In a callback to (of all issues) Taxi Driver, Meyers has De Niro stare at himself within the mirror one morning whereas sporting a fetching blue, white and navy striped set with white piping, and apply his workplace repartee. “Hello, howdy, what do you want?”, he says: a far cry from “You talkin’ to me?”

This issues as a result of within the millennial office – or at the least Hathaway’s frantic nook of it – composure and dependability are briefly provide. And because the movie progresses, all the issues confronted by Hathaway’s Jules will be navigated, a technique or one other, with Ben’s old-school method. 

The identical goes for Ben’s youthful, but extra senior, male colleagues. Their unofficial uniform of open work shirts over uncoordinated ringer tees makes them appear to be the work-experience youngsters, floundering out of their depth. However the Ben Impact begins to rub off, and when one in every of them later asks to borrow a tie, it looks like a minor ethical triumph.

“No one calls males males any extra,” Jules factors out over post-work tequilas one evening, neatly ventriloquising The Intern’s underlying thesis. “Ladies went from ladies to ladies; males went from males to boys. This can be a downside within the huge image.” 

Whereas Jules’s era of girls benefited from the maturing affect of initiatives like Take Your Daughter to Work Day, their male counterparts “nonetheless appear to be making an attempt to determine it out,” she goes on. “They’re nonetheless dressing like little boys, they’re taking part in video video games. 

“How in a single era have males gone from guys like Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford to…” (Her different male staff look at each other guiltily right here.) “Look and study, boys,” she concludes, pointing at their older colleague. “As a result of if you happen to ask me, that is what cool is.”

That’s cool in bearing, but in addition disposition. Ben’s garments are an expression of his broader life philosophy: what he does, like what he wears, issues sufficient to make it value getting proper. Crucially, Meyers doesn’t body this angle as one whose time has handed. 

When Ben arrives on the workplace for the primary time, it’s the modern interval particulars – Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass wittering away on the stereo; the receptionist directing him to “expertise acquisition” – which might be performed for comedian impact.

The Intern’s costume designer was Jacqueline Demeterio, although De Niro’s fits have been chosen by the actor’s longtime collaborator Aude Bronson-Howard, who has been dressing his characters on and off because the mid-Nineteen Eighties. Maybe that’s why he seems so comfy in them – however then, the sheer ease of Ben’s private fashion can also be Meyers’ rebuke to the fashionable delusion of males’s tailoring as outmoded, formal and stiff. 

But The Intern’s significance as a menswear movie has little to do with whether or not or not your style aligns with Ben’s. Quite, like these extensively heralded classics talked about above, it is in regards to the codes inside clothes – that the issues we put on at all times specific sure values, whether or not we supposed them to or not. 

It’s simply that for as soon as, these values don’t result in, say, a dissolute existence seducing wealthy married ladies in Los Angeles, or passing oneself off because the shipbuilding inheritor you lately bludgeoned to dying with an oar. It’s not a lesson you’d anticipate to be taught by Robert De Niro, however you’ll be able to costume nicely and likewise be a completely respectable chap.

Robbie is the chief movie critic for The Telegraph, a PS reader and a menswear fanatic. See his earlier article on white fits right here.