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 truth the movie in query has been round for a decade, however regardless of attracting a sizeable cult following in that point – at least Quentin Tarantino positioned it in his annual prime 10 – it’s but to catch the attention or creativeness of the male model group at massive. 

And that’s in all probability as a result of the movie is The Intern: a frothy comedy wherein 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 in search of out: not solely as a result of stated epic matches are there in abundance, but additionally as a result of the movie is likely one of the smartest I’ve seen about the way in which males gown, and why it issues. 

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

These areas are all the time styled to magazine-spread perfection, but additionally mirror their stylers’ values, aspirations and needs, in addition to the viewers’s. (Watch Meryl Streep flirtatiously put together pains au chocolat with Steve Martin in It’s Sophisticated 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 hen 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 previous 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 appears to be like 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, brief sleeves. The watch is an understated Omega Seamaster; the ties quietly fashionable 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 must 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.”

Notice, nevertheless, 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 in brief provide. And because the movie progresses, all the issues confronted by Hathaway’s Jules could be navigated, a method 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 all them later asks to borrow a tie, it seems like a minor ethical triumph.

“No one calls males males any extra,” Jules factors out over post-work tequilas one night time, neatly ventriloquising The Intern’s underlying thesis. “Ladies went from ladies to ladies; males went from males to boys. It is a drawback within the massive image.” 

Whereas Jules’s era of ladies 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 enjoying video video games. 

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

That’s cool in bearing, but additionally 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 can be performed for comedian impact.

The Intern’s costume designer was Jacqueline Demeterio, although De Niro’s fits had been chosen by the actor’s longtime collaborator Aude Bronson-Howard, who has been dressing his characters on and off for the reason that mid-Nineteen Eighties. Maybe that’s why he appears to be like so comfy in them – however then, the sheer ease of Ben’s private model can also be Meyers’ rebuke to the trendy fantasy 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. Somewhat, like these extensively heralded classics talked about above, it is concerning the codes inside clothes – that the issues we put on all the time specific sure values, whether or not we meant 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 latterly bludgeoned to dying with an oar. It’s not a lesson you’d count on to be taught by Robert De Niro, however you’ll be able to gown properly and in addition 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 here.