It's time for yet another helping of 1980s ephemera courtesy of Marks & Spencer in the form of their St Michael Brand. What can I say? St Michael was simply ubiquitous in Britain's relatively recent yet also distant past. Today, it's a rather fetching dressing gown we're looking at, and slipping into it feels like tuning a television to four channels and waiting for Channel 4 to start up.
It's a simplistic design, navy with burgundy trims, yet its unadorned simplicity also gives it an oddly timeless feel, a robe which refuses to be embarrassed by the decades. It's a solid 40 years old, manufactured in July 1985, a fact derived from the 075 code on the back of the size label. Talking of the label, it's the classic St Michaels logo which decorated not just a million items of clothing in the 1980s, but countless other household goods as well.
The gown itself is made from a mixture of 86% Triacetate and 14% Nylon, so it's 100% synthetic and this goes some way towards explaining its immortality. It's also incredibly lightweight and, purchased back at the start of June, I had intended for it to be my summer dressing gown, but the season betrayed me with so many heatwaves that I spent most mornings just sitting about in my underwear (which isn't vintage, but I'm working on it).
Now the mornings are cooling, the gown is back in service. I pad about, a 1985 man in 2025, pleased with my £12 investment on Vinted, a sum which is about one-quarter that of a modern M&S gown. And, of course, there's the sense of achievement that this vintage artefact grants me. This is how men across Britain once began their days: in synthetics, coffee in hand, in a robe that knew its place. And there’s something rather lovely about following in their quietly shuffling footsteps.
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