How men's underwear evolved (with a little help from Tom Ford)

Twice a year, those who feel such things merit attention make the pilgrimage to Switzerland to survey the latest trends in high horology – watchmaking at its finest, and often most exclusive. Full disclosure: for me, this facilitates a further foray into the parallel but, as we shall see, not entirely unrelated field of superlatively produced underwear.

It’s no secret, much less a surprise, that the Swiss have an affinity with fine cotton: they’ve industrialised its most intimate application since an American, Pastor Isaac Lamb, patented the first manually-run, single-needle knitting machine in 1866.

Five years later, Johann Jakob Zimmerli dispatched his wife from Aarburg to Basel (shortly to become home to the world’s largest watch fair) to learn how to use it, whereupon the die was cast: shortly afterwards, two gentlemen from nearby Liestal, Albert Handschin and Carl Ronus, put their heads and part of their surnames together and launched Hanro into the slipper-soft world high-end undergarments.

Micro Touch boxer shorts, ￡32, hanro.co.uk

Although younger (originating in Sursee in 1941) Calida, too, is a Swiss "intimate apparel" brand familiar to those who value finish and fit over snagging shorts and stifling Y-fronts.

And for those who take their cash flow as seriously as their comfort, the country’s premier supermarket chain Coop famously provides its own line of organic cotton underlayers, over which clued-up members of the international style tribe have long swooned.

All three brands continue to up their game in terms of quality, and it’s now possible to spend three-figure sums on Zimmerli’s sea island cotton collection, with Hanro not far behind.  But eclipsing even these voyages into the masculine world of functional lingerie is the first men’s briefs collection from the doyen of debonair dressing, Tom Ford.

That Mr Ford has chosen the same moment to launch his first range of high-end watches shouldn’t be discounted as mere coincidence either. Having supplied many of the accoutrements required of the committed sartorialist, whilst neatly upending the somewhat staid world from which they have traditionally come, it’s clear he felt it time to address those two items that spend the most time closest to a man’s skin.

And this being the preeminent disruptor of existing markets, the results are suitably heretical. So rather than simply opt for Swiss-ordained comportment with a line of judicious if slightly boring plain white cotton pants, Mr Ford is offering the four main styles (boxer, short boxer, brief and trunk) in a palette of ‘nude’ hues and, in addition to cotton and stretch jersey, the option of silk – an act of largesse hitherto missing from a man’s underwear department.

Available online and from the London Sloane Street store, the collection also includes some libidinously-inclined animal prints, and prices range from ￡55 to approximately ￡250.

Bill Prince is the deputy editor of British GQ

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