BRYAN FERRY FOR GQ.CO.UK

Deep inside Olympia studios, surrounded by Warhols, well-thumbed books of romantic poetry and midnight-blue fabric swatches for his next suit, sits Bryan Ferry. Having been the byword for suave frontmen since Roxy Music first strutted on stage in 1972, it's unsurprising we want to talk to Ferry about his taste for tailoring. But there is one thing that needs to be got out of the way first - how did he feel seeing Bill Murray sing "More Than This" in Lost in Translation? "I thought it was charming," says Ferry with a smile. "It was the pivotal moment in the film where the girl falls for the guy. I've never done karaoke myself - but in Japan one night eight years ago, we went to a bar and all these fans were singing my songs - doing "Don't Stop The Dance" in Japanese accents and getting the words all wrong. Such great spirit!" That settled, Ferry talks to GQ.com about dressing up for the ballet, small bow ties and why he apparently fathered Noel Fielding wearing a white tux...

Anderson & Sheppard seem to have got it right with me. I love the tradition of tailoring and think it is something to support. It's like going to bookshops rather than buying something on an iPad.

The great thing about black tie is that it is just a uniform. You just get one that fits. I don't have any tricks - it's very straightforward. I do sometimes wear a belt with black tie, which is sacrilege to most people as it's better if you have braces. I have worn cummerbunds on occasion but they're really out of fashion now. I don't wear studs much - that's my revolutionary approach.

What I do like is a small bow tie. One of the curses of men's clothing is as soon as you find something you like, they stop making it. They always say something like, "Oh, we can't get that kind of grosgrain any more" or, "Oh, we've always made them this big and clown-sized". If you can afford to get two or more bow ties, I'd urge you to do it.

English tailors are more about the construction of the suit. Italian tailors can seduce you with wonderful fabrics.

It's a very good name, "Lanvin". I'm a great fan. It does make clothes for young men and the sizes are quite small - rather like Hedi Slimane at Dior, where he used to do really minute things that onlyKarl Lagerfeld could squeeze into. Lucas Ossendrijver is a fan of my work? Fantastic - could he make me an opera cloak or something?

The bespoke process drives me mad. Because when people get it wrong, it's a drag. I love slipping into something ready-to-wear which fits. I don't have much time for fittings now. [Pause, smiles and adopts mocking voice] "He said rather grandly."

I had a Rolex I liked that was nicked. It was a beautiful watch. Very sad. GQ's Nick Foulkes has been trying to help me find and replace it. It was an Explorer, with a small metal strap. I've been wearing this Omega on my wrist facing inwards - it's an affectation, but I like it. I bought it in Luqa in an old antique jewellery shop.

La Regle Du Jeu by Renoir is a stylish film. It's about a country house party and a shooting weekend - the clothes are fantastic. Everyone is dressing up for dinner and running around excited. There are intrigues going on. I like older movies - things in black and white always look more graphic and detached from reality in a way. Unless you go into real colour, like The Red Shoes, which is deliberately hyper-real and intense.

I like fabrics and tactility; going into tailors and having shirts made. The two I endorse are Sean O'Flynn on London's Sackville Street andCharvet in Paris is great. It's not cheap but I would rather have one great shirt than 12 that aren't so great. You feel you're supporting an empire that shouldn't crumble. I met the very lovely French woman who owns it once - I was with Issy Blow who had me roped in as an art director for a shoot in the Paris Ritz opposite. I needed some clothes so Issy swept in and got me this and that - including a dressing gown.

I wouldn't bother trying to chat up models. Let them come to you! I think pretty girls above a certain standard in beauty are sometimes so spoilt you're wasting your time. Find a good cook instead.

Manolo Blahnik pulls off a bow tie very well. I think a lot of us are very cowardly about not wearing bow ties during the day. The great journalist Robin Day always wore a bow tie and I thought he was verycool.

Somebody showed me Noel Fielding's routine about him being raised in the forests by me wearing a white tuxedo. It's hilarious. I love left-field comedy; it's one thing the British do very well. When you've laughed so much at something like that and then you meet the person, you love them instantly. I thought he was fabulous.

I worked in a tailor's shop when I was 16. I became infatuated by all these style books. I love fashion illustrations: gents with thin moustaches, trilbies and high-waisted jackets walking down Park Lane. They used to have names like "the Burlington style" and be next to glamorous women getting out of Rolls-Royces.

In Newcastle there was a cool shop called Marcus Price which was quite expensive. Marcus himself was a great jazz aficionado and a very cool guy indeed. He was like an uber-mod who had all the right American clothes - he was way ahead of his time. Provincial cities tend to have someone like that - someone so cool who you just aspire to be.

The first thing I ever bought that I thought was stylish was from a shop called "City Stylish". It had Italian suits which had three or four covered buttons and very tight trousers. I used to gaze into that window imagining myself in these costumes. I got a pinstriped suit from there which was really very small with narrow lapels and very pointed shoes. It looked really good actually. I was 16 and it was £10.99. I used to walk by there to go to my old-fashioned tailor's where I worked and look in the window and think, "This is what I really want to wear."

Two nights ago in Covent Garden I went to see a ballet. I was sitting next to this great Neapolitan tailor called Rubinacci, who has a place opposite Scott's on Mount Street. (He must just stand there with a net grabbing people as they come out.) We were saying how badly dressed the audience were - people in tracksuits, virtually. It's a shame. If I was in charge I would have them all in black tie, I really would. Ballet is a very formal, beautiful thing and when people go in jeans and a pullover, that doesn't seem right to me. There should be a dress code. London is getting dowdy, which is a shame because the city seems to be on rather on the up.

Another great shame is bowler hats have gone. If you look at any street scene in any great black and white movie, every man is wearing a hat. It is a terrible shame that it now seems wildly eccentric. I wear caps a lot, but very rarely wear any kind of trilby. I like homburgs. But you feel you might be shot if you wore one now.

Style regrets? There was a whole unstructured phase. It just wasn't right for me. How could I possibly think I looked good in that? Japanese things with no shoulders with jacket shoulders out to here. They were quite artistically interesting clothes but I didn't look particularly good in them. It was like how David Byrne in Talking Heads once had a huge suit was amusing. But that was deliberately theatre really.

Anything and everything you could argue about Anthony Price argued about. He was always right, of course, except for one thing - the width of collar or lapel. He would have it a bit too wide for me, but it suited him. But he is a genius - very clever indeed.

I bought my great friend David Williams, whose last [recorded] stuff is on Olympia, brown suede brogues from Cleverley. He used to wear them all the time and thought they were the coolest thing. He was a veteran in Vietnam. He'd killed people. If you ever saw Apocalypse Now where they're all in the trenches - he was one of those guys in the frontline. A fantastic, genuine blues player. He loved those shoes.

My fragrance line is miles away at the moment. It's rather like climbing Everest - we're sure we're going to get there and make our way down again.

It would be nice to diversify. People over the years have cornered me and said, "Why haven't you done a range of suits?" But I haven't been idle. You'd be surprised at how narrow-minded people were at the beginning of my career - if I'd said I was doing a fragrance or a line of trainers they'd have said it would invalidate my work! Now things have changed an awful lot thanks to people like Sean Combs - they've embraced fashion and how they get things done.

We met a charming hip-hop guy on Jools Holland - Tinie Tempah is a real character. Very, very good. His collaborator Labrinth was wearing a blazer with a club badge on it. It was a look I always thought should come back. They reminded me out of Outkast - I loved their video with the riding hats.

All the musicians I loved from an early age - Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, even back to Leadbelly - always looked very dapper. They'd have a bow tie, good suit, 12-string guitar. They all embraced dressing up to go on stage. From the age of 10 years old I went to see Count Basie or Modern Jazz Quartet and they would be in black tie. People say to me, "Why do you dress elegantly on stage?" I say, "Why not? I'm on stage."

Originally published on British GQ in May 2011. Read the original post here.