The Bespoke Obama

Carola Long of the Independent (UK) considers what the president-elect is communicating with his sartorial choices.

There's a language tidbit in there, too. Check out this sentence on the second slide (emphasis added):

[O]n nomination night, he made appointments with the company's tailors who created him a 97 per cent merino wool, 3 per cent cashmere whistle- and-flute.

I correctly surmised that "whistle-and-flute" was Cockney rhyming slang for "suit." But I was surprised that it was considered acceptable usage in mainstream UK newspaper journalism, even in the fashion pages.

There's a New York-based clothing company called Whistle & Flute; its founders chose the name as a tribute to their British husbands. Nice. (The clothes are very nice, too.)

(Hat tip: The Thoughtful Dresser.)

Comments

[Picky]

I've been out of London too long to know whether this expression is still current among Cockney-speakers, but if it is, they quite certainly will say just "whistle". The rhyming bit of rhyming slang is almost always dropped.

But then I doubt very much if Carola is Cockney-speaking ... metropolitan middle-classers like to display a smattering of working-class slang - though what she thought readers would make of it in Fort William or Walsall or Belfast (or Oakland, California), who can tell?

[Virtual Linguist]

Long's entire commentary is completely tongue-in-cheek; at least, that's the way I read it.
The use of the rhyming slang whistle-and-flute to refer to a bespoke cashmere-mix suit is meant to be ironic.

[Nancy Friedman]

@Virtual Linguist: I don't think the entire commentary is tongue-in-cheek, although using street patois in this context does display a bit of attitude. But I'm not familiar enough with her writing to say for certain.