What’s your favourite type of long johns? Silver? Baldry? The answer you are looking for, at any rate, is that warm and cosy, figure-hugging, bum-warming, cod-piece-affiliated, feel-good hit of the winter – a pair of woollen long johns. And guess what? They’re back.

“Back from where?” you might ask. Well, while your high-street brands, online utility merchants and hiking outlets have often kept producing slightly sad but serviceable long johns, the upper end of the market has pooh-poohed them. A bit like the traditional British vest, long johns appeared to be something that reminded the cooler customer of knock-kneed 1970s schoolboys. For a while, it was impossible to imagine long johns without conjuring images of nametags stitched into overwashed Airtex, just below a slightly perished, elasticated waistband. The long john has been on apparel’s naughty step. A thing of the past.

Now, however, Johannes longus (that 1970s schoolboy did know his Latin) has been brought back from extinction. How do we know of this fashionable rehabilitation? Well, beloved British knitwear brand John Smedley – of the stealth-wealth charcoal cardigan and silhouette-flattering navy sweater – has enlisted the sartorial services of cinema’s wizened master of cool Bill Nighy to “do” a range for them. And guess what? Yup, the British actor loves a leg firmly – but no longer unfashionably – sheathed in fine merino wool. Better yet, make it cashmere, which forms a key component in Nighy’s collection for Smedley.

Nighy apparently wears a pair of long johns on set whenever he’s shooting a film or show and so they’re clearly personal. And they are personal, long johns. Intimate. They go to the heart of the matter. Along with that, of course, they conjure an image slightly absurd: men in tights. For every Nureyev or Nijinsky – muscular, balletic and toned – there is a man getting dressed on the first morning of his skiing holiday. The unfamiliar thermal layers being bandily hopped into. A skintight woollen torpedo. 

“The idea of not wearing long johns in winter is just anathema to me, especially as contemporary trousers are normally so thin,” says Patrick Grant, founder of Community Clothing, who grew up in Edinburgh and currently lives in chilly North Yorkshire. “I mean, if it’s cold we put five layers on our top half but then wander about with next to nothing on our bottom half – it’s madness.” Community Clothing is also set to launch a set of long johns this winter. “There is infinite scope for jollity with a long john: how many bottles can you get down the front, what sort of vegetables can you stick down there?” adds Grant. “But don’t let that get in the way of the joy of having a warm downstairs.” Quite so. Welcome back to the front of the underwear drawer, old friends. Why were you ever sent away?
 
Robert Bound is a contributing editor at Monocle. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, announced earlier this year that it would cease delivering letters on 30 December and rid the nation’s roadsides of any remaining post boxes (writes Jack Simpson). Though the Danes sent more than 100 million letters in 2024, this number has fallen 90 per cent over the past 25 years. After operating for more than 400 years, PostNord is now celebrating its last (proper) Christmas. But hasn’t the postal service – and indeed the giving of Christmas cards – always been about more than a bottom line?

Denmark’s epistolary travails are a problem across the globe. Despite being older than the country it serves, America’s postal service, USPS, is facing similarly terminal decline and president Donald Trump has even suggested dissolving its leadership. In November, the Greek government announced that it would shut almost half of all post offices in the nation, while in the UK, customers of the 500-year-old Royal Mail have seen the cost of a first-class stamp rise about 55 per cent over two years. Enjoy your Christmas cards while they last.

To read more about what a country’s postal service can do for its soft power, click here.

For its end-of-year show, Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria is paying homage to two of contemporary fashion’s most influential designers: the late Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo, the visionary behind Japan’s Comme des Garçons and global retailer Dover Street Market (writes Cat Woods).

The exhibition is a coup for anyone interested in fashion, art or rule-breaking. Westwood and Kawakubo rose to prominence under different circumstances and championed different aesthetics but shared similar values, including an appreciation for historical costume and a commitment to challenging societal beauty standards.  
 
National Gallery of Victoria curator of fashion and textiles Danielle Whitfield takes Monocle inside the new exhibition here.