**GQ: A small project called the Rolling Stones? **

Charlie Watts: I was in the office, making a career [laughs].

**GQ: You've been wearing serious suits for a long time. Did that have something to do you with your jazz heroes? **

Charlie Watts: The jazz thing was a big influence, of course, but I really got a love of clothes from my father. Not because he had a huge wardrobe or anything, but he used to take me to his tailor. In those days you'd have a little Jewish guy in the East End in London, who made you things. And then I fell in love with a lot of Hollywood—well, pop singers at the time, like Billy Eckstein, who favored really distinctive collars on his shirts. Wonderful-looking man as well. The lovely thing about jazz guys in that period—the fifties and sixties—was that they were very handsome men—Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis—but they were also very stylish. When Miles wore a green shirt on the cover of Milestones, then everyone had to have a green shirt. Another big iconic guy, Dexter Gordon, made a record called Our Man in Paris, and he had one of these pins through his collar, which I now have hundreds of. The lovely thing about all of them, though, was that their clothes were worn. They weren't just put on, to the office and back. They sat all night in the things. They played in those suits. How they played in those suits I don't know

GQ: Haven't I seen photos of you playing in a suit?

Charlie Watts: Not very often. I mostly wear short-sleeved shirts or T-shirts. I used to play in jackets when I was very young.

**GQ: So he was always dressed up, Dave? **

Dave Green: Oh, yeah. I have a photo of him when he was a teenager at a place called the Mason's Arms. He's wearing a prep school jacket.

**GQ: Charlie, who designed the suit and shirt you're wearing? **

Charlie Watts: Me!

GQ: You designed it?

Charlie Watts: The thing with men's tailoring is that you don't really design it. If I went to my tailors—I have two in London—and I said I wanted a notched lapel on a double breasted suit, they wouldn't make it. It's always a peaked lapel on a double-breasted suit. There are things no good men's tailor will do. And you think, why not? But then when you see someone try those things, they look wrong. It's a hundred years of making a suit a certain way, and I love the tradition of that.

**GQ: What I love about you, Charlie, is that you make wearing a suit look so easy. You make everyone else look like they're trying too hard. **

Charlie Watts: Compared to who? Other guys in the band? To be honest, I have a very old-fashioned and traditional mode of dress. I get embarrassed, and I don't really like going to photo shoots. I don't like stylists. If you were Fred Astaire, you wore something and you had it on all day. It wasn't just put on you, which is what a stylist does. So I always felt totally out of place with the Rolling Stones. Not as a person—they never made me feel like that. I just mean the way I looked. Photos of the band would come back—I'll have a pair of shoes on and they've got trainers [sneakers]. I hate trainers, even if they're fashionable. I mean, I like fashion, because it pushes it and bends it around, but it takes a long while to get to this point—if you're that interested in being at this point _[laughs]—_where you understand what works for you. And so while I love fashion—I go to all the shops regularly, wherever I am—I have to adapt it to myself, but nothing fits me cause I'm too small, so I'll look at the clothes, then go back and try to adapt them. And as I've gotten older, there are particular things I like and don't like—little things.