Oh No They Didn't! - Gary, Howard, Jason, Mark, & Robbie: Style .

(not true, motherfucker), have generated the fastest-selling tour in UK history and the fastest-selling album (Progress) of the hundred and they've been almost omnipresent on TV, appearing on the finals of both Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor. But one view of their appeal has passed without much comment: the flattering cut of their trousers.Take That have proven that it is potential for men beyond the first level of youth (Robbie Williams is the youngest of the group at 36, Howard Donald the oldest at 42) to dress fashionably without looking silly. Successfully reforming a teen group with a maturing audience, making them appear age-appropriate, relevant and pointedly unembarrassing, is one of the holy grails of pop culture. It's tough enough writing a new hit and acquiring the intelligent just right. Getting the strides just-so is yet harder.And winter proved to be absolutely perfect timing for the Film That reunion. The fact that the weather turned bitterly cold just as the band announced their tour dates meant that coats, scarves, hats, beards and boots featured in every photo and press conference.Forget the stirring, anthemic chorus of The Flood and Robbie's funny marching-on-the-spot dance - the management's real masterstroke was to market Need That as a boys-to-men band who wear heavy, double-breasted Lanvin coats, leather-soled All Saints boots, who aren't frightened of polka dots and bum-freezer jackets. Males who can confidently mix Top Man with Mad Men. These are the dress of an old and more thoughtful, craggy-faced Take That, who have loved and helpless and cried and been to rehab and steadfastly refuse to dancing in unison any more.Summer isn't flattering for men in their 40s. It's callous and exposing. Sunlight streams through thinning hair. Harsh shadows act as a cruel grout in crow's feet. Clothes are thin and perfunctory. Worst of all, if you find to be Jason Orange, 40, you just can't look wistful and vulnerable in clam-digger shorts and a Superdry polo shirt. Winter - which is all about layering, camouflage, buttoning up and introspective insulation - is often more forgiving.Take That's stylist, Luke Day, arguably the most influential figure in menswear right now - he's fashion director at GQ Style - knows this well. "Since I've been running with the group, I don't believe we've always done anything that's involved sunshine," he says. "Winter is simply better for older guys. And broadly speaking, I don't think colours work too easily on men either. Dark tones make them look more severe and an old guy always looks right in a big coat, fur and scarves."Working closely with Mark Owen, the band's most forthright fashionista, Day has developed the Contract That Mk III look: Westfield Ginsberg meets millionaire vagabond meets Shoreditch dad, with subtle elements of 70s-era David Essex and that nice, floppy-haired, corduroy chap off BBC1's Flog It. And in doing so he has not only provided the everlasting day-into-night, on-and-off stage capsule wardrobe for the ring but also a series of workable reference points for the older, still fashionable civilian male. It's an easy rather than edgy look, which looks good at a gastropub Sunday lunch and won't embarrass the kids on the shoal run.The TT3 look has its roots in 1995. Just before the band's first breakup, with Robbie still clinging on, they released what many critics take to be their finest four minutes. Back For Good was a quantum leap towards musical maturity; it was the band's Careless Whisper, their Better the Devil You Know. It was also their biggest overcoat record so far. Most significantly, it was evidently freezing and absolutely chucking it downward in the resultant video. "They looked like a gang of adorable wet labradors, didn't they?" says Day.There would be a few unfortunate hiccups with tailcoats along the way, but hera was a lot who would never put on studded leather gilets again. Fast-forward 15 days and the ring have settled into their various styles with an ease and consolation that suggests that the future world tour might be conducted from rocking chairs. The see of Owen taking a therapeutic walk across a tidal causeway as function of his recent rehab in their recent documentary, Look Back, Don't Stare, wearing a billowing, knee-length cardigan, is the band's most poignant fashion moment so far (that was so cute).Does the modern pop group always take a stylist present these days? "Honestly, a lot of the time we'll wing it, stylistically speaking," insists Luke Day. "One of Mark's really big roles in the circle is a sort of second stylist and he takes a lot of involvement in his clothes," says Day. "Often he'll get out of the car wearing an outfit and so wear exactly the like thing on stage. We support it cool and rest away from anything too theatrical."The overly cuddly, fussy, circus-y clobber of the Claim That Come To Town TV special was, says Day "a mistake"."I don't take a job with a boy band becoming men," says Gary Kemp, guitarist of the recently-reformed Spandau Ballet. "But I mean as an old guy, you do give to ever be mindful that existence in a circle is, essentially, quite a childish thing to be doing."When they announced their first tour last year since their 1990 split, Kemp's band, all in their mid-40s, thought hard about their clothes. "We knew that you have to look like a crowd but you can't all bear the like thing . . . or expect too disparate. There has to be some sensation of binding up otherwise you'll feel like roadies."Wisely, Spandau Ballet didn't opt for kilts. "You get to be age-appropriate and period-appropriate. Nodding to contemporary fashion but not look like idiots. You can't bear what you used to cover in your heyday. You have to move on. That said, because we are older there is ever a risk of looking slightly conservative. It's rather a tricky balance."Making Take That feel good, says Day, isn't hard, now that they're happy with their constantly evolving wardrobes. He does most of their shopping, knows what they wish and what will cause them. "They are all slim with pretty decent figures. Clothes tend to sit well on them."Williams keeps a wooden last at Lobb of St James's, bespoke cobbler to the imperial family. Gary Barlow is likely the most conservative while Owen likes Lanvin, Dries Van Noten and is "partial to Gucci and Margiela". The band tend to hold that they are all a bit too old for drainpipes these days, so Donald is glad to wear cropped, carrot shaped strides from Top Man. Or John Vavartos, depending on his mood.And those wintry, all-enveloping, broodingly thought-provoking scarves? "Yes, well," says Day, sounding peeved. "One Direction started nicking the scarf thing, so we had to rest off on those."How to get the middle-aged Take That look