Forgotten Style Heroes: E Berry Wall

First there was the Dandy; then, there was the Dude. First there were trousers and riding jackets; then, there were thigh high boots and Glen Plaid pantaloons. Although they could not be more stylistically opposed, the Dandy and the Dude do share the taste for rebellion; the former against the unwashed, perfumed and bewigged fashions of fops; the latter against the plain, austere façade of Victorian respectability. But though the Dandy is celebrated for his overturning of strange fashions that are anathema to all modern men, the Dude has been largely ignored; his extravagant, carriage-stopping ensembles have faded into the past; the heroes of the movement forgotten.

Even the “King of the Dudes” Evander Berry Wall – a great celebrity in his day – is barely acknowledged in style’s hall of fame. Born in 1860, E. Berry Wall - ‘Evander’ was rarely used - was a fortunate young man. He inherited a large sum of money from both his father and grandfather before reaching the age of 22. A young millionaire, Wall used his fortune to assemble a colossal wardrobe that would eventually include 5,000 neckties and 500 complete changes. In Wall’s great variety of ensembles he is said to have possessed the most colourful and extravagantly patterned suits in New York. Unlike the Dandy Brummell, the Dude Berry Wall sought attention and recognition. You can imagine him paraphrasing the Beau’s famous line: “If Joe Public doesn’t turn around and look at you…you’re not worth looking at.”

It was Wall’s taste for experimentation and his patronage of Henry Poole that led to his most famous achievement; wearing the short dinner jacket in public. The story goes that Poole’s most illustrious customer, the Prince of Wales and later Edward VII, had a short jacket made and had worn it instead of an evening tailcoat on a number of private and public occasions. Poole sent one to Wall and suggested it be worn “for a quiet dinner at home or an evening’s entertainment at a summer resort.” Though a wealthy and socially accepted personage, Wall was not a royal prince or the heir to a vast empire; he may have affected to set the fashion but he could not have set the tone. Thus, his jacket’s first public outing at a ball in Saratoga was met with consternation. The manager of the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga ordered him from the floor and, apparently, only permitted him to return after he had returned to his room and changed into an evening tailcoat.

Such sartorial squeamishness was widespread. At the time, New York society, as Edith Wharton and others have famously documented, was not a place for pioneers of fashion. After amusing escapades including one involving a reporter’s thirst for a good story, a “Battle of the Dudes” and a pair of black patent leather thigh boots, Wall went bankrupt in 1899 after a foray into investing on Wall Street. The resulting social isolation and embarrassment led to his departure for Paris. Wall’s own reasoning was that New York had “become fit only for businessmen.”

In Paris, he permitted himself the comfort of an apartment at the Hotel Meurice, near Charvet who had long been supplying him with his famous high starched collars. He extended the elegance of Charvet collars to his chow, who strutted with his master through the Place Vendome to the Ritz Hotel, where Wall’s patronage was well noted. Devoted to his wife and his pooch, Wall is often unfairly pilloried as a profligate and self-indulgent poseur. He was extravagant, but it is said that his life brought him great happiness and that he remained a fixture of continental society until he died in the spring of 1940 at the age of 80. Wall often credited his diet of champagne and his avoidance of physicians for his longevity, quipping: “There are more old drunkards than old doctors.”

Dressing Like James Bond

This article is guest post by Matt Spaiser of The Suits of James Bond.

Every man admires James Bond’s clothing, but have you wondered what makes the secret agent’s clothes so special? It’s mostly about the suits, and a well-fitted suit makes all the difference. But what about the style? Bond’s suits have always been on the more traditional side, often with 3-piece suits for the office, though Bond always found some way to bring elements of current fashion into his clothes. This article will step through the past five decades of James Bond’s style, showing how you too can dress like Bond.

Sean Connery’s suits in the 1960s were classic English Savile Row style. The first thing that comes to mind when we think about 1960s suits are the narrow lapels, but Connery’s were far from the extreme. His suits had softly padded shoulders, a full chest but suppressed waist, and trousers with English double forward pleats and tabs to cinch the waist. Whilst the pocket style and rear vents differed from suit to suit, this cut was always the same. Connery wore mostly suits in shades of blue and grey, with a few dark brown, in solids, herringbones, simple pinstripes and glen plaids. Fabrics ranged from lightweight tropical worsteds to heavy winter flannels, with the occasional dupioni silk and mohair. It all sounds very traditional, but the modern touch to Connery’s suits came with the two-button front. By the 1960s in the United States, two button suits had become the norm, but to the English anything other than a 3-button suit was fashion forward.

When former model George Lazenby took over the roll of James Bond in 1969, he brought a more fashionable style to Bond. His rakish suit jackets were more fitted with a cleaner chest and shorter in length than Connery’s, and he wore flat front trousers instead of pleated. Lazenby wore both 2-button and 3-button suits, with double vents and some with hacking pockets, two now quintessentially English elements. This overall style has seen a resurgence in popularity over the last few years, though today’s style is missing the strong English flair present in George Lazenby’s suits.

Sean Connery returned to Bond and brought the character into the 1970s with Diamonds Are Forever, updating his old style with wider lapels and flat front, wide leg trousers. His new suits were double-vented and many had hacking pockets. When Roger Moore took over Bond his suits were the same in overall style, and as the 70s progressed, his lapels, pocket flaps and trousers widened. These are what the average person notices about 1970s suits, but if you look past that you will find that Roger Moore always wears perfectly tailored suit. No matter how you style a suit, a proper fit is always most important. Whilst some of Moore’s suits incorporated the traditional colour palate found in Connery’s suits, he also wore many more suits in earth tones, plus a large number of silk suits as well. In addition to his 2-button suits, Roger Moore occasionally wore double-breasted suits, mostly in the classic 6-button style with 2 rows to button.

Roger Moore entered the 1980s with a new tailor and more conservative style. The lapels and trousers narrowed and the hacking pockets were gone. His suits were now in more traditional English fabrics with blue and grey chalkstripes for London and tan and brown gabardine for warmer climates. His one consolation to the 1980s was a lower button stance, which happens to suit his figure very well. Timothy Dalton’s clothing is hardly worth mentioning. His suits in The Living Daylights hark back to Connery’s, but have a more relaxed fit. Dalton’s suits in Licence to Kill introduced Italian style to the Bond series, something Pierce Brosnan would continue with in the 1990s.

Pierce Brosnan was known for his Brioni suits, updated for the 1990s with 3-button fronts and reverse-pleat trousers. Whilst many of his suits were anglicized with hacking pockets and double vents, they did not escape Brioni’s strong Roman silhouette. The Brioni silhouette is defined by it’s square shoulders and clean chest, the ultimate power suit. Even though Brosnan’s suits weren’t made in England, they were made from in classic blue and grey solid, pinstripe, windowpane and birdseye English fabrics.

Daniel Craig started off in Casino Royale with 2-button and 3-button Brioni suits, but switched to more fashionable Tom Ford suits in Quantum of Solace. Tom Ford is the most fashionable suit brand Bond has ever worn, but its English-influenced style is rather appropriate for Bond. The Tom Ford suits are cut with strong shoulders, a clean chest and a 3-button front that rolls to the middle button, essentially giving the jackets a 2-button silhouette. The jackets all have double vents and ticket pockets. Though Tom Ford suits have a striking silhouette, they are firmly rooted in classic style. The trousers have a flat front with a lower rise, Daniel Craig’s only concession to current fashions as far as his suits are concerned.

Equally important to the suit are the shirt, tie and shoes.

Most of Bond’s shirts throughout the series are cotton poplin in solid white, light blue or cream. These three shirts go with everything and are all the well-dressed man needs. Connery and Moore were known for their fancy 2-button turnback cuffs (also known as cocktail cuffs, a popular 60s style that rose to prominence from Dr. No), but Bond has worn barrel cuffs and french cuffs throughout the series as well. The key element to the English shirts that Bond always wears is a large spread collar, and English shirts never have a breast pocket. Shirts should be somewhat fitted but never tight.

Connery started the series with only one tie, a navy blue grenadine. Grenadine ties look similar to knit ties (the ones that have square bottoms)  but are not related in the least. Grenadine silk is woven, not knit, and the ties are constructed likes any other normal tie. Later, Connery expanded to wearing black, navy and brown knit ties and black and brown grenadine ties. Connery’s Bond showed how it’s possible to dress with with such a limited tie collection, which is often the case for travelling businessmen. George Lazenby introduced the red knit tie to Bond, and it wasn’t until Roger Moore became Bond that Bond wore non-solid ties. Roger Moore wore striped and patterned ties, but he still wore many solid ties like his predecessors. Dalton wore mostly solid ties as well. Perhaps the best argument for solid ties is that they never go out of style. Avoid loud, busy ties like many worn by Pierce Brosnan, as those all look dated now. Daniel Craig opts for simple woven macclesfield ties, understated and formal.

Aside from suits, Bond occasionally wears sports coats, though we haven’t seen those in a number of years. We have seen country tweed and cotton safari jackets, but Bond’s favourite is the navy blazer, coming from a naval background himself. Bond’s navy blazers are either single-breasted with two buttons or double-breasted with six buttons. And of course the buttons are metal, often in silver instead of brass. Navy blazers always have double vents. Bond wears his blazers with or without a tie, and with grey, beige or white trousers.

Bond’s footwear is always professional, just as everything else is. With a suit, the shoes are always black leather with a leather sole. Throughout the series Bond has worn all the classics, including cap-toe oxfords, 2-eyelet derbies, plain-toe monk shoes, elastic-sided ankle boots and horse-bit slip-ons. The last two are harder to pull off in a business setting. For more casual suits and sports coats, Bond also has worn essentials such as brown suede chukka boots and brown wing-tip full brogues.

Bond sticks to the classics. He ties four-in-hand knot, not a windsor. He doesn’t wear a solid black suit unless it’s to a funeral. And he doesn’t wear rubber-soled shoes with a suit. He sets an excellent example for how to look professional and command respect, in or out of the office.

Matt Spaiser is New York based graphic designer. He blogs at bondclothes.blogspot.com.

Style Icon: Matteo Marzotto

There aren’t many Chairmen or Chief Executives who are worthy of the title ‘style icon.’ Despite being in the pink financially, Captains of Industry don’t dress as their myth would suggest. A great number probably use tailors but evidence of their use is never apparent; a lot of the sheeny-shiny stiff-as-a-board suits worn by business leaders are possibly very expensive, despite being laughably ghastly. A lack of interest is probably the reason; vanity does not always go hand in hand with egotism and leadership is not always matched by inspiration. Money and power shout a heck of a lot louder than the brashest pinstripe suit; who needs an elegant drape when you hold all the power in the boardroom? Who wants a flattering silhouette when you’re buying and selling companies like used cars?

Well, Matteo Marzotto seems to. Undeniably one of the most elegantly attired tycoons in the world, Marzotto – always grinning – is an Italian textiles scion who turned the loss-making Valentino brand into a profitable fat cherry that was plucked in the private equity harvest of 2007 for a little over $1bn. Like Lapo Elkann, the Fiat heir, Marzotto was born into a privileged world. However, unlike the surfer-haired jet-setting überdandy, Marzotto’s association and exposure to the fashion world goes further than whimsical fancy. His is a more serious aesthetic, something self-consciously, though elegantly, ordinary. This is no attention-seeking Milanese orchid, fluttering from café to café; he is a businessman, something horrific to unshackled creatives, and his clothes, though exhibiting a sense of the refined and unusual, are appropriate for a man in his position.

As with many style icons, it is not so much what Marzotto wears but the way in which he chooses to wear it. There may be a few brightly striped shirts, a couple of wacky ties but most of his wardrobe seems to conform to that of any elegant Milanese or Roman about town; a wool suit, white or blue shirt, a dark, patterned tie and a white linen square. An easy, don’t-even-have-to-think-about-it combination, but one delivered with effortless panache. Take for example, Marzotto’s utility of his clothing. Whereas many don tailored suits and treat them with the most extraordinary delicacy, he shoves his hands in his double-breasted pockets, cracks a grin and delivers a wink. He lives in his suits and understands them; many others, by comparison, are like waxworks.

His dark ties are a lesson in elegance for the cringeworthy pastel-crew who, despite an inadequately flattering complexion, insist on the sickly sweet-shop salesman aesthetic of pale ties with pale shirts. Marzotto’s tailor, whoever he is, cuts his suits very well; there is the classic Italian shoulder, a relatively high gorge and an unfashionably large lapel. Despite wrestling for control of iconic brands, as he was with Valentino and he is with Vionnet, and using the names to build the business, Marzotto is a walking advert for everything that is nothing to do with brands; wearing clothing that was stitched by unglamorous artisans. Nothing about his style is unnoticeable and yet, it is not designed to be noticed. He is the sort of man, like Elkann, who learned about wearing clothes from a beloved relative; lectured on the value of a cut, coached in the tying of a tie. A man who really understands clothes is never born; he is made.

Albert Ahoy: The Monegasque Royal Wedding

Another wedding, another balding royal; but this time there was something slightly peculiar about the ensemble, something Mediterranean. In the tiny, Hyde Park-sized principality of Monaco, Prince Albert II married his South African bride Charlene Wittstock in the Saturday sunshine. There was no carriage ride, no cavalry guard, no scarlet tunics or polished riding boots. Instead, the Grimaldi scion wed in an ivory-white military uniform that clashed rather awkwardly with his wife’s sleek-but-dull Armani gown. Fellow royals from Sweden, Great Britain and Holland were also clad in white – famously the least favoured of all dress-uniforms – and the addition of white shoes made their ensembles ever so slightly absurd.

Unlike his father, who famously wed Grace Kelly in a pompous but more fittingly regal navy tunic, embellished with gold thread and spurious military awards, paired with sky blue and gold-braided trousers and accessorised with a jewelled sword, Albert – a ruler in charge of the smallest military force in the world – looked more like a ship’s captain from a 1940s Pacific & Orient pleasure vessel in the summer uniform of the palace guards. Whereas Grace was allowed to gleam, Charlene had to clash; in the sheen of her gown, there was no sign of the legendary elegance of the groom’s mother who had so influenced the bride of the year’s other royal wedding. As one has come to expect from Armani – a gifted but scarcely imaginative designer – the dress itself was flatteringly simple and, alongside the pleasure-cruise uniform of her new husband and the crowd of bluebloods, entirely disappeared.

There was something rather flabby and carefree about the Prince’s ensemble, and indeed that of other royals. For a place that is considered to be the world’s most glamorous superyacht marina, the uniform was certainly appropriate but it lacked the sober majesty of other royal wedding tunics. It was an aesthetic redolent of sweet vermouth cocktails and sticky nightclubs – apposite for a ‘party Prince’ but jarring with the reverence of a Catholic ceremony: it is a rare wedding that allows the groom to be ‘the meringue.’ The majority of the attendees, including Karl Lagerfeld, Sir Roger Moore (orthopaedically shoed) and Bernard Arnault, were in formal morning dress but there were a number of uncovered female shoulders, despite requests to abide by cathedral dress codes, and more than a few pairs of loafers. This was very much a Med wedding.

And yet, as shocking as Albert’s seasonal uniform was, in the beating sunshine and azure background of the glittering Mediterranean, it looked far more apropos than the double-breasted waistcoat and tails sported by others who looked like dazed colonials, shipwrecked on their return from India, squinting into the sun. The military whites looked like dashing sailors taking shore leave in a sunny paradise.

As ridiculous as it was to smash the bride’s white prerogative, Albert’s pristine uniform matched the gleaming and manicured buildings in the quiet and ancient Monaco-Ville; had he climbed into a carriage it would have been preposterous, instead he climbed into a new Lexus landaulette. It was a little gauche, and would certainly have made other royals wince, but it did fit the occasion.  Albert does not pretend to be a knight in shining armour – indeed, with his reputation and flutter of rumours regarding a paternity suit, he most certainly could not. Unlike Kate Middleton, who beamed with unnerving consistency at her marriage to a prince, Charlene Wittstock rarely deployed her smile. Perhaps it was the paternity rumours, or possibly the service? Or maybe it was the sight of her husband, gleaming and winking in white; for clashing with his bride on her big day, even a prince might have some grovelling to do.

The Style of The Talented Mr Ripley

One of the greatest sources of sartorial inspiration is, and probably always will be, the silver screen. Who can forget the impeccable suits of Sean Connery’s Bond, or the preppy-meets-cop style of Steve McQueen in Bullitt? Modern technology has made the ferreting out and dissemination of stylish films much easier than it was when I was a nipper. Which is just as well for you, dear reader, as I can share with you a supremely stylish film, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley.

The setting is largely 1950s Italy, where Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), the son of an east-coat WASP millionaire, has taken to frittering away his allowance. Needless to say, Dickie’s father isn’t too happy about this and recruits the outwardly charming but inwardly sinister Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) to bring him back. As time goes by Ripley develops a very unhealthy obsession with Dickie and, inevitably, the excrement hits the fan in chilling fashion.

Aside from being a fine thriller in the mould of the best post-war mystery novels, The Talented Mr Ripley is an absolute gem in terms of men’s style. The locations – Sanremo, Rome, the Bay of Naples – lend themselves to a fine Mediterranean summer wardrobe that has, sadly, all but vanished from 21st century beach resorts. Jude Law steals the show in this regard, with a selection of summer-weight odd jackets, cotton chinos, loafers, ties and hats that will make most Men’s Flairers green with envy.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that you copy the looks wholesale unless you happen to have a time-travelling DeLorean at hand, but it certainly offers some inspiration. The combination of navy linen shirt and off-white chinos/shorts is always a winner in my book, and it doesn’t take much to reimage some of the more formal outfits seen on screen with some modern tailoring.