Style Icons: The Cincinnati Kid

“I’ll see your two thousand and raise you five thousand.” Gasps around the room. The Cincinnati Kid leans back in his chair, hand on chin.

Is that a knitted tie he’s wearing? It’s so hard to tell in black and white.

“Lancey’s got the jack!” “Nah, the Kid’s got the jack.” “Don’t be stupid, no one’s got it.” The crowd argues in whispers as Lancey leans forward, mockingly.

Look at how Steve McQueen’s grey shirt contrasts with the prim attire of Edward G Robinson and the rest.

The card is turned. Lancey has the jack; it’s all over. Fast cut from the Kid to Lancey to Christian to Shooter. End scene.

Lancey really has all the trappings of a establishment man – from the tie pin to the waistcoat.

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As long-time readers of this blog will know, I often have trouble concentrating on old films for all the wonderful tailoring on display. Brighton Rock was the first described here. The Cincinnati Kid is the latest - another victim of my wandering attentions.

The Kid is a lesson in the virtues of standing out, and in how to do it well.

Steve McQueen is the outsider in a group of high-rolling gamblers. The gamblers have money, and silently, implicitly try to outdo each other in displays of riches. The kingpin, Lancey Howard, declares that money is merely a means in gambling, not an end; just like breathing is a means to debate. Money has to be seen to be unimportant, and so it is lavished on embroidered waistcoats, silk gowns worn over their suits around the house and tie pins that glitter around the poker table.

McQueen’s clothes reflect his status. They the epitome of downbeat cool. For much of the film he wears a shawl-collared sweater with his shirt, instead of a jacket. When he goes out to a cockfight he wears a charcoal, round-neck sweater underneath his grey suit. At the table, in the culminating game of the film, he wears a grey shirt and black knitted tie with the suit.

As the picture of the cock fight here illustrates, everyone else is in white shirts (often with pinned collars), silk ties and either waistcoats or double-breasted suits. He is the exception. The eye immediately goes to him (though Melba’s legs help).

To enjoy men’s clothing as much as we do, there has to be a willingness to stand out. You will be wearing something different to most men in the room. Better, in our opinion, but different. The Kid is the best example I know of how to stand out in style while actually being more casual. Well dressed, well fitted but casual.

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Reality Bites: Is It All Strictly Useless

I am not one for reality television. I hardly watch anything on television as it is; whatever draws me to the box has to be something one-off and unscripted (such as a football match) or a particularly good drama series. Following reality television is as alien to me as drum ‘n’ bass music or ‘installation’ art; and it’s certainly not old age, I have never understood these concepts, even in the flower of youth. However, I am not in the majority for there are many who follow, and value, reality television. Those who challenge my support of sport – the sense that you are following something real, that the outcome is unknown – often suggest that reality television, particularly competitive programmes such as Big Brother and I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!, offer the same kind of thrill. I contend however that reality television is in most cases, aside from the public’s input, to some extent ‘scripted’ otherwise it could never receive the financial backing from those who have facilitated its filming. Investors always like to know what they’re getting for their money and reality television is no exception.

I also believed that reality television contributed to our new zombie nation. That many viewers are actually susceptible to manipulation through performance should concern, or delight, all who are in positions of power. However, recently during a viewing (which I had to endure) of Strictly Come Dancing – a ridiculous title for a show – I realised that there might be some good to come of the format of reality programming after all. For despite the asinine opinions, garish lighting and levels of glitz and sparkle that would make Elton John blink, the show does have redeeming qualities. Dancing is an attractive and admirable activity to advocate; it’s good for health, promotes elegance and reengages the public with, in our current musical climate, what is really a dying art – moving in a complementary fashion to a melody and rhythm. It also has the benefit of reengaging the public with clothing that is often seen as fusty or (I despise the tag) ‘posh.’ Rugby players, admired actors of stage and screen and crumbling celebrities have all been seen in dazzling white tie, no doubt provoking comments of ‘Oh! Don’t they look smart?’ in many sitting rooms up and down the country. When such beloved and ‘humble’ figures are seen to dress thus, it is peculiar how acceptable and acknowledged it becomes. No longer is it something they ‘don’t understand’ – for they had seen it last Saturday on their favourite leading man.

The other benefit of this show is the presenter Bruce Forsyth who, despite the garish surroundings of the studio, manages to dress with a restrained flair. Much to my relief, the show advocates black tie like no other – and it demonstrates the impact of the practice, and its superiority, by its juxtaposition to the ‘modern’ black tie. The only characters who dress well are Mr Forsyth and one of the judges, Len Goodman. Their staple is black tie but they vary the style of their evening dress from week to week – colours of waistcoat, width of lapel, size of bow – all contributing to the likely positive acceptance by the public of the differentiations possible with evening dress, and the idea that elegance is desirable and achievable. Both achieve solid 8s and 9s. By far the most poorly dressed of the male quartet, Craig Revel Horwood and Bruno Tonioli dress in that careless, ‘young Hollywood’ fashion; Tonioli with his ghastly, glittery tone on tone bringing back nightmares of a similarly attired Chris Tarrant, and Revel Horwood, though he has occasionally worn a bow, in his inoffensive but cheap and lazy ‘modern’ black tie. Both would be very lucky to receive anything more than 4.

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Forgotten Style Aces: Edward Hughes Ball Hughes

A friend recently told me that they believe there is no better, more flattering combination of shirt and tie for any man than that of black and white; a white shirt, with a black tie. Traditionalists might scoff at the practice of wearing black ties to anything other than a funeral or an evening function; until quite recently, the modern practice and code has been to wear all colours of tie during the day, except black.

Some I have encountered remark that wearing a black tie makes you look like personal security, or a doorman, or a chauffeur: a man in service to another. They are often surprised when I inform them that you can trace back the ‘invention’ of the black tie (or cravat) with the white shirt to a gentleman who represented anything but the image of servitude. A man who lived a life so wildly fantastical that his interesting tale is refuted as Aesopian myth; but he was real and he was indeed credited, and credit was always to be his downfall, with the invention of the black cravat.

Edward Hughes Ball Hughes, known in society as ‘The Golden Ball’ due to his extraordinary wealth, was a friend of the Prince Regent and a noted dandy. He was, in addition to being fabulously rich, a handsome man and, no doubt due to his notoriety as a hedonist and colossal gambler, influential in matters of fashion. Ball Hughes was still at Eton when Beau Brummell was gambling his last farthing at the tables in St James. His spells at Cambridge and in the navy must have been brief; by the age of 19 he had inherited a fortune of £40,000 a year. With such riches, connections to the highest circles will have been expedited.

In the days of the Regency, and indeed the era of George IV, men like Ball Hughes were the Hollywood stars. In the capital of the largest and most influential empire, society concerned itself with sex, scandal, money and fashion; Ball Hughes was one of those at the centre of attention. He bought Oatlands, Henry VIII’s great palace in Surrey, from the Duke of York and spent his honeymoon there with his beautiful new wife, a sixteen year old Spanish danseuse. He would famously be seen, set striding across his newly acquired estate, hunting in his latest creations for fashion; an army of servants carrying guns, wine and food behind him.

However, despite his undoubted influence in fashion, it was for his career as a gamester that he was best known. Gambling at anything from cards to shuttlecock, Ball Hughes dissipated most of his fortune away through his speculations at the tables. He was written letters by concerned friends, fellow members of his clubs, that there were conspirators, vultures; ‘they seek [to] knock down your whole fortune in one night.’ Though he gained little reward but pleasure from his gambling habits, the Oatlands speculation was one of his few triumphs. Much of the land was sold for the development of villas and Ball Hughes was able to live out his remaining few years in the luxury he had enjoyed throughout much of his life.

So for gambling he was known, but for the black cravat he is remembered. His legacy for his heirs had all but disappeared but the most important legacy; the daring to flaunt an alternative style, however conservative that style appears in the modern day, preceded one of the most common practices and combinations of tone available to men today. I often think to myself that I could credit few individuals with the appreciation that they were the reason I do a certain thing, or dress a certain way – largely because if they did exist, they are unknown to me. I relish therefore the opportunity to raise a glass to a single figure in history whose accidental power and influence is the reason I am flattered by monochrome today.

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The Enigma of Flusser

Alan Flusser knows a lot about style. Anyone who has read his books knows that, and knows that he has a gift for communicating his knowledge (though I would say that he had a better editor on Dressing the Man, which has a lot less flowery prose than Style and the Man).

The enigma of Alan Flusser is that, although he knows a lot about men’s clothes, he doesn’t necessarily follow his own advice. In a recent comment on this site, one reader pointed me to a video interview with Alan on men.style.com, the GQ men’s style website. The video can be seen here.

In the interview he is wearing a charcoal-grey pinstriped suit, white shirt, black tie and a pink handkerchief. It’s a combination of strong tones that some might find hard to pull off – that black tie and white shirt could easily make you look like you are at a funeral, and a strong colour like pink can easily look cheap against black.

But it seems to suit Alan well, and he has obviously decided (pace his tonal recommendations in Dressing the Man) that his is a high-contrast complexion, complemented by high-contrast clothes.

Half way through the video, though, the camera pans down to reveal Alan wearing a pair of pale, ripped, rather baggy jeans. It’s hard to think of a starker failure of marrying formal and casual – indeed, as in our previous discussion, in wearing jeans and a jacket – well.

The textures of material are at completely different extremes (worsted, denim) as are the colours (white and high-contrast, blue and subtle) and the patterns (pinstripe could not be more formal, ripped jeans hardly more casual). It is an archetypal Newsreader Look.

So I am afraid I have to disagree with the reader on this point – Alan here is doing the exact opposite of everything I have professed and argued. Try wearing that combination yourself and then wear it to work.

But, and it is a big but (no sniggering in the cheap seats please), I have complete confidence in Alan Flusser. His books are too good, and have been too fundamental to my passion for clothes, for me to think that he does not know what he is doing. He knows the rules and he knows he is flaunting them.

Alan also has a rather personal take on style generally, as can be seen in the other photos shown here. I can only presume that when you know all the history and traditions of men’s cloth-combination, you want to do something a little different. You can only break the rules well when you know why they are there, after all.

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Brideshead Overstated

There was always something a little fishy about the choice of Castle Howard as the setting, once again, for Brideshead; the seat of the aristocratic family, the subject of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. That the film makers of the feature length version simply had to choose this famous baroque pile in Yorkshire for the family home of the Marchmains, to match the 1981 miniseries, made me a little less optimistic about its release. It revealed a lot about the mindset of the adaptors. They were clearly wary of the power and enduring appeal of the Granada masterpiece and yet, instead of choosing to source their own Brideshead, to craft their own mystique, they lazily borrowed from earlier artwork. I had the horrible feeling that I was entering a theatre to watch, not a story and characters I had loved and admired, but a curiously unnecessary revalidation of the thought that one visit to Brideshead was quite sufficient. Were it not for the costumes, I might not have entered or endured.

One of the most fabulous treats of a period drama, no matter how it is massacred by the screenwriters, the juvenility of the green actors or even an overbearing score, is that you are certain to be delighted by onscreen beauty in setting, architecture and above all costume. For the recent film The Duchess, the actors did not have to compete with each other, the director or the composer for the best reviews; they had to compete with the costumes and the sets. Our love for period film has turned us into visual gluttons who love to see the fashions and worlds of yesteryear as an on-command pageant in front of our eyes. This has ensured that accuracy in costume, and budget revision, has been one of the key considerations of period filmmaking. You can even hear them before pen is put to paper on script: “Well, we don’t have a story yet but Steven, this is Victorian London! It’s going to look fabulous!”

The danger with this is that sometimes, budget accords too much time and effort to costume. In a bid to win back the cost of production, the wardrobe departments sometimes veer into the fantastical and improbable; you see costumes and not characters. In Brideshead Revisited, this happened more than once. Some of the costume lacked period accuracy, as did much of the film – one boo-boo was to feature a summertime visit to Venice offering the pleasure of Carnivale which actually takes place far earlier in the year. That mistake summed up the intention of the filmmakers (or financiers – what you will); this was a rearrangement of the story, of the characters and even the cities in which they frolicked. Accuracy in costume would be hardly noticed. There were strange 1950s neckties and 1940s lapels, out of place in pre-war Britain, suspiciously 60s Missoni style scarves and some very modern cuts of suit that paid no heed to the lines or construction of 30’s tailoring. It was attractive, and extravagant but one was frequently wondering; “Would they have worn that?”

Having said that, there were some wonderful ensembles that cleverly displayed the differences between middle class Charles Ryder and aristocratic Lord Sebastian Flyte; their first ‘encounter’, when Charles peered over a bridge to watch Lord Sebastian lolling in a punt as Anthony Blanche entertained those surrounding with his recitation, had Sebastian dressed in blue Henley jacket and waistcoat, white trousers and white shoes. The very picture of patrician progeny. Charles was dressed, due more to budget and social position than taste, in a more bland fashion. His artistic soul appreciated the Decadents but his middle-class awareness prevented him from following them too closely; in clothing, as in life, there was always something holding him back from a world he had dared to suppose he could be a part of.

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