New Year’s Resolutions

Another year is drawing to a close. Many people will use the start of the new year as the impetus to resolve to improve their life in some meaningful way. Some common New Year’s resolutions include getting fit or losing weight, improving a career, getting out of debt, being more organized and helping others. I would suggest that all of these worthy goals can have some relevance to men’s style.

This time of year many people resolve to lose weight. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States. Currently about one-third of U.S. adults are obese. Holiday parties inevitably contribute to the problem. It’s easy to pack on a few holiday pounds by washing down high-fat finger foods with your favorite cocktail. Gaining weight can really wreak havoc with tailored clothing. Waistbands sag under bloated bellies and jacket buttons strain with effort. And it’s no secret that clothes look better on a fit body. Resolving to get in shape is a worthy goal that will improve your style.

Some people resolve to get a better job or seek a promotion. It may be cliché, but if this is your desire then you should dress for success. Let people know that you mean business. Remember that you are marketing yourself and the packaging is important. This is especially important today because of the stiff competition in these troubled economic times.

Speaking of the economy, some people resolve to improve their finances or get out of debt. When it comes to clothing, obviously well-made classic items have better value than trendy fashionable attire. Constantly updating your wardrobe at the whim of the latest trend can be incredibly expensive. Instead, invest in items of lasting style and quality; your pocketbook will thank you.

If you winnow out your wardrobe, it is possible to get more organized and help other people. Resolve to weed out the clothes that you never wear. Then box them up and donate them to charity.

Good luck with whatever you resolve to do in 2011. Happy New Year!

Sartorial Stereotypes: Pocket Squares

The Silk Paisley Puff

The Silk Paisley Puff man, happily divorced but unhappily retired, still purposefully stalks the corridors of the investment management company he founded more than 33 years ago and for which he accepted, and now regrets, a glittering golden parachute and a token non-executive chairmanship. He divides his time between a Belgravia flat and a ‘small’, Elizabethan manor house in Oxfordshire, where James I allegedly kept a mistress, at which he pretends to enjoy his role as local squire by sponsoring village fetes and throwing a summer music and fireworks extravaganza. He stares glumly at the longcase clock in his dark hall, drumming his fingers on the refectory table on which his Blackberry (‘No new messages’), fully charged, rests quietly. He indulges in reflective self-ridicule; a hard-won life in the country, dressed in tweed, Tattersall check shirts, knitted ties and a silk paisley puff pocket square scream to him not of success but of failure – a failure to live up to their once lustrous allure.

The White Linen TV Fold

The White Linen TV Fold man is new to pocket squares. It is only a few months since he began to carefully insert a folded Thomas Pink square into the pocket of his Reiss suits. Silently thankful to his girlfriend for conniving him into ‘cosy evenings in’ watching Mad Men, he never admits that Don Draper was the inspiration for his substantially smarter look (indeed, his entire persona). Instead, he airily and unconvincingly proffers that he just ‘fancied a change.’ A ‘senior consultant’ at a nebulous public affairs agency, he is very conscious of his discreet ‘fold’, though it is barely visible, and he is often found in the office toilets refolding it before client meetings.  An unhappy mishap with a colleague inspired him to sew a linen fold into the top pocket of each of his suits, which proved to be an initial success, until an attractive client services assistant he’d been playfully flirting with at a company away day yanked so violently at the square that the linen ripped like a paper napkin.

The Colour Co-ordinated Peak

The Colour Co-ordinated Peak man, a Diet-Coking, go-getting, self-taught (and self-described) ‘management guru’ strides through the offices of his various companies shouting hellos at the bemused minions cowering in their desk booths. Ever since the purchase of his start-up by a FTSE listed corporate, he has assumed the role of an energetic paternalistic mentor; a post-David Brent caricature of ‘inspirational leadership.’ He rejects the term ‘employees’ for his staff preferring to refer to them as ‘key colleagues’ and he wanders around pumping his fists and high-fiving in dark suits, white shirts and precisely tonal-matched ties and pocket squares – the latter of which is worn in the mountain-peak style. A collector of nauseating management idioms rather than possessions, he often wears the same combination two days in a row but “…never”, he states proudly, “do I get them mixed up.”

The Misplaced Neckscarf

The Misplaced Neckscarf man, so named because the sheer volume of his pocket squares merit no other description, doesn’t do anything by halves although he is, ironically, a product of two different worlds. An early NY-LON Transatlantic childhood, his life was a mixture of ‘arty parties’ thrown by his doting but ineffective English mother, for Warhol and his troupe, at which he was usually left to his own devices, playing soldiers in the shag-pile carpet. Occasional visits to his stockbroking father in London, an Anglophile Bostonian who valued the quiet repose of English country life, introduced him to the world of tailored English eccentrics. An exuberant pocket square is his signature (thin squares, he claims, make him ‘physically sick’) which he wears with blue blazers, white Charvet shirts, Levi jeans and burgundy penny loafers while showing his chi-chi clients around an immaculately white art gallery in Lower Manhattan.

On Fashion, Gender, And Society

Right out of the gate I want to make two things clear: First, this is not an indictment of individuals, but of ideas. Second, everyone is entitled to their ideas and beliefs, and I am just expressing my own.

I have been troubled by a recent discussion taking place here on Mens Flair regarded the supposed differences inherent between men and women. A fellow columnist asserted, casually no-less, that “women tend to be led, men tend to choose,” and when questioned about it defended himself by suggesting in the positive that “being guided by fashion has given women an advantage in a heightened sense of aesthetics.” While I do not think these comments were meant with any malicious or consciously misogynistic intent, it would almost be better if they were. The very fact that they reside as seemingly-benign, condescending assumptions about a gender difference with natural, easily traced causes makes them all the more dangerous. It is only in acknowledging our assumptions, questioning them, and then making distinct and purposeful judgements of them that we can ever hope to express truth.

Another perfect example of this is the assertion that “the markets for womenswear and menswear respond to market demand,” with simply no regard for what might cause or influence those demands. The power of the market is not top down, and certainly not bottom up as it would seem here, but rather dialectical. We want things because of unconscious motivations and desires that stem from much broader concerns than whether we wish to be fashionable or classic. And, while due to additional social forces these concerns may impact men and women to different and varying degrees, no person exists outside of them. To think so is a delusion.

A commenter pointed out the absurdity of some of these assumptions and was quickly met with the philistine maxim “Embrace boldly your masculinity, your sword of discrimination, your natural proclivity towards choosing. Do not prostrate yourself to the fashionable altar of politically correct feminism, or its facsimile. Stand up, my good man.” I’m almost speechless. While we are at it, you know, taking up our violent implements of barbaric masculinity and keeping the progression of ideas about gender politics (and anything else for that matter) suppressed and in the kitchen where they belong, why don’t we just go all the way and take the vote back as well? Such a disgusting, ignorant depiction of subordinate female intelligence and action is the exception to my above clause granting everyone the right to their opinion.

Such an attitude’s companion, the condescending, self-righteous brand of faux-gentlemanly behavior that includes soft-voiced references to “the fairer sex” does nothing more than champion misogyny under the guise of paternalistic protection. I know it sounds like a crazy idea, but imagine actually respecting a member of the opposite sex, not as a woman but as a person. Seditious seeds these suggestions should not be.

Lastly, the powder keg that began all of this, the paragraph regarding classic men’s style as different from blind female consumption, in fact should have had nothing to do with gender at all. As people interested to varying degrees in style, fashion, craft, &c., we should all be aware of the myth of “classic.” Yes, I like classically inspired garments and accessories, but to ignore the fact that this category of design is influenced by trends, past or current, is to miss the mark. All design and aesthetics in general are relative. Absolute beauty is only one thing: absolutely false. Whether male or female, we do not design fashion or style, nor do they design us. We design each other. The debate here should be about things like menswear/womenswear, classic/fashionable, not about men vs. women.

Bespoke Morning Dress Part 3

More than a month ago, my brother put all his eggs into one basket and jumped off the dock. It was an autumn wedding, unusual but not unheard of, and despite being out of season, neither he nor his bride could have asked for a better send-off as they embarked on their new adventure in life, together as man and wife. Without a doubt, the main sartorial focus of the day was the bride – it always is, even when they look like meringue explosions – but this attention was entirely deserved; the men tipped their hats as a show of reverence to an elegant, Grace Kelly-esque lace-dominated creation, with a huge lace train, as it passed by.

However, the men of the groom’s party were not outdone; the groom informed me many moons ago that he wanted to be the equal of his bride on his wedding day, not a fawning servant in a rented outfit. Bespoke and distinct was the order of the day. Morning dress was always the choice but not the usual garden variety, black jacket and spongebag trouser affair. Instead, a navy herringbone wool was chosen for the jacket, and a navy and white houndstooth wool for the trousers. The jacket was to have grosgrain piping around the lapels and the hem, and the double-breasted dove grey waistcoats would be cut shorter.

The ushers were dressed similarly but wore the standard black jacket, striped trousers and single breasted instead of double breasted waistcoat. Ties were chosen over a traditional pinned-cravat(Ascot) – viewed as fuddy duddy – and the shirts were all varieties of blue with a contrasting white collar. Pins were worn in the ties – the groom’s was a blue topaz and gold antique - and the buttonholes were a single carnation. The men of the groom’s party also wore antique silk top hats.

One of the most outstanding and arresting features of the groom’s own morning dress was the grosgrain piping which lined the lapels and hem; it added a further soupcon of formality to the jacket and the lines, shining in the light, framed the shirt, tie and waistcoat beautifully. Russell at Graham Browne was sufficiently pleased that they were noted as the team at work on the piping had gone to considerable trouble; when it was first done, Russell was dissatisfied and ordered the piping be removed and redone; “The look on his face when I told him” he recalled, laughing “he wasn’t happy!”

Despite causing such temporary misery, the creations are entirely unique – which is the whole point of bespoke clothing – and will be loved and worn by their owners for years to come. Much like his lucky bride, the groom had a vision of his own wedding day. Fortunately, he was also able to realise it.

The Trials And Tribulations Of Suits You

Newsflash: anyone near a Suits You store may soon enjoy the experience of a stock-clearance sale as 2011 will see the end of trading for the much-unloved chain. Spare a thought though for the 300 Suits You employees who are now facing redundancy after the administrator of the long-flagging high-street retailer decided that the 66 stores no longer offer financially viable trading.

In other words: they can’t sell their damn suits.

I have only visited a Suits You store a few times and my first reaction to the decision of the administrator was not one of surprise; in my own estimation Suits You is not store concept that has any unique qualities that would see it through troubled times. In fact, the problems with the style are fundamental.

Lack of appeal

It looked like a clone of Moss Bros and inside and out; shop windows often had Young’s Formal Hire mannequins and boards, jostling for attention and dominating the display. The window should have been four or five mannequins with flatteringly pinned suits (hey, Ralph Lauren does it – why shouldn’t they?) displaying a variety of fabrics and styles; waistcoats, greys, blues, checks, along with a few interesting and relevant props for good measure – bowler hats and umbrellas.

Instead, wedding hire and red-tickets dominated their glass frontage and lent the emporiums the unappealing characteristic of a discount store.

Suits are a man’s best threads; don’t pummel him with big-font scarlet price reductions, simply offer the good value, more discretely, in store. And bring them in to buy, not to hire.

Image is everything

TM Lewin have a near permanent sale and get away with the loophole of trading standards by offering their shirts for the full RRP for the shortest period possible. They do have the fortune of a Jermyn Street address and history but they have blown neighbours out of the water in terms of trading numbers and expansion, and they have a very broad range of clientele. The reason? It doesn’t look or feel much like a discount store, just a store of excellent value; wooden shelves, attractive spot-lighting, Old-School decorative touches and leather armchairs. A lot of their stores have a sense of permanence. Suits You look like stock-clearance units.

Reduce the inventory

Instead of boasting about how many names (faux-designer or not) they stock, Suits You should have cherry picked the top seven or eight and focused on simple, currently-fashionable designs; you couldn’t sell a baggy three-button in this market if it was lined in gold.

Selectivity is attractive in a store, an endless list of names like Pierre Cardin, Racing Green and Jeff Banks is not and simply conveys the image of a bargain-warehouse. Suits in a bargain-warehouse might well sell, but not at less than half the price.

Branding

Your branding dictates who you appeal to. Don’t brand to people who don’t care about good suits, but do care about paying as little as they can for them and be surprised that they don’t purchase a suit discounted to £450 – even if there is a Royal Warrant on the label.

The brand name, the logo and the mockney tagline (‘Looking The Business’), are also cheap and unappealing; no one wants to say they bought their new suit, or their husband’s Christmas present, from a store named for a camp comedy punchline.

Comedy is never a clever idea for branding sensible stores; sooner or later, the joke is on you.