Too Much of A Good Thing

As I write this I’m listening to Dean Martin; as a rule I’ll quite happily drink cocktails with dinner; I read books on the Rat Pack and Sixties film icons; my favourite song is ‘Come Fly with Me’, sung of course by Frank Sinatra; my dream car is the Jaguar E-Type and don’t even get me started on Mad Men.  So you could say I’m a man with a long and ingrained appreciation for that age of manliness, the early 1960’s.

A few years ago I discovered Adam Shener. His shop, Adam of London, in Portobello sells suits authentically styled in the fashion of that peculiarly English movement known as the Mod’s. Tapered and tailored three button suits are the signature piece, and he stocks a full range of shirts and knitted silk ties. I thought his shop great. An original Mod himself, I loved what Adam was trying to do and his complete avoidance of the dictates of current fashion. Sadly, since then fashion has caught up with him.

The 60’s style revival that has happened over the last few years, which if not started by the cult status achieved by Mad Men was certainly accelerated by it, seems all pervasive. Knitted ties, and slim cut suit silhouettes are everywhere.

Of course if you talk to the genuine article, men like Adam, you’ll realise that most of it is a bastardisation of the authentic style of early 1960’s. But the era is yet another victim of fashions tendency towards overkill. But then anybody with a love of American Work Wear or genuine Ivy League will no doubt feel similarly - more Madras ties anybody?

The realisation that I’d just had too much of a good thing struck me this week when I visited Jaeger’s Autumn/Winter 2010 review day. While there were plenty of items I liked, and a few I will certainly be getting, my overriding feeling was ‘please God not another 60’s styled collection’. Of course it’s not entirely the fault of this company, this era was its heyday and it is only natural that they should take a look in their considerable archive for inspiration.

Fortunately, fashion is ever looking for the next big thing; and I shall retire to my sick bed with a copy of Shawn Levy’s ‘Rat Pack’ to aid my recovery.

Taking The Plunge

Currently the UK is in the grip of a general election. I say grip, it’s more of a weak handshake.

You may know that I am a part-time scribbler and hobby-ist on matters clothing and dress. My day job is a researcher to an MP, and whoever wins the election the time is fast approaching when I shall have to seek a new career path. As my last post made clear I’m more interested in product than dispensing advice, so I doubt scribbling full time is really an option. However, this week I’ve been arguing with my girlfriend about setting up my own label. Do I take the plunge or not?

The question I’m asking myself is does my idea have appeal and is it practical? Every year there are items I’m after, and more often than not existing retailers just don’t provide it. Experience – and you only have my word for this – tells me that I’m often ahead of the curve. Whatever I want normally comes out about 12-18 months later.

My basic idea is that every season I’d produce just one or two items in limited runs. Once they’re gone they’re gone. They will be core items around which you can add other items from other sources and build a look with. But the products will change from season to season; a shoe one season, a particular style of shirt the next. Manufacture will predominantly be in England, and if I can’t manage that then from a reputable source – no low rent, low wage sweat shops. Prices will be fair and reasonable, no big mark-ups for its own sake. Limited runs will be the determinate of exclusivity not mere price. For these reasons it obviously makes sense to sell online rather than from a retail outlet.

There isn’t much to prove this type of business model has legs, but then just because a thing hasn’t been done before is no reason to assume it won’t work.

So, do I follow the lead of so many of the people I’ve been writing about the last few years and take the plunge?

Men In Style: The Golden Age Of Fashion From Esquire

This book, which I mentioned in a recent post, is rather an inspiration.

You know how you flick through men’s magazines, hoping against hope that there will be an inspiring fashion shoot of suits, ties and shirts, demonstrating bold colour combinations you hadn’t considered, illustrating textbook use of pattern density and pushing the boundaries for contrast in texture? Styling that encompasses the rich past of menswear yet enervating it with effective modern interpretations?

Well I do. And outside an occasional spread in the Esquire Big Black Book, and slightly more frequent line-ups in The Rake, they are hard to find. Inspiration for me more often comes from runways, blogs like The Sartorialist and men I just see around on the street.

Which is ironic. Because the illustrations from Esquire that are collected in Men in Style are a composite of those inspirations: what men are wearing, slightly idealised, and slightly styled. No one sits quite that nonchalantly assembling his fishing rod, perched on the edge of the desk. But men are wearing wide peaked collars with single-breasted suits. And the pattern combination among check, herringbone, stripe and crocodile is certainly inspirational.

Esquire was some magazine, containing articles and stories by writers like Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett and John dos Passos. It was progressive, boldly printing a tale by a black author about a romantic multi-racial triangle – at readers’ request. And most importantly, it employed some great illustrators – particularly Laurence Fellows, Leslie Saalburg and Robert Goodman. Each had their strengths, but all could paint texture, cloth and drape extremely well. This was their primary skill – where modern fashion shoots focus on atmosphere at the expense of detail, these illustrations showed the shine of every button and the subtlety of every pattern.

Those were the good old days, you may say. No one would produce that kind of thing now. But when Esquire launched it was entirely unique on the newsstand. As Woody Hochswender says in his introduction, “the conventional wisdom was that men were not interested in fashion, at least not interested enough to be caught dead looking at it in a magazine.” So Arnold Gingrich, the founding editor, sought articles “substantial enough to deodorise the lavender whiff coming from the mere presence of fashion pages.”

Men’s fashion magazines today feature many articles. But you wouldn’t call many of them substantial. If I see another grooming piece telling me how to shave I’ll kill someone. Hemingway it ain’t.

The original Esquire was brave and different. And it launched as the world clambered out of global recession. Coincidence?

Cary Collection: Manhattan Treasure Trove

New Yorkers have mastered the art of living luxuriously in small spaces. Visiting Leonard Logsdail and Stephen Kempson in midtown last week was a good example: you step straight from the elevator into a compact yet very well-appointed tailoring studio, complete with armchairs, drink and racks of cloth. Alan Flusser’s small boutique is similar.

But the “bachelor flat/cum showrooms” of Thomas Cary (as he himself described it to me by email) are something else. As the pictures here amply demonstrate, the four small rooms on the upper-east side are stuffed from floor to ceiling with gentlemen’s collectibles and accoutrements.

From an old Dunhill walking stick with concealed blade to an Asprey catalogue featuring beautiful painted boards; from Christmas cards drawn by Cecil Beaton to vintage velvet slippers. And of course books, mountains and mountains of books. Regular customers include Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, who have bought items both for display and design inspiration.

I had discovered Thomas while searching for a copy of Men in Style: The Golden Age of Fashion from Esquire by Woody Hochswender. Although only published in 1993 it is now out of print, and is the only collected edition of illustrations from Esquire or Apparel Arts as far as I know. Outside of this volume there are the original editions of both magazines, but they usually only contain a few plates and are much more expensive.

As I was to be in New York, and one seller on AbeBooks.com (Thomas) lived in the city, I thought it would be a good opportunity to check out the book. Little did I know the treasure trove I was discovering.

Thomas also owns several hardback editions of the original Apparel Arts, which are truly beautiful things. The adverts are just as attractive as the features – as those that have seen scanned copies on various style fora can attest. But I didn’t realise that they also include swatches of cloth tacked to the pages. Not big ones, but enough to give a prospective buyer a sense of the weight and handle. If only my pockets were deeper (the set of six is on for $4500).

I did end up with Men in Style though, which I was very happy with. Fans of classic style will be familiar with many of the illustrations, but it is lovely to have them collected and in one’s hands. And doubtless they will provide inspiration for many blog posts in the future.

[Pictures from Tina Barney’s portraits of the showrooms for Nest Magazine in Spring 2000.]

Shoe Stereotypes

The Sanders buck shoe

The Sanders buck shoe man was quietly insistent that his daughter inform her class that her father was not, as she had previously speculated, a ‘ship builder’ but a ‘yacht designer.’ He flicked open his Macbook Air and explained to her, in an insipidly patronising tone of voice, that ‘daddy doesn’t bang nails; daddy draws aft cabins.’ His daily life is one of constant exposure to the world of the have-mores; as such his own lowly existence, though relatively civilised and fortunate, is a point of constant chagrin. One of his first clients commented that his Sanders bucks looked very much at home on his 150 foot long teak decks which inspired him to purchase three more pairs; in green, blue and grey. The clean, sporty style of the model and their lack of chintz appealed to the minimalist in him although his blue pair particularly, with the orangey-red sole and the substantial blue ‘hull’, brought to mind of some of the larger commissions he had the misfortune to miss out on.

The Church’s Tenby

The Church’s Tenby man, an irritable antiques dealer, was one of the original ‘Walnut Mafia’ who once occupied a choice position on the Fulham Road and sold, at great profit, Queen Anne and Georgian lowboys, armchairs and bureaux to City moneymen for their mansions in the Boltons. Times have hit the Church’s Tenby man hard however, and he is now selling from a smaller address in Ladbroke Grove. The money men have wised up and now send droves of experts and fearsome bidders to the auction rooms to pick up the sort of thing the CT man would rely upon flogging in order to purchase his tailored suits and his Church’s shoes. Hand burnished, his Tenby’s are starting to look a little worn but he gives them as much attention and skill as his highly priced antiques and buffs them to an incredible shine on a Sunday afternoon, where he can be found in his sitting room with an ale, his semi-brogues and the Antiques Roadshow which he enjoys by guffawing at the ‘small fry,’ exacting his snobbery with great delight.

The N&L Russia calf

The N&L Russia calf man is an effete Upper East Sider who collects purple cashmere socks and summers on The Vineyard. This dealer-turned-collector made a fortune selling his collection of Picasso sketches, mostly pornographic, to a Picasso-mad Bermudan billionaire for nearly eight times their market value. Ever since, he has been able to skip down Fifth Avenue from his co-op apartment, fancy-free at every 10.30am, to enjoy his favourite meal; champagne eggs Benedict. Being an incurable Anglophile, the Russian calf man makes regular and unnecessarily fabulous (large suites at the Ritz with a purple Rolls Phantom from the airport) sojourns to the English capital for, he says, the ‘art culture, the dynamism and…just the quirkiness of it all.’ Insiders say he goes for the suits, the shoes and the hunky Brit bartenders.

The John Lobb monkstrap

The John Lobb monkstrap man is a Milanese banker, terrified of being taken for: a Milanese banker. Unfortunately for him his flowing locks, pronunciation (‘Jon-a-Lawwb’) and continental minimalism give the game away within a minute of introduction. Ever since the ‘Bail of PIIGS’ issue, he has played down his Italian connections and has made efforts to convince colleagues that he is essentially European and does not hold the same views as some of the amusing politicians in his home country. He recently married an English rose ten years his junior who, again rather unfortunately, loves all things Italian as much as he does himself and often has to beg to be taken to Zafferano on a Friday night. His John Lobb shoes were an effort to make himself appear more English; his wife pointed out that they made him look more like Sartorialist favourite, and classic Milanese, Lino Ieluzzi.