Menswear Moving to the Front – Part 1

Things are going full steam ahead on the menswear front, particularly when it comes to New York City, the capital of fashion retail. High end labels are making serious investments and seem quite bullish on the future of men’s fashion.

Locals style icons like Ralph Lauren are putting money on the table with major brick-and-mortar expansions - in his case, turning the landmark Rhinelander Mansion into a men’s only store and building a new flagship across the street to house his women’s and home collations.

Other marquee names are expanding their New York footprint as well.  In May, Canali opened its first Manhattan store just steps away from the New York Stock Exchange, and not far from Hermès’ 5,000-square-foot Wall Street outlet.  That store, which opened in 2007, has a pronounced emphasis on the luxury firm’s men’s line.  Canali is still in the early stages of executing an ambitious plan to develop a retail network across the United States.  The New York location is the fourth of five Canali outlets in the U.S., including two in California and one in Florida.  A Las Vegas outlet is scheduled to open later this year.

Giorgio Canali, president of Canali’s North American operations points to the financial district’s growing residential population – the store is housed in a former office building currently being converted into luxury condos – and its attraction to tourists as benefits of the location. “It was time to showcase the entire collection the way we want it,” Canali said, adding that the company continues to look at additional locations in the U.S. but has no definite plans. Other luxury brands, such as Tiffany and Thomas Pink, have also opened stores around Wall Street.  These companies are all keenly aware that , when it comes Gotham, many of their better customers work on Wall Street, so these outlets are certainly well placed.

Hermès is making a major bet on its male customers too and is planning to open its first men’s-only store on Madison Avenue this fall. The 6,000-square-foot outlet will be located directly across the street from the company’s existing flagship at 691 Madison. The store will carry the company’s entire assortment of men’s merchandise ranging from ready-to-wear and accessories to lifestyle products. It will also include an entire floor dedicated to custom and made-to-measure merchandise. The store will be the first of its kind in the world.

The Wall Street store, noted above, showcases men’s ties inside the main entrance rather than the women’s accessories and handbags that are generally up front in its other units. That store also offers separate made-to-measure suit and shirt department as well as leather goods, watches, clothing and sportswear.  Once the new men’s only branch is open in mid-town, Hermes will have a solid menswear presence in the city’s two key retail sectors.  The company will launch a men’s ad campaign this fall as well; the brand has a solid men’s business, with menswear accounting for about 45% of sales.
This trend is not only contained to the States; French luxury label Lanvin is expanding its footprint in the men’s department with a refreshed retail presence in London.  The new 1,600-square-foot Savile Row boutique will replace their former New Bond Street location.  The store will showcase the French brand’s runway collection, classic “15 Faubourg” line and made-to-measure, a cornerstone of Lanvin’s menswear business since the 1920s.

“Men’s is showing a great dynamic,” said Lanvin president Paul Deneve to DNR, also outlining plans to renovate its Paris flagship men’s location on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore.  The 6,500-square-foot men’s store will house a VIP room for its bespoke clients on the third floor.

With prices starting around $5,000 for a basic bespoke suit, I don’t think I’ll be stopping by anytime soon.

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Why the fuss: Abercrombie & Fitch

Walking up to Regent Street is a regular activity of mine. I walk across St James Park, up the Duke of York steps wedged beneath the clotted cream Nash Carlton House Terrace, and up Lower Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus. I tend to avoid the Circus due to the high concentration of people congregating; taking pictures, loitering, pointing, pushing and shoving. If I were a tourist I could tolerate it. However, seeing it everyday is rather distressing.

What I used to do was take the route up Swallow Street. Until I realised that I saved even more time avoiding the throng by walking up Sackville and turning right down Vigo Street. However, I have recently had to avoid this route on particular days and resort back to Swallow and even Air Street to access Regent; my favourite shopping street. The reason? Well, it has nothing to do with the quiet establishments of Sackville Street – an ‘always empty’ travel agency, a stockbrokers, a couple of tailors, a book and printshop and Jasper Conran. No, even Vigo – despite the arrival of Napket and Starbucks – is not the reason for the consistent waves of people moving to and from Regent Street. At the end of Vigo, as you come to the corner of Gieves & Hawkes on Savile Row, you see the veritable ‘ants nest’; the line of dashing people can be traced back to a large and handsome building that sits on the corner of Burlington Gardens and Savile Row.

The steady stream of humanity moving in and out of this building would give the impression to the passer by that this is a structure of great importance. Is it a museum? Or perhaps an important royal residence?

However, passing by the building, from the strong shower-gel-perfume they seem to inject into the atmosphere to the low thud of vocal techno, you soon realise that this is no attraction of culture. The topless man, shining in oil, at the entrance to the store makes you think it could be some bizarre club; but it is only the bags that are carried out of the building that expose it as a shopping emporium.

Abercrombie & Fitch, although new to the area – an area of discreet art galleries, luxury goods and smart Italian restaurants – is easily the biggest, and noisiest, draw. Shoppers alien to the quiet Mayfair streets sit outside disconsolately, guarding their Bruce Weber-photograph bags full of booty. But what sort of booty is it?

The little I knew of the brand came from word of mouth and popular culture. I remember listening to the song ‘Summer Girls’ by the Lyte Funky Ones, when I was a school lad, in which the lyrics confessed a partiality for girls that wear Abercrombie attire. A&F was one of those American brands that was generally unavailable in the UK and this hard-to-get-hold-of aspect only heightened the curiosity. Since then, it has made numerous appearances, and received many a mention, in many Californian drama series to which, naturally, the youth of the UK have become rather addicted.

Though a born sceptic, I gave the store the benefit of the doubt and paid a visit to see what all the excitement was about. When I walked in I almost stumbled into inanimate objects for, much to my bewilderment, the store is completely devoid of natural light. It’s rather like walking into one of those Disney ‘rides’; I half expected a robotic pirate to thrust a sword at me from the shadows. In the dim light I was approached by a good number of muscular Narcissi who were helpful, but conspicuously so. I spotted racks, piled extraordinarily high, with colour and so I made my way over for examination.

The incredible thing about Abercrombie & Fitch clothing is that it is the least interesting thing in the shop, or I should say, the least distracting. Apart from a couple of pleasantly striped but poorly constructed shirts, most of the clothing looked like it had washed up on a beach in Thailand; the flotsam from a backpacker’s cruise across the waters of South East Asia. The branding was prominent and repetitive; A&F stamps on polo shirts, t-shirts and even shorts. I looked for clothing more suited to a cooler environment, but could find none; it appears it is always summer in the Abercrombie world or, at least, ‘Forever California.’

Incredibly, though Abercrombie & Fitch clothing cannot boast design or uniqueness, it comes at a hefty price. The polo shirts, ‘custom washed’ – and blighted by hideous white ‘stamping’ – were as expensive as Ralph Lauren’s, a minute’s walk away.
Everything in the shop was exorbitantly priced; I imagined poor parents shuffling through with their children, being asked to purchase shirts and shorts, of dubious value, for more than the cost of their hotel. Nothing I touched reassured me of there being any fair worth in the shop. There were no special materials; no silk or cashmere, nothing that had taken work or craftsmanship. Nothing that required more than a squiggle of a pencil from an infant.

My understanding of A&F is that they are selling a ‘lifestyle’; the ‘Californian dream.’ When I compare this ‘ideal’ with the, oh let’s say the more ‘East Coast’ ideal of Ralph Lauren down the road, it’s difficult to believe you are talking about products and ideology from the same nation. Ralph Lauren’s shop has a focus on design classicism; cut, material and quality of finish. Abercrombie, though comparatively priced, offers none of this. It merely offers the purchaser a simple garment and the ‘privilege’ of wearing the Abercrombie name across the chest, thigh or any other area of the body broad enough to emblazon a logo. Ralph used to do this – Polo Sport was an offender - and a few of his items have overly generous references to the designer. However, I am always reassured that items from his store, though certainly symbols of status, have many more additional qualities to recommend them.

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New York Men Shine in the Sun

New York puts London in the shade. The hot weather (it’s been above 30 Celsius all this week) brings out the city’s hidden peacocks.

Walking down Fifth Avenue this morning, almost every block presented a summer delight. Several seersucker suits, a plethora of summer hats, sockless suits with loafers, white linen and white bucks.

You just don’t see that in London. Granted, the consistency of the weather here makes summer clothing a better investment – a sunny day is actually sunny all day, rather than being half cloud in the morning, patchy at midday and just overcast in the afternoon. But I would bet good money that these impeccable gentlemen own four or five summer suits, and their peers in the UK own none. Such a shame.

Some would say that the Americans are not dressed well, in one regard. No matter how well tailored the outfit, or daring the cloth, every one of those summer suits had pleated trousers and no jacket waist to speak of. So while they were striking, I would argue they weren’t very flattering.

The trousers also had cuffs (or turn-ups) which, while I know many people are a fan of, create a very cluttered picture in my eyes. Given that the gentlemen I saw were wearing trousers that were wide, decorated with pleats, worn with a belt, and few of them wear slim, the last thing they needed was another bit of texture to break up the line of the outfit. All the slimming, heightening effects of the suit were removed. (I know cuffs are also meant to help pleats stay straight, but doesn’t tape add just as much weight?)

So the cut was not to my taste. This is the difference between silhouette and fit – something I stressed in a previous posting. The fit was immaculate, but the way they had chosen it to fit (the silhouette, the proportions) were, in my eyes, questionable.

But this is obviously a personal choice. I have to admit that what they did, they did well. In fact, I think many Americans get a bad press in the UK. Too many of them wear chinos that are too wide. Almost a third of them seem to be wearing the same outfit, which pairs these chinos with a shirt (or polo) and deck shoes. [I had the surreal experience yesterday of being in a list with four Goldman Sachs employees, who were all wearing blue button-down shirts, brown belts, chinos and brown deck shoes. It was freaky.] Finally, some Americans wear their chinos with trainers, which is just ugly.

Yet there are none of the classic English howlers – no suit jackets with t-shirts, no shiny tracksuits, no voluminous untucked dress shirts. The rules seem to have stronger roots in New York. Yes, the outfits can be boring (if a third were wearing the deck shoes outfit, about a quarter were wearing blue blazers) but the belts generally matched the shoes, the shirts were generally tucked in, and no one had a matching tie and pocket handkerchief.

So here’s to New York men, for their peacocks and their consistency. Without them English style wouldn’t have got far.

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The Real Innovation of Tom Ford

The greatest contribution Tom Ford’s new eponymous line has made to menswear is nothing to do with design – it is the creation of a compromise between bespoke and made to measure.

Bespoke, as regular readers will recall, involves creating a suit from the ground up. It can take any form, any shape and material. It is usually handmade by the tailor you speak to. Made to measure involves taking your measurements, adjusting the standard block for an existing suit and having it made in a factory.

Aside from the added quality of having a suit sewn by hand, the biggest difference between bespoke and made-to-measure is that there are fewer options with the latter – the shape of your suit and, to an extent, the materials, will be limited.

Tom Ford doesn’t mind this because people want to buy a Tom Ford shape and Tom Ford materials. They don’t want bespoke. But they do want the suit to fit as well as humanly possible. So he adds an onsite tailor to the equation.

The customer’s measurements are taken in New York, and from those measurements staff pick one of four bases and adjust it. The amended base in sent away to the factory (in Italy) and made up. When it comes back, the New York staff have the capability to make some fairly dramatic adjustments if needed. It’s made-to-measure, with a tailor at the other end.

“When you go to a bespoke tailor you can have almost anything made. When you come to us, you come for a certain Tom Ford look and then it’s modified. This is a hybrid that did not exist,” Ford told Fantastic Man recently. “There’s much more customisation than you can get from any other designer company. At the same time it’s got a bit more of a personal [designer] stamp than Savile Row.”

This is not just new, it is important. It tells people from George Clooney and Brad Pitt to the man in the street that you don’t only have three options – ready to wear, made to measure and bespoke. You can find any point in between if you find and use a good tailor.

If you buy a suit off the peg, ask what adjustments can be made in-house. Many designer brands offer this, often at cost price. Don’t be afraid to take it to a separate tailor if the fit still isn’t right (pushing yourself along the range from RTW to almost MTM). And don’t be afraid to take a MTM suit to a tailor either. Again, many shops that offer MTM will also do adjustments – Suit Supply is a good example, as I mentioned in a previous post.

It’s great to see Tom Ford distance himself from many other designers, who make no attempt to ensure their RTW suits fit. It is even more impressive that he has created an almost unique niche. Here’s hoping some other designers follow his lead.

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Survey Results: the American and the Dandy

Thank you to all who took the time to fill out last week’s menswear survey. At almost 400 respondents, it was great to see so many involved in a poll of what today’s men are wearing, and what they think about what they are wearing.

There seemed to be an interesting split between a dandified minority and a more conservative majority. On most questions that explored flamboyance or dandification, there was a stubborn 15% to 25% that revealed more adventurous tastes. For example, 27% considered themselves a dandy, 26% said they wear a pocket handkerchief and 13% answered that yes, don wear a bowtie casually.

It is not surprising that the numbers varied a little. Some are always a little more adventurous than others – I myself answered yes to the first two questions but no to the third. But there is a consistency across the answers. French cuffs are not necessarily that adventurous, but they do tend to be preferred by the more dandified – and so the result was at the top end of this dandy bracket: 30%. A minority owns a double-breasted suit (20%); and owns a bespoke suit (25%). Given a rough averaging of the numbers, this dandy minority also owns a minimum of around six or seven suits. (The number of suits also highlights the majority – if not necessarily conservative, at least less expansive – that owns between one and four suits.)

Of course, there is a chance that none of these minorities overlap. But it does seem unlikely that someone would wear a bowtie casually and not consider himself a dandy.

Countries and their historical, sartorial appeal is a fascinating subject. The results support two common assumptions. First, that most people identify with England as a style centre above others. Which is always surprising to most English people, at least those not steeped in its tailoring history. And second, that few people identify with the French, despite its reputation in womenswear (Tom Ford: “French men just can’t dress. They can’t”). The surprise is probably the 29% that pick America as the country they would most like to identify their dress sense with. I think this is testament to the power of Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and other US designers that have built up the idea of clean, historically aware American classics in recent years.

Which segues nicely into the branding question, where Ralph romps home. This is testament to the American and probably less flamboyant majority. But most interesting to me was the 14% of people who associated most with Hermes – a brand that does not spend much time or money advertising its menswear. This was my personal choice, but I assumed I would be in the smallest minority. The lesson may be that brand identification can be through ephemeral and more conceptual links than magazine ads and big runway shows. By contrast, the high fashion of Gucci and Prada disappear with just 6% each.

Thank you again to all 391 respondents, and I think this survey should be an annual feature of MensFlair.com. We will change the odd question here and there, but it will be fascinating to see how ideas and responses change over time.

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