Buenos Aires Style

I was fortunate enough to be in Buenos Aires last week for work, and was able to appreciate a city renowned for its style as well as its steak.

Argentine men have much of the casual, easy style of their south European cousins. A photo sent to me of a lawyer I was interviewing showed him leaning against a doorway, a strongly striped suit offset by the classic Italian Background of dark blue tie on pale blue shirt.

The tie was undone, but kept neat by the buttoned jacket – a touch that is all too frequently forgotten by men elsewhere in the world, but was reflected in a recent interview with Tom Ford. “Always keep your jacket buttoned,” he said. “If I have one rule for men, it’s that. It instantly makes your silhouette. It’ll take pounds off you, just in terms of your shape. Especially if you are being photographed, you really should have the jacket buttoned.”

He puts it almost better than I could. If you don’t button your jacket, the tailoring is simply thrown away.

Elsewhere in the city, this simple style was reflected in other south European staples: brown leather shoes, simple white pocket-handkerchiefs and a taste for pale, unusual tie colours (lime green was a favourite). There was also a surprising prevalence of brown suede shoes: almost as much as there was leather.

This seemed like an inspired choice, and one I could emulate, until I considered the weather. It’s either raining or it’s sunny in Buenos Aires. The rain is heavy, even tropical, but it’s certainly not drizzle. And when it’s sunny there isn’t a cloud in the sky.

Wearing suede shoes is therefore an easy choice to make. Not so in the UK, where clouds day after day can threaten rain without ever falling, and it’s rarely guaranteed to be a drizzle-free day.

The biggest difference between Buenos Aires and Italy, however, was the consistency of this style. As one local resident confessed to me, Argentina is not yet rich enough to have a large middle class that can afford high-quality or tailored clothes. This means that the threads, many of them of European origin, are limited to a rich, professional class. It is their scarcity, in fact, that contributes to their price – a smaller market means higher margins.

So appreciate the office-bound workers that still require suits on a regular basis. As the suit and other more formal attire become less required and (probably) less popular as a result, the margins and prices on those clothes we love will rise.

The Struggle to Innovate in Menswear

It’s rare that traditional menswear retailers are genuinely innovative. A few designers have their odd quirks, and many fluctuate with the (fashion) seasons. But a precious small number actually change the way people look at jackets, shirts and trousers.

Paul Smith has original quirks. His suit linings were the first thing that made him popular in the UK, or at least the first that made him stand out. Bright colours, bright stripes and images of old-time footballs attracted men to suits for the first time in a while. Differently coloured buttons came next, as did one coloured buttonhole on the sleeves. Having fifties pin-ups on the reverse of belts and the inside of wallets was eye-catching.

Some of Smith’s innovations went deeper than that. I was a big fan, for example, of his dip-dye shoes – the technique produced truly deep hues of red and green in the leather that I’d never seen anywhere else. But they were surface changes. Little about design or construction changed in either suits or shoes. A harsher man than me might call them gimmicks.

Equally, many other menswear designers innovate in the seasonal variations of their outfits. Every six months, the usual suspects of Hugo Boss, Dolce & Gabbana and others will have their hot style to tout. This fall/winter, D&G was obsessed with Sicily and the style of its local inhabitants, whether hunters, mariners or just butch-looking guards with dogs. There was shearling in abundance, bulk in the trousers and especially around the neckline, and bulky bags, hats and pets as accessories.

But is this innovative? It may be different to everyone else on the catwalk this year, but has no one had a similar idea previously? Will they not have the same idea again?

More importantly, much of this innovation is merely the accumulation of certain types or shapes of garment into a ‘look’. It is this look that is important, rather than much innovation in the garments themselves. It is innovation in aesthetic idea – the concept of sticking certain things together – but not in tailoring or structure.

The art needed to create an aesthetic vision should not be underestimated. It is, after all, one of the prime aspects that we admire in great artists in any field – whether architecture, painting or sculpture. But it is not what excites someone about picking up a jacket in a shop and discovering a genuinely new idea. That inspiration is very different to just a well-adorned mannequin.

Is the Suit on Borrowed Time?

A lot is written about suits on men’s style pages. A heck of a lot in fact. And it is hardly surprising that it should be so; many of us require, for professional, occasional or aesthetic purposes, a suit at some point in our lives. My first suit came before I was seven. I looked rather ridiculous of course; an improbable character from a fairy tale – with blonde ringlets, a little waistcoat and tiny turn-ups – but it was the beginning of what I project to be a lifelong relationship. As with all relationships, there are ups and downs; our vain flirtations with casual dress are corrected by inevitable reconciliation with one of the most essential items in a gentleman’s wardrobe and one of the most splendid inventions in the history of fashion.

Of course, there are those who cry that suits have lost their relevance; “I only wear trousers and a jumper to work – suits are a pain”/ “It’s a day at the office, not a wedding.” The de-formalising of everyday wear, and the ranking of suits among the archives of ‘customs past’, led initially to fashion’s secret swag: the suit has been one of the most important items in high fashion for the last 5 years. Consequently, the high street chimed in with cheap and cheerful representations; smart became different, cool and respected. Now, the ‘smart man’s’ wardrobe is everywhere: personally, I never thought I’d live to see three piece suits at Next but there they are for all to see.

Many of those who follow fashion rather more religiously might predict a decline in the suit as a channel for contemporary expression; over-production and over-popularity might lead to the classic fashion knee jerk – “Right no more of zees soots!” Of course, there’ll always be suits as a small staple in the gentleman’s outfitter but will they weigh down 40% of the racks in some major high street retailers as they have done for periods in the last half decade? Possibly not. Will they recede in the consciousness of the masses as something to wear on a rather ordinary Saturday night? Probably. The result is not something which I am sensitive to; I don’t care to dress as the majority dresses. And, I might suggest, that particular thinking might go for a good number of readers.

The question is; how much will a repudiation of the suit affect its position for the future? Is the recent rally, helped significantly by fashion and mass market retailing, the beginning of the end? There are arguments to hush the sceptics. We will of course, always require something to wear; but questions about the appropriateness of our suits’ current designs, designs which are certainly old and very, very established, might materialise. I have always looked on the suit as something solid; so much so that one takes it for granted. “It’s too big to fail” said a pal of mine at dinner “tell me, what would make us switch?” I had no answer for I, like him, am a faithful buyer and a firm believer. “Although there are many” I wagged my finger “who are not.”

Sartoriani Goes for a Bigger Lie

God, it makes your blood boil. Splashed all over the front of City AM (the free business paper in London), Sartoriani is claiming to be selling “The finest bespoke shirts in the world!”

Where do they get off? Their shirts are not bespoke and I can’t imagine what criteria they have for saying they are the best in the world.

For those who are not familiar with the background to this charade (see previous post), Sartoriani won a case earlier in the year allowing it to use the phrase “bespoke” in its advertising, despite the fact that its suits are made by a machine. That’s right. They are made by a machine, in a factory, on a block altered to a customer’s specifications. That probably sounds like the age-old definition of made-to-measure to you. And it is. Yet they claimed their suits were bespoke because they were “personalised to the customer”.

The association of Savile Row Bespoke, representing tailors on the Row, took Sartoriani to the UK Advertising Standards Authority. It lost. The ASA said it considered bespoke and made-to-measure to be synonymous. It was a loss to menswear everywhere. As I said at the time, “once one company can get away with it, everyone will advertise their made-to-measure service as bespoke, and a refined section of tailoring will lose a crucial communication skill.”

It’s happening now. Sartoriani apparently has bespoke shirts; there’s a picture of someone in “a bespoke suit”; apparently “it’s now easier than ever to make a bespoke suit.” Bespoke, bespoke, bespoke. It’s an assault on the language, eroding the meaning of words in the pursuit of profit.

Who actually thinks that a bespoke suit can be made, “cut and sewn in London”, for £495? And a shirt for £99?

Sartoriani seems to have decided to adopt the old adage “if you’re going to lie, lie big.” Because it has the cheek to lecture people in its advertisement on what bespoke means, maintaining that it is just something that has been altered to a customer’s specifications, “as opposed to off-the-peg or ready-to-wear”.

Not only that, but it proclaims in its headline that is has “the best bespoke shirts in the world,” as mentioned earlier. Does the ASA have anything to say about this? Has Sartoriani commissioned a piece of thorough, independent research that compared its shirts to Charvet and Turnbull & Asser, which concluded that Sartoriani was the finest? Ridiculous.

And the cherry on the cake: Sartoriani advertises itself as “Savile Row – London”. But look carefully. It has an office at 10 Savile Row, and shares some of the basement. Its shop is actually at 24 Old Bond Street, and now 1 Canada Square in Canary Wharf.

It makes your blood boil.

Costa Smeralda Report

On my recent travels to the Costa Smeralda, surrounded by holidaying Italians of varying social position and wealth, I came to the happy conclusion that I was satisfied to be born an Englishman. Not for the dreadful weather, or any of those boisterous and brutal reasons of base patriotism. But I was satisfied that I was in a better position than an unfortunate Italian gentleman who has grown up in the magnificent shadows of Renaissance churches, in the glorious vineyards of Tuscany and by the shores of the ‘Emerald Coast’, merely to woo a woman who considers the vulgar display of ‘designer’ labels (literally labels in some instances) to be the epitome of style. In a sunglasses store in the oddly manicured but pleasant Porto Cervo, a group of Italians walked in. The women, separating from the men, gravitated towards the ‘big brands’; big lenses, big designer name on the arm. The men looked around casually but their interest in glasses was less to do with the conspicuousness of the designer name and more to do with the construction and shape; they held the glasses, folding and refolding the arms, inspecting the profile like a ship’s architect admiring a model of his latest project. For me, this was illustrative of the difference. Names for the girls, design for the men.

The Costa Smeralda is a picturesque place; an unspoilt playground for holidaymakers attracted by the tidy towns, rugged and soaring landscape and the general feeling of ‘quiet safety.’ To call it a stylish destination is perhaps being rather generous; there is certainly a focus on fashion, but there is also as much of a focus on spending money and displaying money – activities which cannot be singled out by a soul as complete evidence of ‘style.’ There is definitely a naïve confusion in towns like Cervo and Rotondo, a confusion which seems to filter down, unfortunately, to the less well off Italians who push their children’s perambulators past 200 foot yachts in silent reverence. This ‘confusion’ is rather best summed up by a line from the song ‘Big Spender’; “The minute you walked in the joint/I could see you were a man of distinction/A real big spender.” The wealthy Russians visiting this coast remain as true to this dogma as anyone; the oligarchs’ massive vessels lurk in the Cala di Volpe and more than a few own properties here.

One of my companions commented that there wasn’t nearly as much style on this particular coast as on Capri and I certainly agreed. When the sun went down, Capri was replete with colourful style; the Costa Smeralda was rather different. Whereas on Capri, an island drenched in ancient decadence and offering glorious beauty, there was less evidence of label gluttony, Costa Smeralda was epitomised by the desperation of many to contrive importance and significance from decorating their bodies in garish and crass designer names. Money plays the best cards on this coast; and attention is courted, sadly, not from eye-catching style but from evidence of a deep wallet. This is a place upon which wealth has been thrown like confetti but there isn’t the same result as a Cap Ferrat or Capri; no old Profumia and few shops selling high quality holiday clothing. The usual suspects; Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani and even Billionaire (the brash brand launched by the Costa’s maitre’d for the super rich, Flavio Briatore) are here but it doesn’t feel organic or natural to have them here. The shops are closed throughout most of the day and only open in the evening to the throng of tourists, eager to catch a glimpse of an Italian celebrity or a Hollywood filmstar. The landscape and situation of the towns provides inspiration galore; this is indeed a very attractive part of the world to doze through a summer. However, the fabrication has resulted in predictable smatterings of overpriced leathers and clothing frequently offered at prices greater than those requested in the world’s capital cities. The Costa Smeralda has cash aplenty but, like a number of its visitors and residents, it badly needs style.