What a Pitti!

“Pitti Uomo” as the hackneyed phrase goes “is to menswear what Paris fashion week is to womenswear.” A bold statement, and not an untrue one; there is no doubt that the great (and the greatest) as well as the good of international menswear are all to be seen lurking around a chilly Florence, chatting on iPhones, sipping espresso and admiring the spectacle. Jeremy Hackett, Luca Rubinacci and a host of other Sartorialist favourites strut around the magnificent Tuscan city from show to show, brightening each piazza with their dazzling attire.

The coverage of this glut of plumage-presentation is as prodigious as the sheer numbers that pour out of the grey, winter-lit buildings in the most astonishing array of seasonal (and unseasonal) male clothing. Scott Schumann and other photographers’ coverage of Pitti is the National Geographic of menswear; buyers, business owners, tycoons, tailors, shirtmakers, shoemakers and artisans are all captured together through the lens in this tiny habitat. Indeed, the coverage of Pitti peacocks is almost as important to the organisers as the event itself, with PittiImmagine commissioning their own photography of the various species spotted.

The reason for their congregation is actually rather dull; stands exhibit wares that you have already seen before, shows introduce you to fashions you already know. This is perhaps why their mere appearance provokes more interest from the long-lensed street snappers who wait patiently with their D3s or their 1D for an orange checked suit or a fur collar to appear, squinting into the sun. The beauty of the photographers’ position is the intoxicating concentration of experimentation, colour and style that so often evades them in other localities. This is a seasonal feeding; they know the location and they return hungrily year after year.

For all the spectacular creativity on display, you can’t help but get the idea that a good many of the fine species swaggering across the cobbles of Florence are self-consciously on display; their aesthetics refined, intensified and even exaggerated as though they are part of some mating ritual with the lens. There is no shame in this, it is only unfortunate that natural instincts are thrown aside for the benefit of the camera. Others may disagree and cheer that the only thing cast aside are their inhibitions. However you analyse it, they compete for the lens as no prey would compete for the jaws of a predator. The beneficiary of this surreal feast is, of course, the blog devotee; the devourer of sartorial ideas.

Where else would we get the idea for matching our trousers to our buttons?

Sartorial Stereotypes: Hats

The Brown Trilby

“I have eight-five with the gentleman at the back. Do I have eight-six?” the auctioneer declares to a fidgety and disinterested Sotheby’s floor that is largely comprised of non-bidders who have stopped in for a spot of observation.

A collector and auction room regular, the Brown Trilby Man sits at the back of the room – bow tied, waistcoated – awaiting a superior offer, quietly confident that his only competition, a telephone bidder, will inform his appointed agent that he is no longer interested. He brushes off his coffee-ground coloured Bates trilby with conclusive delicacy as the auctioneer draws the bidding to a close. As he looks around the room, he sees no other serious collectors of note and congratulates himself on making an inspection of the object before bidding, knowing that the item in question is actually rarer and more valuable than the estimates.

A supercilious smile on his face, he stands up in his Edward Green brogues holding his horn-handled umbrella and walks back to his Marylebone flat where he is greeted by Arthur, a tubby Himalayan. He locks his recent acquisition away in a Japanned chest-on-stand; it will only be displayed when fellow collectors and dealers come to call.

The Designer Beanie

The Designer Beanie Man brushes past two in-the-way, middle-aged out-of-towners who are loitering at the entrance to a Bond Street emporium. As he does so, he abruptly ends their frivolous commentary on the geography of the street and provokes one to whisper too conspicuously “Oh he was handsome…like a movie star!”

The Designer Beanie Man is indeed very good-looking, although he is not an actor. After a brief stint of modelling, he moved into advertising when he began an affair with a planner at Saatchi who gave him an easy job in her office so she and her friends could flirt and wink at him as he brought them their coffee. Proving more adept at creativity and planning than expected, he rose quickly and came to be admired by a number of the directors.

Now on the other side of the camera, photography has become a hobby through which he meets many of his elegant girlfriends. He dresses in a slick and expensive fashion – fashion being the operative word – and wears simple and elegant overcoats with skinny trousers and Chelsea boots from Christian Dior. He has a collection of designer beanies which he uses to cover his thick hair but is careful not to hide his million-dollar visage.

The Karakul

An enormous car growls outside a glittering Mayfair palace hotel, a liveried doorman hurries to open the rear left door, out of which a silk suited leg appears, shod in bespoke wholecuts. Cigar ash drops on the pavement and the Karakul Man, sunglassed, stogie-sucking and wearing an astrakhan collared cashmere overcoat, looks blankly at the hotel staff who flash him wasted smiles.

It is said he once worked for Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, until the famous hotel-living recluse fired him for his suspected connections to organised crime. His Karakul is cocked Jinnah-style on his grey head, its charcoal tone contrasting splendidly with his unplaceable tan.

The manager of the hotel welcomes him in to a glittering marble lobby and instead of making his way to the desk, as is the expectation of other guests, strides into the bar where a young, attractive woman rises to her feet and heralds his appearance with a frantic shaking of her multi-bangled wrists. Though boasting a small but well-groomed entourage, no one communicates with the Karakul Man who stares back blankly at his bangled companion as she giggles through one tedious story after another. Sensing impatience, two tall, dark and Bluetoothed men throw anxious looks across the bar as the Karakul Man rises with his young female companion, holding her firmly by the elbow and makes his way to the elevator.

Look to the East

One of the best acknowledged and least challenged fashion truths of recent times is that women are the chief focus and men the afterthought. The colossal developed market for womenswear has dwarfed the relatively irrelevant space for menswear to the extent that a few designers and some retailers have considered dropping male lines altogether. In Europe and North America, despite rough equality in numbers, men and women have been leagues apart when it comes to fashion spending with over 50% of total clothing spend being in womenswear and under a quarter in menswear.

It is easy to detect this difference in focus whilst wandering through one of the branches of a retailing behemoth like Zara, H&M or GAP. Women have two or three floor spaces, men a maximum of one. The womenswear department buzzes with custom, the tills ring constantly; menswear, while not exactly ‘dead’, is a small area of comparative stillness and calm. Men in this part of the world, though the highest earners, are not the most prolific spenders, at least not when it comes to their own costume. Commentators, including myself, have reasoned this as a representation of the differences between the sexes in our cultures; men crave quality, not variety; women crave both, but err on the side of variety. Variety means quantity, volume and consequently greater profit margin potential, ergo the focus from cheaper retailers on womenswear.

However, this trend is based on a limited populous in a limited geographical area that, while fully developed, does not represent the future space for the clothing retail market. A report at the end of last year highlighted the trend towards men in the luxury goods market. In Greater China, 75% of this market is male driven. No surprise then that a simple linking of China’s position as the growth engine of the world with its growth in its highest spenders has provoked luxury giants such as LVMH and PPR to focus on the region. PPR’s purchase of Brioni and its ambition of the brand’s growth in the lucrative Asian market are responses to expectations of 14% growth in luxury menswear, almost double the growth of luxury womenswear at 8%. And its ambition is well-founded; almost half of Ermenegildo Zegna’s $1bn annual sales revenue comes from this region.

Despite the fact that much of the hullaballoo is focused on luxury retail, there is a strong correlation between luxury growth and resultant mid- and lower-tier growth. The simple fact of the matter is that menswear is more dominant in Asia than it is in Europe and North America. In both China and India, two enormous growth economies, menswear is the largest constituent part of the clothing market, contradicting the accepted fashion truths about the sexes. For budding menswear designers, stylists, tailors, retailers and marketers, this will come as good news. For those who already have a mammoth presence in menswear but a comparatively small presence in Asia, it is even better; established names matter in these markets and titans such as Ralph Lauren, long considered to be a menswear brand in a womenswear world, will be laughing themselves silly that their business model has been proven to be the one of the future.

A Case for Fashion Illustration

One evening, I sat down for a drink with a friend and a female acquaintance of his outside one of the many restaurants squashed into the tiny and oddly un-English Heddon Street, just west of the bustle and beeping of Regent Street. After small-talking pleasantries, I asked the acquaintance what she did for a living. “I’m a fashion illustrator, among other things” she said in a politely searching and uncertain manner, which suggested the majority of those she communicated with needed explication. This is hardly surprising. Fashion illustration is not a common pursuit, it is not sufficiently self-explanatory and it is not one of those trades which is publicly celebrated or vilified, which would lend the average man at least a slight knowledge of what the dickens it is all about.

Most people guess that fashion illustration is about ‘drawing fashion’ or ‘drawing clothes.’ It is of course, but then it isn’t; it’s really about drawing ideas. There is no need to illustrate what can be photographed, but there is a need to illustrate what cannot be made. Countless designs of the past, which never made it through the seamstress’ door, are wedged into silent archives; the wash colours fading, the designs forgotten. They represent the full universe of creativity rather than the compact and reduced world of fashion. They are the designer’s electric brilliance transposed to pen and ink; they are the closest thing the fashion world has to artistic individuality.

For in illustration, individuality is defined by what the artist chooses to create. Photography is limited by what is already there. Thus, a photoshoot conducted for Hackett has only the originality of the backdrop and the frame for the art that has already been created. He can only use what has been made and what exists; only a cynic would suggest that Photoshop is an acceptable replacement for the illustrator’s pencil. For it is a mighty pencil indeed, and one which I believe is too little used; where are the artist sketches lining the tailor’s shops? Where are the customers’ sartorial fantasies? Where is that vital connection between art and clothing?

Bespoke clothing is about more than stitching, basted fittings and floating canvas. The snobbery about these elements has led the trade into a never-ending game of top-trumps based on the formulaic accumulation of individual characteristics; who has the oldest shop on the Row? Who offer the most basted fittings? Who uses gold thread to sew the buttonholes? Quality is important but it’s not the only horse at the races. When I went to Cad & The Dandy to have a bespoke evening jacket made, I didn’t turn up with a photograph and a list of requirements; I turned up with a drawing of how I wanted it to be.

With this in mind it is well to remember that not everything that can be imagined is always made which essentially means that not everything that is imagined is ever photographed. Considering the evergreen popularity of Fellows and even Leyendecker, particularly as a resource for bespoke ideas and ensembles, it is odd that others do not make more of the unique power of illustration; to enable the observer to imagine themselves in something that has not yet been made. At the very least, they should make more of the journey from synapse to seamstress; showing the process of creativity adds value to a product. Illustration is the hallmark of creativity and it needs to be utilized far more than it is.

Forgotten Style Heroes: E Berry Wall

First there was the Dandy; then, there was the Dude. First there were trousers and riding jackets; then, there were thigh high boots and Glen Plaid pantaloons. Although they could not be more stylistically opposed, the Dandy and the Dude do share the taste for rebellion; the former against the unwashed, perfumed and bewigged fashions of fops; the latter against the plain, austere façade of Victorian respectability. But though the Dandy is celebrated for his overturning of strange fashions that are anathema to all modern men, the Dude has been largely ignored; his extravagant, carriage-stopping ensembles have faded into the past; the heroes of the movement forgotten.

Even the “King of the Dudes” Evander Berry Wall – a great celebrity in his day – is barely acknowledged in style’s hall of fame. Born in 1860, E. Berry Wall - ‘Evander’ was rarely used - was a fortunate young man. He inherited a large sum of money from both his father and grandfather before reaching the age of 22. A young millionaire, Wall used his fortune to assemble a colossal wardrobe that would eventually include 5,000 neckties and 500 complete changes. In Wall’s great variety of ensembles he is said to have possessed the most colourful and extravagantly patterned suits in New York. Unlike the Dandy Brummell, the Dude Berry Wall sought attention and recognition. You can imagine him paraphrasing the Beau’s famous line: “If Joe Public doesn’t turn around and look at you…you’re not worth looking at.”

It was Wall’s taste for experimentation and his patronage of Henry Poole that led to his most famous achievement; wearing the short dinner jacket in public. The story goes that Poole’s most illustrious customer, the Prince of Wales and later Edward VII, had a short jacket made and had worn it instead of an evening tailcoat on a number of private and public occasions. Poole sent one to Wall and suggested it be worn “for a quiet dinner at home or an evening’s entertainment at a summer resort.” Though a wealthy and socially accepted personage, Wall was not a royal prince or the heir to a vast empire; he may have affected to set the fashion but he could not have set the tone. Thus, his jacket’s first public outing at a ball in Saratoga was met with consternation. The manager of the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga ordered him from the floor and, apparently, only permitted him to return after he had returned to his room and changed into an evening tailcoat.

Such sartorial squeamishness was widespread. At the time, New York society, as Edith Wharton and others have famously documented, was not a place for pioneers of fashion. After amusing escapades including one involving a reporter’s thirst for a good story, a “Battle of the Dudes” and a pair of black patent leather thigh boots, Wall went bankrupt in 1899 after a foray into investing on Wall Street. The resulting social isolation and embarrassment led to his departure for Paris. Wall’s own reasoning was that New York had “become fit only for businessmen.”

In Paris, he permitted himself the comfort of an apartment at the Hotel Meurice, near Charvet who had long been supplying him with his famous high starched collars. He extended the elegance of Charvet collars to his chow, who strutted with his master through the Place Vendome to the Ritz Hotel, where Wall’s patronage was well noted. Devoted to his wife and his pooch, Wall is often unfairly pilloried as a profligate and self-indulgent poseur. He was extravagant, but it is said that his life brought him great happiness and that he remained a fixture of continental society until he died in the spring of 1940 at the age of 80. Wall often credited his diet of champagne and his avoidance of physicians for his longevity, quipping: “There are more old drunkards than old doctors.”