As we peel the last page off the 2013 calendar and take the 2014 version out of shrink wrap, we look back at some of our first few months of blogging.
Greg inaugurated our posting by asking if the world needs another online menswear store. Fortunately, the answer was yes. Not only that, it turned out the world needed another menswear blog as well. So we have spent the past few months posting about aspects of clothing and style that interest us most.
Buying nice clothes is useless if you don’t know how to spot the ones that fit you. So we want to make sure you know a shirt,a pair of shoes, or a jacket should fit,and how to think about the shapeandsilhouette of a suit jacket.
New Year’s Eve is the one night of the year when it’s OK to wear black tie, almost no matter where you’re going. Even if you’re the only person wearing a tuxedo, it’s understood to be part of an atmosphere of festivity, and no more ridiculous than the guy wearing the HAPPY NEW YEAR glittered plastic top hat.
Whereas in Britain the tuxedo began as a more informal way of dressing for dinner at home or at your club (hence the term “dinner suit,” used in England instead of “tuxedo”), in the United States the tuxedo has always been a celebratory garment. It’s a uniform for merry making.
But even if black tie is not bowling, it’s certainly not ‘Nam, so there are rules. The first is that you must wear a black bow tie. Do not try to “mix it up” with some cyan nonsense or “have some fun” with some paisley confection. And heaven help you if you wear a long tie.
The second rule is that you wear a white shirt.
Finally, you must wear black shoes.
This is the bare minimum, the sine qua non of black tie.
But every further detail that distinguishes your outfit from the look of a normal business suit is one that will bring out the tuxedo’s fun-loving character. For example, instead of your usual white shirt, wear a dress shirt that has either a bib or pleated front, and closes with studs instead of buttons. The studs help break up the expanse of white between your bow tie and your waist.
And that waist should be covered. It used to be that men would always cover their waist. Either they would wear a three-piece single-breasted suit or a double-breasted suit. While two-piece single-breasted business suits are now common, a waist covering remains standard for black tie. Either an evening waistcoat – cut low, to show the shirt studs – or a cummerbund will do.
Evening pumps are as elegant as men’s shoes get. But if you feel funny wearing shoes with bows, or if you don’t want to buy an expensive pair of shoes you’ll rarely wear, at least give your black oxfords an extra shine before putting them on with your tux.
If your shoes end up a little too shiny for the first few work days of 2014, they will reflect the final revels of 2013.
There has been some recent controversy over Santa’s ethnic background. But all modern-day Santas, be they white, black, or boozehound, wear the now iconic red suit with white trim.
Urban legend has it that Coca-Cola designed and popularized the Santa suit to match the company logo. In actuality Santa’s wardrobe was settled before Coke began their Santa advertising in the 1920s.
The Santa character is based on the gift-giving Saint Nicholas, in particular the Dutch personification of him, with influences from the jolly English Father Christmas. The rest of the Santa mythography – the sleigh, the reindeer, the chimney, etc. - comes from Washington Irving’s satire A History of New York, and “The Night Before Christmas,” an 1822 poem written by Clement Clarke Moore for the entertainment of his six children. It was published anonymously, but quickly went viral (yes, there were cultural viruses in the 19th century, too).
The poem’s only reference to Santa’s clothing is that “He was dressed in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.” Depictions of Santa Claus from this era show him in many colors, including red, but very often green.
He was even shown wearing the American flag in a 1863 illustration in Harper’s Magazine by Thomas Nast, the illustrator who also popularized the use of the elephant and the donkey as symbols of the two major American political parties. Nast became the most prolific illustrator of Santa Claus yet, which made him a sort of personal stylist for Santa.
By the late nineteenth century, Nast had converged to consistent use of red and white for the Santa outfit, with Santa himself having already become a slightly more ethnic looking version of the white-bearded, jolly, chimney-blocker we expect to find on our holiday Cokes today.
Nast’s version hadn’t quite vanquished all the other Santas by the end of Nast’s career in 1886 – note for instance this green-coated version on the cover of a popular children’s book in 1902 – but crimson tide had turned. By the time Norman Rockwell began painting Santa in the 1920s, he had no choice but to clothe his subject in the outfit his descendents have worn ever since: the Santa suit.
Many of my most prized possessions were gifts from others. My mother gave me a beautiful acoustic guitar for my high school graduation that has been with me ever since. A dozen years later when I finished graduate school, my godfather gave me a lovely piece of luggage which I am sure will age much more gracefully than I will.
Why is it that a well-chosen gift is worth more than its price? How can we choose the right gift?
The most common reason given by members of the panel is that a gift serves not only as a transfer of wealth from the giver to the receiver, but also a signal of how much the giver values their relationship with the receiver. Searching for a gift requires more effort and sacrifice, and knowing what to get shows a better understanding of the giftee and what makes them happy. I can’t think of a more important foundation for a relationship between two people.
Durable gifts can also be reminders of a shared bond. Cash isn’t a good substitute. To test the power of this theory, Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee suggests: “Instead of proposing to your wife with a diamond ring, offer a gift card of equal value. Efficient – if you don’t count your hospital bills.”
There are also gifts that people would enjoy but would never indulge in themselves. A wine or chocolate lover may not buy their most coveted delicacies for themselves, for fear of setting a precedent and succumbing to temptation too frequently. Receiving them as a gift allows enjoyment without the guilt of transgression.
A gift is also an opportunity to introduce someone to a new pleasure. It could be something totally new to them, perhaps a pocket handkerchief for someone who hasn’t worn one before, or a reintroduction to a familiar item on different terms – such as a finely crafted umbrella or luxurious socks, surprises that bring beauty to a place where only function was expected.
Reserve your cash gifts for tipping waiters. For your loved ones, give thoughtfully.
In the cold season of winter, many of us are breaking out our sweaters daily, and at some point will face the colder reality that, no matter how well-made, all wool sweaters pill. This is true whether you have one of those cheap merinos from a mass-market retailer or a hardier Scottish piece from a specialty boutique. With enough wear, all wool sweaters will pill over time. The question is just how much and how easily.
There are many techniques recommended online for how to take care of pilling, but beware: some of them will cause more harm than good. To understand why, you have to understand how pilling occurs in the first place.
Wool yarns are made from intertwining animal hair fibers that have been carded and then spun. The areas where each fiber connects to another is weak, at least compared to the rest of the yarn, and can break with enough stretching or friction. When it does, the tiny fibers tangle into each other and result in the fuzz balls we refer to as pilling.
Cheap yarns are made from shorter fibers, so they have more areas for potential breakage and thus pill easily. Nicer, more expensive yarns, on the other hand, are made from longer fibers, but this doesn’t mean they’ll never pill. They’ll just do so to a lesser extent and at a slower rate.
Once you have pills, you’ll want to get rid of them, but be careful of the technique you use. If you pull the little fuzz balls off with your fingers, your sweater will look nicer and tidier in the short term, but you can create new breakages as you pull and thus create more pilling in the future. “Sweater stones,” which are essentially like pumice stones for you knitwear, can do the same thing.
Instead of pulling the little fuzz balls off, try cutting. There are a number of sweater shavers on the market designed for this. Cheap ones on eBay typically don’t work that well, but for $15 or $20, you can get a perfectly serviceable machine at any major department store. These will achieve what you want: to remove pills without creating any new breakages.
Of course, the other approach is to just embrace the pilling. With enough of it, maybe you can say you have a Shaggy Dog.
One of the most anticipated vendors in the Styleforum Trunk Show last month was No Man Walks Alone, the new online men’s store recently founded by Greg Lellouche. I had the pleasure of chatting with Greg that afternoon, and talked to him about his store, his products, and his own sense of style.
Styleforum fans will know Greg as the infamous GDL203; He has been a prominent figure there for many years, but also credits the styleforum crew with helping advance his own style. “I joined styleforum at a reasonably late stage compared to some of the young members here,” he explains. ”I was already a working professional in my thirties, having worked in finance for years and therefore being quite accustomed to wearing suits and ties. My taste clearly evolved quite a bit while exposed to the style and choices of great dressers on styleforum and by getting acquainted with different makers and products. For instance - without styleforum, I wouldn’t have traveled the road to explore bespoke options. Now that I have, I can see clearly the benefits and drawbacks of each and wear both ready-to-wear and custom.”
One aspect of Greg’s style that is surprisingly unique is his interest in both traditional men’s clothing and edgier “streetwear” garments. Most men align themsleves with one camp or the other (as seen in the “Great Schizm” of styleforum), but Greg promotes a more holistic approach. ”I feel that we should embrace the opportunities to experiment a bit more, to discover interesting designers, fabrics, patterns, silhouettes,” he says. “I have for years felt that part of my ‘mission’ was to bridge the gap that exists between classic menswear and the more contemporary fashion - something that goes both ways, by the way.”
‘Tis the season to be gaudy. It’s the time of year when every mall spins saccharine holiday music every shopping hour of the day, every annoyingly over-energetic neighbor covers their home in 37 pieces of holiday flair, and every child under the age of 13 becomes a walking wish list. But there is a bright side – office holiday parties. Your chance to get drunk and make small talk with people you already spend 2,000 hours a year with. Rejoice!
Though it would make for a good story, you probably should not go to your office party naked. So you’ll have to decide what to wear. If your party organizer has any sense, they will have stated clearly a dress code. This avoids the awkward situation that arises when the new guy wears his college sweatshirt and has to look like a jerk all night because everyone else knew to wear cocktail attire.
If there’s no announced dress code, ask the co-worker you think is least likely to play a practical joke on you. If they tell you the dress code is Power Ranger costumes, try a different coworker.
Since you will be with work people, but preferably not talking about work things, it’s good to eschew work clothes for something more festive. Some people show their Yuletide spirit by wearing hideous holiday-themed apparel. There is a better way. Here are some suggestions for each level of formality.
Casual
Casual means a tie is discouraged, and a jacket is not required. It doesn’t mean you have to look terrible. Your clothes should still be clean, well-fitting, and tasteful. Here’s an outfit with a sweater that captures the spirit of the season without skinning it and using its hide for a poncho. Scarf optional.
Smart Casual
Smart casual still means no tie, but a jacket is encouraged. This jacket is perfectly appropriate to wear to work as well, but the cotton and cashmere blended into the wool and the larger weave suggest a worker bee who might be on a honey break.
Cocktail Attire
If you’re lucky enough to be working at a place that’s willing to fund a nice party at a swanky spot, show your gratitude by dressing appropriately. Dark suit. White shirt. Evening tie.
Finally, always remember: what happens at the office party DOES NOT stay at the office party.
Oh, James Bond will return. The end credits of each of his films promise, nay threaten it. Rather, the revelation that newly indicted longtime Donald Trump associate Paul Manafort’s password of choice across several platforms is “Bond007” should serve as a termination warrant more binding on all men who care about style than anything SMERSH, SPECTRE or indeed Woody Allen’s Dr. Noah ever issued.
Bond isn’t guilty, but certainly irrevocably tainted by association with the man who spent $849,000 of possibly laundered funds at a New York men’s clothing store (and an additional $500,000 or so at a clothing store of unidentified gender in Beverly Hills) who still doesn’t look good, except in, as fashion critic Robin Givhan pointed out, a sort of dated 1980s glitziness. The same sort of glitziness that animates the style of Donald Trump, whose campaign Manafort co-chaired, taking credit among other things for the selection of man who cannot trust himself alone with women Mike Pence as Trump’s vice president. We appear to be in an age where American psychos or Bond villains, Max Zorins if you will, think they are Bonds. Each age gets its Bond, not necessarily the one it deserves. Poor Timothy Dalton, my favorite Bond after Daliah Lavi, was dealt a bum hand playing Bond in a period that didn’t know what to do with him. (Why Dalton? Connery looks too much like my Dad.) Since Dalton, the Bond films have been about first acknowledging that Bond is a cliché, then resituating his anachronism. Like Manafort, however, Daniel Craig’s recent Bond films and his wretchedly ill-fitting Tom Ford suits show that all the money in the world can’t necessarily buy elegance.
Manafort’s password precipitates many ironies. The man using the most famous secret agent as his password is charged with failing to register as a foreign agent for a power (the former government of Ukraine) allied with Bond’s most infamous state enemy. Like Bond’s return to basics (a male M; gadgets reined in from invisible cars to a Home Alone-style DIY showdown in Skyfall), Russia too has come full circle from Cold War adversary to détente fencing partner to corrupt ally to hostile entity better poised than ever to destabilize the United States. Perhaps his terrible, constricted fits are aa similar return to source, an homage to Bond’s creator Ian Fleming, whose real-life sadomasochism is well documented.
It gives me little joy to write this. My Bond bore credentials are embarrassingly extensive. But Manafort’s Bond self-identification recalls yet another early Bond theme, the worry expressed by some critics that the very first (shut up, fellow bores) Bond film, Dr. No, with its scene of 007 shooting an enemy in the back half a dozen times, portended “a fascist cinema uncorrupted by moral scruples.” Today’s portents are of a bigoted, ultranationalistic executive uncorrupted by moral scruples and unchecked by the rule of law, installed and supported by men like Manafort, those he lobbied for, and a handful of billionaires who believe their ends justify any means.
Bond was fun for a while, but as he recalls his “first expensive tailor” saying, we can do better now. Find inspirations elsewhere in heroes more aware of their ridiculousness, like Steed, or of their crassness, like the Kingsman crew, or simply in those who strive to do right, like Patrick McGoohan’s John Drake, or the tailor spy Elim Garak. Or perhaps leave the spy genre altogether and pick alternatives; I’ve written aboutenoughofthem to fill a Zorin blimp if you need to start somewhere. We can find better style inspirations than those picked by these trite, terrible, tacky men.
Fujito is the newest line from Japan to come into the No Man Walks Alone family. The clothes are beautifully made, but not precious; classic without being antiquated. The designer behind the company, Go Fujito, draws heavily from his love of the great outdoors, vintage clothing, and the skateboard and music scenes he grew up with in Japan during the ‘80s and ‘90s. Earlier this week, we talked to Go about his personal history and design process. Today we end with a chat about how he ended up collaborating with one of Italy’s most famous bespoke tailoring houses, Liverano & Liverano, as well as some of his favorite things outside of fashion.
You once did a collaboration with Liverano & Liverano, a bespoke tailoring house in Italy. How did that come about?
A few years ago, one of my customers went to Pitti Uomo and wore my jeans. Mr. Liverano saw them and asked where they were from. My customer contacted me and put us in touch.
I was very honored by Mr. Liverano’s interest, so for the next Pitti Uomo, I traveled to Florence to show him a pair of Fujito jeans. He asked if we could change the pattern a bit, as well as switch up some of the stitching. Back at his atelier, he also gave us a copy of a paper pattern hanging on his wall, which he wanted us to use for the hip pocket. Again, I was very honored because I know how unusual it is for Mr. Liverano to share one of his paper patterns.
We ended up making some samples for Mr. Liverano, and I traveled to Florence a few more times to get his approval on the final production. Our factory was very supportive throughout this process. Today, we still make all of Liverano & Liverano’s jeans in Japan.
A lot of clothing today fits very slim and tight. I noticed, however that you often play with proportions. Some of the garments have a bit more ease built in and everything looks very comfortable. Do you generally like clothes to fit a bit fuller? What aspects of the cut are important to you?
I’ve been shifting to making more relaxed cuts in recent seasons. Our “big silhouette shirt” is one of those cases, as are the fuller-fitting trousers. I’ll usually start the process by discussing with our pattern maker how our clothes should fit. It’s really about how each individual piece fits into the broader collection. As it gets tougher to live in today’s world, I want our clothes to feel comfortable and relaxing.
Why is it important to you to manufacture in Japan?
About seventy-percent of every collection is made in Kyushu, which is the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. Our shirts, for example, mainly come from Karatsu. It’s a beautiful town with a great view of the mountains and ocean. The close distance makes it possible for us to discuss things face-to-face with our partners, which results in better clothes. Even if we start with vintage items, we change the silhouette, color, and texture in order to create something that simultaneously feels new and classic. And I know it’s important to those of us who live and work in Japan that things are made here.
I know you have a shop in Japan. For you, what makes a good retail environment?
I started my career working as part of the sales staff, so I still enjoy talking to people who come into the store. Part of what makes a store special is having that very personal relationship. I also think presentation is important – both in terms of showing the product and the people behind the company. For many of our customers, who they buy from is just as important as what they buy.
You travel a lot for work. What are some things you always bring with you on trips?
A bottle of fragrance from Aquaflor; a scarf from Liverano & Liverano; sneakers from Asics; and a travel wallet from Smythson.
If we were to visit your part of Japan, what should we not miss?
I work in Fukuoka, which is famous in Kyushu – one of the main Japanese islands – for its food. If you visit, I’d strongly recommend trying Tsudoi, which is one of the Japanese noodle bars here. It has a personalized noodle menu, some incredible sake, and a mysterious feeling atmosphere. The place will satisfy any customer.
Finally, what music are you listening to these days?
“Passing Afternoon” by Iron & Wine. When I’m stressed, I find it cools my mind.
Many designers today, even those considered avant-garde, start their design process by delving into vintage archives. It’s just a question of where they take their inspiration. For Japanese designer Go Fujito, the process is as much about drawing from archival designs as it is about staying true to his personal history. As Fujito puts it, “clothes are about living,” which means style should always have some kind of contemporary relevancy.
As a teen growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Fujito was in the thick of Japanese youth subcultures – a breakaway from the past, when youths dared to be a bit more rebellious. Fujito skateboarded and played football; he listened to punk rock and hip-hop. He was also heavily drawn to Harajuku, a district of Tokyo known for pushing rock ‘n roll fashion to young Japanese people disaffected with Ivy style.
If Fujito’s version of Americana feels familiar, that’s because he draws from a period many of us lived through. Instead of vintage, archival styles from the early 20th century, Fujito’s collections are inspired by the mid-century designs favored by youths in the ‘80s and ‘90s. There are soft, comfortable fleeces for hiking and camping; thick striped sweaters and shirt jackets for record hunting; and jungle jackets and parkas for everyday use. We sat down with the designer to talk about his history, design process, and work.
How did you become a designer?
Back in the 1990s, when I was in college, I worked at a vintage clothing store. This was when Harajuku was becoming a major center in Tokyo for street fashion. I got the job initially because I was interested in men’s clothing and style, but it wasn’t until I worked there that I discovered how much today’s clothes are based on vintage designs. Those years had a big impact on me, as I learned how to select and sell imported-clothes.
Later, I ended up working for Denime, one of the companies in Japan making jeans. It was there that I learned how clothes were made – from yarn selection to weaving, pattern making to garment washing.
After many years of working for other companies, I decided to make my own clothes. I started with simple screen-printed t-shirts, which my friends and I made in a garage. We moved up from there to jeans, which I’ve always considered the king of men’s casualwear, and have since expanded into a fuller collection of knitwear and cut-and-sewns.
You mentioned Harajuku. Were you involved in any youth subcultures growing up?
Absolutely. I was born in 1975 in a city called Sasebo, which has a big US military base. I actually came to the United States for the first time in 1984. I stayed with my cousins in San Diego and still remember how they showed me their break dancing moves while we were in their kitchen. When I returned to Japan, I brought with me a pair of Nikes that I had bought back when I was in California. It made me something of a celebrity amongst my classmates.
During this time, when I was a teen, I got involved in the local football and skateboarding scenes. Skateboarding actually opened up new cultural avenues for me, particularly in fashion and music. I listened to a lot of punk rock and hip hop, both of which really influenced me. I still count Matt Hensley, a former professional skater and now a musician, as one of my heroes.
Tell us about your design process. What inspires your work?
Fujito is made for everyday purposes. The clothes are meant to be worn roughly and casually, so they naturally have a bit of sportiness to them. Even if the item feels familiar and “normal,” I try to make things with a sophisticated and sporty feel.
Lots of things influence my work, from music to movies to art to friends to skateboarding. Back when I just started by brand, my mother told me that I had look at more art. Since then, I’ve made it a personal rule to always visit art museums when I travel.
Regarding the design process, I’m constantly thinking about my next collection. We have small team here, just three people, so we’re always sharing ideas. I may show my team the direction I have in mind for some rough designs, and then they dig into the details. Sometimes I’ll give them a theme to work around, such as “clothes for an anarchist woodpecker in a modern era.” That makes our choices for textiles and color a bit easier.
Still, the collections stay pretty consistent from season-to-season. The fundamentals are drawn from vintage clothing, either from my own personal collection or others’. We rely on those vintage clothes to learn about small details, then modify them in order to build our own “fashion language.” That can be anything from taking inspiration from the yarn dyeing in knitwear, stitching in a jacket, or some kind of fabric. We then draft up a pattern using toile, which helps us develop a fit. These details eventually all come together to make up the feeling or mood of a collection.
Many of your clothes have an outdoorsy feel to them. Do you go camping much? If so, what kind of equipment do you like?
I don’t always have the time for them, but I love outdoor activities. When I go hiking or camping, I wear boots from Goro, which are made in Sugamo, Tokyo. I like to layer with Montbell down jackets (they were really helpful during my last trip to New York City). I also recently bought a hammock from Eno. We’re now in a tent-less age!
About a decade ago, a kindly assistant at my office nicknamed behind her back (not by me) La Castafiore for her resemblance to the melodramatic Tintin character of that name took me aside to tell me how nice it was that a young man still wore a silk handkerchief in his jacket pocket since so few men did nowadays.
What a difference a decade makes. Today millions of silk pocket squares erupt into bloom from coats like violently variegated tropical flowers. These blossoms appear to have germinated from spores borne on the wind from that hothouse of male motley, Florence’s Pitti Uomo trade fair, where several times a year menswear salesmen, aspiring salesmen and bloggers gather to incubate and incestuate their looks.
The history of fashion, if not any trend, is of minor movements that sometimes catch on and disparate inspirations that may converge into a dominant esthetic. Dominance leads to universality and to excess, followed by an inevitable counterreaction, a correction that eventually swings into its own excess at the opposite pole.
Something of this nature appears to have been occurring to the Pitti peacocks, a media-friendly name these men have adopted as wholeheartedly as their boldly patterned suits, daring mixes of textures, vibrantly colored accessories, and affected buttoning, tucking or folding quirks. As I write this I realize that unlike their human counterparts the different colors of avian peacocks’ ornate plumage actually harmonize with each other. Nonetheless, their respective resplendences both serve the purpose of being seen, in the case of the Pitti peacocks the better to be snapped by their street style photographer symbiotes.
I was originally surprised, though slightly jealous, several years ago when some friends who were not clothing retailers obtained invitations to Pitti in order to pose and parade there. Today, the Pitti peacock phenomenon is widespread enough to have made the cover of the latest lifestyle supplement to The Economist, with an article inside about how these flamboyantly suited and booted characters may be the last manifestations of a phenomenon they have done to death, as the pendulum inevitably swings back. (Beholding the cover I did actually utter the letters “FML.”)
Luxury men’s magazine The Rake, whose founder The Economist interviewed for that piece, corroborates this concept of counterreaction with an article on the new sobriety in men’s tailored clothing. Its accompanying fashion spread features suits with ties in matching colors over white shirts. The effect goes beyond sobriety to a Volsteadish prohibition. Its consequence will be to shift attention away from the suit wholesale to other, more casual outfits.
17 years ago Hedi Slimane put the tailored suit back on the map of men’s fashion, eventually leading to its re-establishment as the fundamental garment of men’s fashion. Although his vision was of an ascetic, indeed gaunt, silhouette in austere black and white, his tailored look converged with other trends towards dressiness, including a new exuberance in color and pattern that moved from dress shirts to suits and coats. That joy of color, texture and pattern – what’s left of them, anyway appears now to be switching to a different locus: not the suit, but leisure wear.
Perversely, as the last decade went on, I retrenched to wearing only solid linen handkerchieves or the RJ cat pocket square, even if I do keep in a drawer most of my favorite patterns (like the medieval prints and the Hermès Puss in Boots square). Perhaps as other follow the pied pendulum towards athleisure and de-emphasized drab tailoring, I will come back out of the closet with those other squares. Things always do swing from interest to excess and then abandonment. Reaction began to gather against the fitted look as soon as Tom Ford launched his own fashion line in 2006, with its originally 1970s-inspired proportions.
Those Pitti peacocks were no more featherbrained than the fashion victims of movements past or future. Their distinguishing innovation was to gather and strut most prominently during a menswear trade show, rather than in the repairs of the beau monde, wherever those may actually be nowadays (and as income inequality and the share of wealth held by a vanishingly small population continue to escalate, almost none of us would know). The last decade was the first time that so many of the best-dressed men in the world, according to various lists, turned out to be men flogging or blogging for clothes.
I love color and pattern. Perhaps I lack the imagination to improvise on the broader canvas of more casual attire, but I like suits and will continue to wear them regularly, just as I’ll continue wearing as I always have rollnecks in all imaginable colors, even (should I hang my head?) socks with a nice pattern and the infamous printed cashmere-silk neckerchieves from Paris that I wrote about so long ago. I love the unusual and have dressed for myself and against the prevailing wind of pretentious blowhards since I was an adolescent. So I’ll keep wearing what I want to wear. Although perhaps not quite as often the iridescent colored twill shirts, my very first custom shirts, I ordered back in the days before La Castafiore sang, beautiful as they are in their shades of peacock-like blue and green.
There are many ways to wear a pocket square, but only one rule – always complement; never match. As with tie knots, card tricks, and pick-up lines, you want to look good without seeming like you put in too much effort. Any hint of contrivance and the magic is gone. For pocket squares, that means looking like you grabbed something at random (n.b.: use caution in applying this logic to pick-up lines) and things just happened to work out perfectly.
The Elysium of nonchalant perfection is bordered by hellscapes of priggish foppery and slovenly carelessness. These borders are poorly defined and to some degree a matter of taste. However, here are some good guiding principles to keep you on the right side of enemy lines:
Color: The trickiest part of wearing a pocket square is knowing how to combine colors. Just as you should never buy matching tie and pocket square sets (let alone wear one), you also never want your tie and square to match too closely. Instead, choose a square that either picks up a secondary color in your tie or complements the main color. For instance, suppose you’re wearing a tie that’s navy with burgundy pencil stripes. You could wear a burgundy square to highlight the burgundy pencil stripes in your tie, or a dark brown square to complement the navy base color.
Pattern: Squares with big patterns often look best with neckties with small patterns, and vice versa. Doing so keeps either accessory from competing with each other. Squares with “motif” patterns - that is, an unrepeated sketch that takes up the entire square - work with any tie pattern.
Material: A clean, sharply folded white linen will look good with almost anything, but day-in-day-out white linen pocket squares can get a bit boring. Consider mixing things up with silks, wools, and cottons. The first is good for year-round wear, while the latter two are a bit seasonal (wool for fall, cotton for spring).
Sheen: Pay attention to how light reflects off the material, and use it to balance the rest of your outfit. A wool square can be a nice seasonal accent to your usual navy sport coat and silk tie combo, whereas a silk square can keep a tweed jacket and wool tie ensemble from looking too fuzzy.
Fold: Don’t over think it – this shouldn’t feel like origami. Neatly fold linen squares and slide them into your breast pocket. For anything else, pick the square up by the center, fold it over so that the center is touching the square’s edge, and then stuff it into your pocket. Points up or down, it’s up to you, although points down will always look more discrete.
Done right, a pocket square can elevate the look a tailored jacket – decorating the breast pocket, balancing the tie, or adding visual interest when you’re going sans neckwear. It’s arguably the easiest accessory to wear, or at least you should make it look that way.
Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in March 2016.
Language as a metaphor for clothing is ubiquitous in writing on dress. But clothing isn’t a language. Speaking and dressing make very different demands of the body. And combining words and figures of speech is quite unlike combining shirts and shoes.
Which makes the clothing of famous writers all the more interesting - their clothing does not simply duplicate their writing, but rather offers a separate, complementary dimension of expression. In the most evocative cases, like Colette’s suit or Samuel Beckett’s turtlenecks, writers’ clothes give us a sense of embodiment—their presence, their posture, the way they existed in public and private spaces—that texts alone cannot.
Clothing can also condition writing. To sit their final exams, students at Oxford University must still wear sub fusc, a kind of dark academic dress (from Latin, sub fuscus) that is now understood to mean a dark suit and a white shirt—whose collar is closed with either a white marcella bow tie or black ribbons—with a black gown over the top. The same uniform is worn for graduation, knotting together the labor and its reward, and lending both a sense of occasion.
Without the proper dress, students cannot write their exams. A similar sartorial barrier appears in Peter Stallybrass’s classic essay, “Marx’s Coat.” In London in the 1850s, Marx was fighting to keep his household above starvation, working as a journalist and pawning his possessions between paychecks. One item which made its way through the pawnshop as the family finances fluctuated was his overcoat. What Marx was trying to do, amongst the bartering and fear that stalk a life of mere subsistence, was write the book which would be his life’s work, Capital. To do so, he needed to spend hours in the British Library reading the great works of political economy, and in order to do that, Stallybrass points out, he needed his coat.
Both the ferocity of those English winters, and the social expectations of the British Library reading room, made Marx’s overcoat not merely an adornment or extension of his writing self, but its most basic necessity. When he sets in Capital out to analyze the economy in terms of the kinds of work people do, Marx writes that the value of “coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements – matter and labour.” The coat is formed not only from its cloth, thread and horn, but also the hours of work invested by weaver, tailor and finisher. It marks a relation between maker and wearer. And the example folds back on itself: the hypothetical coat depends on the real one which was required before it could begin. The airy theory clumps back into heavy wool.
Words won’t keep you warm, nor cashmere make you eloquent. Having places to go but no coat, and things to say but no words, are different kinds of poverty. But the importance—and occasionally the necessity—of a writer’s clothing demonstrates that we are connected to one another not only by language and ideas, but by the materials of work and leisure, that furnish and clothe our lives.
The barchetta pocket is often thought to be a tailoring detail exclusively from Italy. The word “barchetta” is Italian for “little boat.” It describes how the pocket floats on the chest, gently angled upwards, like the bow of a sailboat. Most machine-made suits, by contrast, have chest pockets with a more stamped-out, rectangular shape.
Although the barchetta pocket is most famous today in Italian sartorias, it was once found in American suits during the early twentieth century. In this time of more careful craftsmanship, President Theodore Roosevelt (below), Woodrow Wilson, and a young F. Scott Fitzgerald were all wearing suits with hand-set barchetta pockets.
The barchetta bestows an elegance that is missing from its rail-car-straight cousins. The pocket’s upward curve mirrors the sweep of the lapels as they form a v-shape from the buttoning point to the chest. It also echoes the lively roll of a beautiful lapel that carries the spring of canvas and natural wool. The more horizontal, straight lines of the standard RTW chest pocket fit only the lapels of a stiff, flat, and lifeless suit.
A person who is indifferent to appearance might say that the only worth of a tailoring detail comes from its “practicality,” or whether it makes the suit more durable. By that measure, the barchetta might seem to be superfluous, and the cookie-cutter rectangle an acceptable substitute. This is the same view that animated the modernist architects who declared themselves the enemies of ornament. Form should follow function, and in Le Corbusier’s words, the function of a house is that it is “a machine for living in.”
What this view ignores is that nothing could be more practical than beauty, and there is no higher function than to give pleasure. The Boston City Hall resembles a machine more than the White House, and is perhaps more durable, but which one would you rather live in or look at? Durability without beauty only ensures the permanence of ugliness.
In wearing the barchetta pocket, we are reviving a tailoring detail with real American roots and style. Most of all, we are taking a small step to living by Frank Lloyd Wright’s advice: “If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.”
Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in September 2014.
A great achievement of the classes that rule us is making us love our chains. I had this (almost certainly not original) thought reading the estimable Bruce Boyer’s recent essay “Dress Up” on the faith-oriented website First Things, and remembered it again as I struggle to restore one of my chains, my badly worn briefcase bought new 16 years ago from the heavily fetishized English whipmaker Swaine Adeney Brigg.
I can say, with all of the ecumenism worthy of a site like First Things, that Boyer is a mensch, perhaps the most respected English-language men’s clothing writer, and has personally become one of the kindest voices about my own writing and attempts to bring my own book to publication. So “Dress Up” showcases his splendid knowledge of clothing history, enlivened with his usual verve.
“Dress Up”’s thesis is that we have lost a sense of occasion, a socially shared sense of ritual that inspires us as a group to dress better (Freudianly, I just typed “bitter” and then “butter”), and to know how to dress better to appropriately fit the occasion. Casualization of clothing is a false democratization; an old order of codes is destroyed and a new surfeit of variety bedevils us: would-be #steezinistas lose their way, unsure how to coordinate their clothes given all the different colors, styles, and changing fashion seasons. In other words, losing the shared sense of occasion means loss of commonality, community, and “humility,” to be replaced by a society that “gives more leeway to the strong than it does support to the weak.”
Change from a supposed settled and calm order that leads to aimlessness, confusion and indulgence. I can see why this piece was of publishing interest to First Things. Nostalgia for a time of less, or more repressed, questioning is rampant in many religious outlets today.
Clothing is a social tool, a manner of expression. Dress codes, including and especially those that “Dress Up” mentions like entire stadiums wearing suits to ballgames, are a method of enforcing social order. The idea of wearing nicer clothing as a sign of mutual respect is profoundly bourgeois, one of many incentives to the middle class to conform to this sense of order. Others include modesty (the wearing of suits means wearing far more layers than, say, today’s T-shirt) and the ideal of quality, the lie of longevity that convinced me so long ago that my briefcase, my leather lunch pail as Tom Wolfe snarkily and observantly called it, would really be a lifetime quote investment unquote.
I got pumped and dumped, in both the investment and the Trumpian senses of the terms.
Things do not last, things do not make you you. It’s a lesson I had to learn over time. Like, I suspect, most iGents, my favorite superhero as a little kid was Batman, because he always had the right accessory. With his utility belt and quick thinking, he had the response to every occasion. (Today, it’s probably Green Arrow, Batman as a bleeding heart liberal.) His things made him him. I admit his deep and twisted repression also made him a natural identification for us iGents too.
Unfortunately, the nature of capitalist society is the privilege of the strong at the expense of the weak. At best, social support is an afterthought. The creation of a sense of occasion to which we must respond and conform means that the few who are not required to do so enjoy and outwardly signal their power. Power to transgress the norms they have set down, in dress as in other forms of conduct. (That, incidentally, was prep, in all of its worn-down, bizarrely-colored and patterned glory, a reality far from the idealizations of the Internet creeps who idolize it, a set of strange codes to penalize outsiders, strange codes set by an upper-class and upper-middle-class ability to transgress against norms of good taste and restraint that supposedly dictated how everyone dressed 60 years ago.)
I selected my briefcase in conformity with the old norms of taste: tastefully anonymous, unlogoed, made by hand by Englishmen guaranteed to treat most non-Sloaney visitors to their St. James’s shop like utter garbage, unwieldily heavy brass fittings on thick, thick bridle hide leather that not only had that forelock-tugging equestrian heritage but supposedly would last forever.
As usual, Ferry was right. Nothing lasts forever. The lies to manage us, though, are the Same Old Scene. Luxury, as always, is what almost none of us can have. In the rosy-tinted past of First Things, it was casualness, freedom from strictures, suits, codes of professionalism. Today, as Boyer correctly notes, we have been given freedom to be as casual as we wish by our corporate overlords, a false freedom since now what almost none of us can have is peace of mind, personal time, sleep, job and personal security, perhaps even any kind of future – all things those corporate overlords, and their owners, have in various ways taken away through labor-saving devices that make us available around the clock, donations to think tanks to create deregulatory lies, newly charitable contributions to help elect the most venal leaders. It was not a change in clothes that created this environment, even if my reaction against the false freedom of casualness was to dress as I liked – well, if I daresay – and to embrace my chains, like my briefcase.
Welcome the freedom to dress as well as you like, to be individual, rather than as a subject of spoken and unspoken codes of dress. And if you believe in community and shared social support, fight for it on your own terms, rather than ingesting the politically conservative pablum too many mouthpieces of organized religion like to serve up.
Making fine leather goods is like parenting a toddler – it’s difficult, dirty work and you don’t know if you’ve succeeded until years later. Even after decades of working with leather, Frank Clegg admits he’s still learning. “You always think you’re doing something well, but it’s not until you see a bag five, ten, fifteen years down the line will you know whether something was done right.” Frank has forty-five years of experience both building and repairing leather bags, which means he’s had a lot of time to refine his process.
Frank’s work started in 1969, when his then-girlfriend (now wife) gave him some leatherworking tools for Christmas. Like most leatherworkers, he started with small, simple objects – basic belts, wallets, and key cases – but it wasn’t long before moved to bags and briefcases. “I found I had a real knack for pattern design and construction, so it quickly turned into a business. Back then, we used to sell at craft shows. I guess they call them pop-ups now, but it’s all the same thing.” His earliest models, going back to the 1970s, included simple, handsome designs that have been pared down to just their essential details. Models like the Captain’s, Birmingham, and English briefs. Frank calls these his “pure state bags.”
In the 1980s, however, men wanted something different. “Every market goes through its trends,” Frank says. “Back then, bags with metal frames were popular, so we made those. The problem was, five years down the line, those bags would come back to us with the frames poking through the leather. So we switched to polypropylene frames, but then those broke.” Meanwhile, Frank noticed that all of his pure state bags from the 1970s were holding up beautifully, so he went back to what he knew worked: simple designs made from quality materials that naturally go together. That means handles made from pure leather, rather than a mixture of leather and cardboard stiffeners, or zip-top briefcases that are reinforced with belting leather, rather than metal strips. “Over the years, I’ve found that the less you put into a bag – not in terms of work, but in terms of unnecessary complications – the better.”
That simple design philosophy also runs through Frank’s business model. While many companies – even “heritage brands” – have shipped their production overseas, Frank has kept production in his hometown Fall River, Massachusetts, where he makes bags with the help of his eight-person staff. “We stick to what we know, but it’s always a learning process as you go – even after forty-five years of doing this stuff.”
Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in September 2015.
Hugh Hefner, millionaire libertine, child of sexually repressed Methodists, and father of a generation of men’s magazines, has died at 91. With the golden age of Playboy long gone by the time I would have been old enough to sweatily peruse its pages, my own feelings about Hefner have centered around a mixture of bemused indifference and the kind of awe one feels toward a grizzled old tree that’s been struck by lightning, yet remains standing. For me, he was always a fossil, a cartoon, and a skeezy brand ambassador—rather than a living person, or an agent of profound change in American sex culture.
Much has been written about Hefner’s dubious philosophies regarding women, but less I think, about the influence he has had over millions of men, who imagined his persona as the Mount Olympus of bachelorhood toward which we should all strive. Though Playboy of the past few decades was more Hollywood, Florida than Hollywood, California, it began as a fantasy that was hip, cosmopolitan, and sophisticated—as opposed to the macho pulp of lad mags like Men’s Adventure,Man’s LifeandStag with headlines like “Weasels Ripped My Flesh.” As a young Hefner wrote in Playboy’s first editorial in 1953, “We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” Nevermind that when he wrote these lines, Hefner was living with his first wife, the first woman he’d slept with, and publishing his magazine with the help of his mother, who had loaned him a substantial $1000 to get it off the ground. “I was the boy who dreamed the dream” would eventually become Hefner’s refrain, and dream he did.
The particular figure that Hefner dreamt up has perhaps died along with him, or at least devolved into kitschy caricature, like the gravel-voiced “Most Interesting Man in the World,” who hawks Dos Equis between sword fights and yacht excursions. It was from Hefner’s loins that this type sprung: one part James Bond, two parts Ivy League prodigal son, and a dash of contrarianism for spice. His party guests spanned the intellectual and cultural spectrum of his time: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., Mick Jagger—and he greeted them all in slippers and a robe. What other man has turned a constant uniform of pajamas into a sign of success rather than a symptom of alcoholic depression?
When I look through men’s magazines and see guys who are supposedly living “the dream” today, I instead find blowhards, technocrats, and goons—more interested in bragging to attractive female journalists about how much they paid for a Picasso, rather than discussing the artwork on their wall. But perhaps those differences are purely generational: were he a millennial like myself, I imagine Hefner would have preferred smoking a vape to a pipe, and instead of building a media empire, he would probably have dropped out of college to found a VR-sex app. Ultimately, Hefner was very much a man of his time—an early defender of free speech and abortion rights, and also a sexist pig, obsessed with an idealized vision of female beauty. For better or worse, his tastes and obsessions guided the inner lives of his readers, who are themselves are getting on in years. Hefner may now be buried next to Marilyn Monroe in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, but he will manage to live on every time a curious boy exhumes his dad’s old Playboys and gives them a browse—for the articles, of course.
Most people think of suits as being British, Italian, or American - the first being “structured,” the second “softly tailored,” and the third a “sack cut.” But what a suit looks like can be much more complicated than that. There can be curves and lines throughout the jacket that give the wearer a certain look. Here are some of the main details that make up a suit’s silhouette.
Shoulders: Every jacket hangs from the shoulders. The more padded the shoulders are, the more horizontal they’ll be the less padded, the rounder and more sloped (relative to the wearer’s natural shoulders). The shoulders then meet at the sleeve at what’s called the “sleevehead.” This area can have a prominent ridge running along the crown of the sleeve (making it a roped shoulder) a light ridge, but still generally running flat (a natural shoulder) or be knocked down and have a low profile (a bald shoulder).
Chest: A jacket’s chest can be made lean or full. A lean jacket sits closer to the body to give a trimmer, younger look. A full chest is more sculpted to create a more muscular profile. Full chests sometimes have excess cloth “drape” near the armholes, although this feature is usually reserved for bespoke tailoring.
Waist and skirt: The waist of a jacket can be nipped or left loose. The skirt - the area just below the buttoning point - can hug the hips or kick out. These elements combine with the chest style to create an alphabet of shapes: As, Vs, Xs, and columnar Is.
Long or wide: Finally, by playing with the lines of a jacket, the cut can be said to be lengthening or widening. A lengthening jacket may have a lower buttoning point and a higher notch on the lapel to create a long vertical line from shoulder to buttoning point. A widening jacket, on the other hand, can have wider lapels and extended shoulders.
These aspects can be combined in any number of ways to create the jacket’s silhouette. As you look at pictures of well-dressed men, notice each element and how it contributes to the overall effect. By understanding each piece of the puzzle, you’ll better understand which ones fit together to make a look that works for you.
Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in October 2013.
I immigrated to the United States when I was child and I often wonder how I would’ve turned out if I’d have been raised in my native Haiti. Mostly, I wonder if I would’ve suffered from the anxiety and depression that has been with me for the past decade. But we can experiment with alternate realities only in our imaginations. In the reality we have, we can only experiment with coping mechanisms. An important one for me has been finding routines that create an order to my life and keep me well grounded, connected to what I know. One of those routines is shining my shoes.
Upon immigrating to the States, my mother and I found ourselves living with my uncle on Long Island. My father wasn’t in my life meant, so I was always searching for a male role model and my uncle became the first of these surrogate fathers for me. To this day I mimic many of his behaviors and one of my favorites was the way he prepared his clothing the night before work. How he carefully pressed his shirts and lovingly ironed the crease into his pants.
Most of all I loved watching him shine his shoes. Every night, he’d take a brush to his shoes and once he buffed out all the dirt, he’d apply multiple layers of shoe shine until his shoes gleamed. I thought it was the coolest thing my seven year old self had ever seen. He took notice that I was enthralled with the process and one day he sat me down in his lap and showed me how to buff his shoes and how to apply the shine just like him and from that day on it became our thing. To my memory, it was the first time a man had ever taught me how to do a “manly” thing.
These days, it may be all I can do to get out of bed to shower and make it back to bed again. When I feel myself getting to that point, I keep in my mind that the way I present myself to the world is one of the few things I can control. That’s when I take out my own shoe care kit and start to methodically brush a pair of shoes. I then carefully apply the shoe polish, seeing myself more and more clearly in the shine of the leather, and in that moment I’m seven again and I’m sharing a moment with the only father I’ve ever known.
