VintageGent’s Menswear Daily

“Lace Ups”

I was flipping through a copy of Details, and their showcase of some of the fall fashions. At left, is one of the looks they showed. Nothing new or revolutionary about it. Seems to me to be basic clothes that men could live with.  A long sleeved shirt.   Pants that could be weathered blue khakis or jeans.

One detail caught my interest, however.

The footwear the model is wearing is what they are referring to as”Lace Ups.”

I think they are protesting a little too much by pointing out specifically that they are different because they are polished, and they are certainly not broken in and scuffed up.   As if they knew exactly what I was thinking.

Lean your head in a bit and take a closer look.   ”Lace ups” are just another euphemism for BOOTS

Take a little closer look.  Specifically, to me, they look like a slight throwback to a certain Doctor rather than any sort of equestrian look.  In fact, on another page, a pair that had the white stitch close to the sole were featured with an outfit. Looks like combat boots redux a la 90s to me.

Rare Find: Made to Measure Suits!

There was a time when a tailor’s shop was on every corner, and the staple of a well turned out gent’s wardrobe were several custom, Made to Measure suits. Now, with modern fashion being much more casual, those days are gone. Many men only slightly alter their clothing. Is that day truly gone, or merely on the cusp of a comeback?

I was excited to find MySuitNY.com, as it gives me high hopes. There are actually tailor shops and tailors in the United States that do make custom suits, but in an old fashioned way, they only get their business by word of mouth, and do not advertise for anyone new in town to find them. On the contrary, MySuit rolls out the fanfare and has an interactive website to get you hooked on the idea.

Coming to New York? You can make an appointment right from the website. There is an animation showing you the 30 measurements they take at the store to get you the best possible fit.  After playing around on the site, I have high hopes that you will get the itch to hop on a plane. They say that a good suit is like an old friend. Good thing that you can make a friend for life starting at $495.00.

That may seem like a lot for someone who is used to buying suits at $90-200 discounted and off the rack. Think about it, though. It is like a woman buying ten tubes of lipstick at the drug store until they find the right one.  They would tell you if they found the perfect one the first time, they would have paid fifty bucks for it, because they already sunk seventy dollars into a drawer full that are too orange, to brown, or that wear off too fast.  When you buy a custom suit, you’ll only need a couple, not a closet full.   It is a worthy investment.

I am convinced that at least thirty percent of the men who wear vintage suits don’t do so because of the historical value, or to fit in at a Halloween party with something outrageous, but because the fit and finish cannot be compared to what is widely available today.   They were just “made better.” If you fall into this category, this is definitely worth looking into for you.

If you go to MySuit, please drop me a line and tell me how it went!  Your experience might just get a mention from me.

Esquire Goes Digital (Literally!)

Esquire is celebrating its 75th Anniversary with an electronic, blinking cover.  The edition is limited to 100,000 and will hit Barnes & Noble and Borders this week.    The cover is 10×10 and blinks the message “The 21st Century Begins Now.”  The cover is run on two computer chips and six batteries. You can pick one up for $5.99, much less than what it took to make them, I am sure.

Why, you ask?  On the Today show, editor-in-chief David Granger, replied:  ”We’ve always been about showing men a certain level of ambition that they can aspire to.”

Here you are, friends and neighbors. Here is a look at the magazine, fresh on YouTube:

Are you going to hop in the car this week and fight over your very own copy?   Well, I had to go to three different stores to find the premiere issue of Men’s Vogue, as my area wasn’t considered high traffic enough to canvas every stores with it. I managed to find a copy at Walgreen’s almost at the end of the run of the first issue. The nearest Barnes is a thirty minute ride.

Either this is going to be the elephant in the room, or it is going to be the metrosexual answer to furby.  Oh, there may be blood. Or, maybe there will just be a few passive aggressive stares.  It is hard to tell which at this point.     I wonder if there is a way to turn it on and off, or will the battery just run as fast as a glow stick does at the Fireworks?   Hmmm….

1974: New Hair!

1974: what a year!

Brylcreem ran an ad touting the virtues of the “NEW” short hair. They “explained the difference between the short hair that went away and the short hair that’s coming back.” Ads, I guess, were always more lenghty then, and they used their space to tell you how to order your barber around to get the “NEW HAIR.” The style was a hint at the Luke Skywalker ‘do (or non-’do that was to come. Do you think barbers were helpful that their customers knew what they wanted, or do you think ol Bob and Gus who were cutting the dude’s hair since they were five years old thought, “Don’t tell me how to do my job?”

At any rate, here is how to get it:

Ask your barber to scissor your hair – no clippers – to a length of about an inch on top and in back, graduating to about an inch and a half in front and on the sides.

Around the neck and ears hair should be left shaggy enough so that it will still meet your collar and the tops of your ears. Trim your sideburns slightly, to the middle of your ears. Now you have only two problems to cope with: fuzziness and dryness. In no time short hair can look like sunburned straw. It needs frequent conditioning.

Re-enter Brylcreen, the conditioning hair dressing.

Oh, so this is not REALLY a public service announcement.   You can’t get the style if you don’t use Brylcreem!  By the way, Virginia Slims may have said “You’ve come a long way, baby,” but Brylcreen says:

We’ve come a long way since “a little dab’ll do ya.”

Wait a sec. My first grade teacher said that about glue! We used to use so much that we would have to peel the rest off our hands like we were shedding snakes when we got home.

One may wonder what the difference between 1974 and the current “I am sort of starting to grow my hair out” looks?  This was actual a specific style that one worked towards versus just “letting it happen.”

The part that I thought was particularly funny, is that the ad proclaims that this would be the style SURELY that would last for many years to come.  SURELY the writer didn’t see Disco or hair bands, or even Robert Plant coming.  Or they didn’t want to.

Watch Out for Granny!

The Chrysler Cordoba was the “new SMALL car” from Chrysler.  SMALL?!???!?! They have got to be kidding. Well, back then, with cars the size of a small ocean liner, it actually was.

Today, people are doing all sorts of things to make their car run better.    You can get a big old mercedes supercharger, a chrysler, a pontiac, or whatever suits your ride.  Some people get them to give their vehicle more pick up and power so they can hold out buying something new.     It reminds me of the banner years of souped up muscle cars.

Today, your car doesn’t have to be purple with flames on it to have a little extra power.   Down right respectable Pontiacs, and Buicks are getting the same treatment under the hood.    So you never know what hit you when the little old lady in the 2003 Chevrolet challenges you to the turn lane.

Bundle Up Like A Mummy!

Summer is almost over.  In fact, a good friend of mine says that summer is over July 5th.  The days start to get shorter, he says. It is scientifically true, but it is not over in spirit. It is only getting rolling.  He also says that he never gets cold in the winter.  The only time he does is that initial chill.  The first time that it is suddently thirty or forty degrees (Fahrenheit) out, he feels really cold and bundles up because his body is not used to it.

I have news for him:  Cold is cold and if its below zero out and if you are not a St. Bernard or a walrus, it is not unmanly to admit so.   There is no “mind over matter” or level of personal growth involved.  Even Iditarod entrants can only take so much. Our bodies were just not designed that way.

One consideration I had was going into the office and bringing a down comforter and a crazy deerstalker hat to prove my point, as he also blasts the air conditioning at this time of year, and opens the windows in the winter. Maybe I would hit the point even more by getting a huge thermometer and sticking it in my mouth.

Then, I stumbled across a travel blanket site.  Just like some jokes and gags that deliver a serious message, I found something very practical.   It usually happens that I start out being “up to no good” that I find something pretty cool.

The Cabin Cuddler is specially made to fit in an airline or an office chair. It is a full 80″ long so it can even work for the tall and bigger guys. It is a very different shape than a regular blanket and it can be wrapped to cocoon you in without being unwieldy. There is even a foot pocket. I recommend taking your shoes off for that if you are in to clodhoppers or steel toes.   It comes with a carrying case so you can easily stash it when you travel or in your desk drawer.

If you are sitting in a chair, from the back, passersby would have no idea anything was different, or that you had a blanket on until you whipped around.   A lot of old movies and horror films feature someone walking into a room and calling someone’s name, and all the sudden the chair turns around on its own, and it has a skeleton in it.  I would turn around and instead of running and screaming, they would say “Oh, that looks comfortable! I want one.”

It is all about the element of surprise!

Jacks, Jacks Everywhere!

I briefly take a detour today from talking about vintage clothing, fashion etiquette. and modern doodads to speak of a male cultural phenomenan that has been heavy on my mind. (We’ll blabber away about clothing again later.)

It happened again last night.

I was watching a rerun of Eureka  on the SciFi channel, and scriptwriters let me down once again.

Somewhere there is a natural law of writers, for some reason, that if you have a lead character that is male and finds themselves in an unusual or distrubing situation, his name has to be Jack. Or if he finds himself in a normal situation, but doesn’t like to play by the rules…he’s Jack too. And several minutes into this series, the writers again used the same device.

And the phenomena or deep gully of unimaginativeness doesn’t trace its roots to JFK being in the back of the collective mind. The Jack Law was written long before then. The earliest Jack we know of appears in the character of Ensign Jack in the 1912 flick “Saved from the Titanic”, and then Jack is eponymously portrayed by Jack Abbott in the 1927 film, Convoy.

The man who has played the most Jacks – Jack O’Lane, Jack Manning, Jack Martin, Jack McCabe and Jack Marley cannot claim the Tony Danza syndrome** (**see footnote) like Mr. Abbott…his name was Art! Art Acord, a contemporary of Mr Abbott, played the many Jacks throughout the 1920s. He also had a claim to fame as a steer roper in real life. And if you are a steer roper or have portrayed a character like “Two Guns O’Brien” such as Mr. Acord had, you definitely are destined to play a Jack.

Maybe I am being too harsh. Perhaps “Jack” signifies some sort of modern take on a classic archetype. It would just be too heavy handed to give characters such monikers as Beowulf, Cedalian or Antigone. Or maybe I am looking to far into it. “Jack” is an anti-hero. And the writer sits and thinks…hmmm…what is a name for an easy going guy that everybody can relate to? Or maybe they don’t think. It just pops into their head. Because I would imagine that they would socialize with other screenwriters and forget that half of their family, and just random folks on the street, are named Steve or Mike.

Nowadays, Jacks are few and far between outside of the entertainment and literary world. It just doesn’t make the list of most popular baby names or nicknames these days. ***I stand corrected, in the UK Jack is indeed still a popular name for babies again beginning in 1995. Jack didn’t make the chart 1994 and earlier. Could it be all those movies going across the pond? And look at Jack historically in the US. **** I, in fact, only know one Jack in my extended network of “friends of friends” and extended relatives of people who married into my family. In otherwords, if I called him, he would have an idea of who i was. But I will confirm the Steve and Mike thing. I also know a fair amount of Jeffs and a few Brians. But Brian will never creep in to be a name of a male action lead anytime soon. By the time Brian happens, kids of today will be writing and everyone’s name will be Brendan, Mason, Ty, Connor, and Aidan. However, if they studied such classics as Sky High Corral and Romancing the Stone, instead of such fare as Gone with the Wind, their alteregos would be named Jack too.

If that LP record they shot into space with “Sounds From Earth” is ever found by someone – if there are someones to find it – they will probably look back at our ancient culture and come at the conclusion that 70% of Earth Males regardless of creed or ethnicity were called “Jack”.

So to all the folks writing the Hollywood classics of tomorrow, there is still time. You can make a change and go against the tide. Surprise us! (Please.)

Footnotes:

(*** = The Tony Danza Syndrome. Either Mr. Danza can’t get into character if he plays a Joe or a Paul, the writers don’t think an audience will recognize him, or they are playing a joke on him. A minor case of this is known as the Jackie Chan Disease)

Tune in to the World

As if I couldn’t find enough on the internet to completely distract me, the Internet Television and Radio directory has come along to lead me even further down the road. With thirty gazillion channels, it is a Pandora’s Box of sorts. I am going to listen to the radio stations from all the towns I have ever lived in, and I am bound and determined to find out if in some remote country, My Mother the Car is being shown. My dad talks about that show, but I have not been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to have actually seen an episode. Maybe they have all been destroyed to protect humaniity. If you find any lost classics, write in and let me know!

In truth, there are not thirty gazillion. There are 1750 TV channels and and over 9500 radio stations. There are some I would not touch with a twelve foot poll, but there are quite a few that I am going to tune into.

A 1970s Frame of Mind

Mentally, I am on a 1970s kick right now.  I know, how could I be with the great 40s vintage ad treasure trove I just found? Don’t worry, I will talk about that too.    I thought I would share the mood with you.  Stay tuned during the next week (or so), where the decade of fondue, leisure suits, and “what were they thinking” hair takes center stage.   I think I may just wear some platforms around the house.   Maybe I am a bit insane.  At least I will be able to reach the top shelf a whole lot better.