VintageGent’s Menswear Daily

It Started with a Man with a Lot of Sweat…

(At Left:  Is that an early jump suit?  Feetie Pajamas for Men without the Feet??)

Whenever I am in a blue mood, I sometimes wander to the Lileks.com site and look at the gallery concerning the rise and fall of Dorcus Menswear.

Visitors are given a preperative preamble:

The brand is long forgotten; the name itself has not been uttered by a fashion critic for decades. The days when doors opened at the mention of these two simple syllables are gone, long gone. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised; this company never had the glamour or prestige of a Saint-Laurent, a Givenchy. It never sought the adulation of the fickle scribes, the playboy set. It simply wanted to make interesting clothes for everyday people.

In a broad, generous definition of “interesting,” one can certainly say they succeeded.

Dorcus abandoned the goal of putting men in dresses in the 1960s, but triumphed in the application of extremely large plaids. The question arises: When does a plaid stop being a plaid?

Barney Dorcus’ drive to create clothing was born of his halitosis and predisposition to sweat profusely. It all started when Dorcus purchased a surplus of army gasmasks and used the lightweight fabric to create SWETZ-ALOT fabric. Since the fabric kept gases out, it was sure to keep B.O. odor at bay. The suits flew off the shelves. It may have been that Dorcus would have been in the annals of fashion history with his product.  That was of course until son Raoul Dorcus had been given the reins and decided that the company should go in another direction all together, and his own personal style of tall socks with shorts, ghastly plaids (which almost sunk the company), and the male skirts that the world was not ready for caused the company to gradually dwindle.

Have fun flipping through the pages of a dream gone a little bit sideways.