Hard Bop Hank wrote:

carpu65 wrote:

Hard Bop Hank wrote:

The 30s stuff looks great but I would not want to re-enact it. All sort of period dressing seems wrong to me.

But Ivy clothes of 30s are not a period dress.
Look at this Brooks Brothers coat of 1939,are not like the others drape coats of that period:

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/6779/brooks1939c.jpg

Shoulders are natural,lapels are not wide,trousers are not baggy with three pleats..this is the strength of this style.
Paradoxically the  skinny lapels ivy suits of 60s ARE much more a period clothes.

Anything from the 1930s or any other period is inevitably "period dress". I do get your point that Brooks Brothers, though, with their insistence on classic style never went to the extremes of fashion. Even in the 60s their lapels were moderately slim or at least they offered alternatives to the narrow lapels, I think. During the boom years the Ivy Look did become more stylised, yes, but not everybody went crazy.

The pictures that you show are great, indeed. And, of course, there is nothing wrong about taking inspiration from this wonderful era. But anybody who attempts to try and copy this 1:1 would end up in the period dress trap.

I don't think there is one single period that can be regarded as the peak of style. Any period is a period. Period.

Same problem with the Boom years look too (which you also say).

I'd love to destroy all that. Get Ivy timeless & classic & not 'period'. Can it be done? To try and to fail is better than not to try?

/\ Brilliant. There's a real classicism there beyond all the Boom Years Ivy cliches.

The Brooks suits are a great illustration of Brooks Brothers' classicism or sartorial conservatism, if you want, and the HSM suits illustrate the fashion of the 30s and 60s, as I said I partly agree with you...

The lapel widths of these Brooks suits were indeed not too different in the 30s and in the 60s, but the button stance changed a lot in the Boom Years.

The lower stance of the 30s might be more "timeless"... nevertheless they are both suits of their times.

I'm not saying that you couldn't wear them now. My point is simply that aiming to achieve a 30s or a 60s or whatever period look is problematic. You can take inspiration from that, but one should always aspire to achieve a modern look.

... and I don't think that everything you see on the street, or in business meetings, or in fashion shows, or on TV does look modern...

Some of these things are just fads that will disappear very quickly...

The relation between style and fashion is a complicated one. I think you can't have one without the other.

Backward never, forward ever.