Listening to Jazz with my Uncle. Loving the fact that it was proper music but so different to classical or pop.
Noticing the way the guys dressed on the album clovers. Loving the fact that they were proper clothes but so different to anything else in England.
Watching US films just for the clothes - Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Mr Grant, Monty Clift...
Spending time in Ray's Jazz shop looking at album cover photos.
Spending time in Flip (A vintage US import clothier) looking at how the clothes were put together. Lapels, vents, shoulders, lack of darts etc.
Getting English RTW items altered to Ivy them up (Never looked quite right). Wearing Saxone loafers & European Levis. Even Ben Sherman shirts (shiver!)
Getting my first MTM Anglo Ivy suit from Colin Wilde in Newburgh Street W1. Almost had The Look.
Buying imported US BDs in Simpsons (Hathaway) & The Arrow Shop on Savile Row. Bass Weejuns from The Natural Shoe Store & Meenies. Sebagos from Russell & Bromley.
Being told about J Simons one drunken night in a club. Shoping there & starting to mail order from Brooks.
Being taken to Brooks, Press, & Stuart on shopping holidays with my new found friends. Getting my first authentic Ivy outfit: Sack blazer, Khakis, very dark blue knit tie & as many BDs as my credit card would allow.
Tracing the story back to the Ivy shop on Richmond Hill. Talking my way into being a 'Saturday boy' there one Christmas.
Exploring the US N.E. Seabord on further shopping hoidays. From Press in New Haven up to Bean in Freeport. Deciding that Harvard Square was the centre of the universe.

Then having discovered this new & different style just plain sticking with it.

Last edited by The_Shooman (2007-03-18 14:24:04)

My clothing obsession started during college, where my first roommate was the unlikeliest of people. First, I should mention that my own journey to college was very unusual for an upper middle-class Connecticut WASP. I'd essentially abandoned almost all of my family's hopes for me by scrapping any plans for college straight out of boarding school and taking a long detour through the trade of carpentry/cabinetry, a long stint of teaching English in Japan and studying the sitar in India, running my own business and training full-time as a zen monk. The product of this eclectic education in the school of hard knocks washed up on the shores of Columbia University in my mid-thirties and became the roommate of a lapsed aristocrat from Scotland who had abandoned his family in his teens and had a story even more bizarre than mine by the time he'd reached the cusp of fifty.

His sartorial world was one of complex social codes, certain telltale infractions of which could mark one as a pretender. From him I learned a number of basic principles, some of which I would adopt and others I would jettison as antiquated or just plain wrong, but foremost among them was the principle that dressing well is a skill that the well-bred or well-educated should possess. I have since learned that it is one you never finish honing.

My clothing revelation was when I first stumbled onto an Andy CD on the sidewalk, thrown out by some angry wife of a husband who frequented flea markets too much.

Last edited by Incroyable (2007-03-19 01:27:25)