Bizarre. I always said I liked studying older tailoring books because they had a huge variety of very dramatic ideas in them that make modern tailoring seem conservative and hidebound by comparison. They definitely painted with a broader brush in those days. Today fashions that are actually worn on the street involve almost trivial changes from season to season. The iGents too agonise over trivial details like a ticket pocket or an extra decorative button on their coat. The latter generates pages and pages of discussion - in the form of the decorative show button on a button-two show three lounge jacket (the iGent term is 3 roll 2 or 2 1/2 button or something weird). I always said that I studied older texts to cull bold ideas off them that would look old enough and forgotten enough to look fashionable and modern - things that are old enough can look new. I said that again and again. 

Unfortunately, the moment you show a really old fashion plate people assume that you are interested in wearing ancient clothes and dressing up like Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare. As it happens, I have exhausted older texts when it comes to culling novelties out of them. Doubly time to move on when if expressing even the most remote interest in this sort of thing results in you getting a bizarre reputation as someone who likes to dress up in period costume.

As for the explosion of the iGent crap about Rules, I too was under the spell. So I went out to see if the Yeti existed. Over several years I studied as many texts as I could lay my hands on. I've done my research and concluded that it is a myth because not one historical document shows that such a thing as Permanent Rules have ever existed. Some will still insist that the 1930s are the Classical Period and that the fashions of the era should be cast in stone as being eternally valid, so that every deviation from the fashion of this error is called a grievous transgression of The Rules. I'm afraid '30 fashion plates where called fashion plates by the illustrators of the era. They were the equivalent of runway shows to showcase the latest cuts of the season. The captions that come with them talk about this or that being that latest fashion and certain things as being no longer in fashion. The people of the era thought of fashion plates as showing the bleeding edge of fashion of the time and never as being Eternal Style, permanently valid for ever and all eternity. What a bizarre idea that is! It is an entirely modern idea too, even though advocates will have you believe that these Rules are ancient. Flusser certainly helps to perpetuate the notion and I suspect iGents are mostly something he has spawned.

That was another reason why I showed a lot of Edwardian fashion plates, which for a while, I did collect. It was a good way of questioning the iGent dogma about The 1930s Forever. Whereas Americans tend to regard the fashion of the Hollywood Film Noir Golden Age in the '30s as being Eternal Style, there had always been a British tendency (most prominent in the 1950-60s) to regard the Edwardian era as a Golden Age of style. Which is to say, I have always questioned the notion of the existence of a singular Golden Age whose style has to be mummified into some sort of rigid Eternal Style. As I say, unfortunately, all you have to do is show one Edwardian fashion plate and every idiot thinks that's how you dress.

In any case, I am totally over this retro stuff. It is fine as long as retro styles are modernised well to present them in a fresh and fashionable light. However, with all the Goth and Steampunk stuff around just showing one Edwardian fashion plates attracts these types like maggots to rotting flesh. To hell with them and all of this retro crap.

I totally agree with Berhard Roetzel (note the comment about brown shoes after 6):

Q: How often do you follow the different rules in classic style?

Roetzel: Today I've followed 23 rules 75 times while yesterday I broke eight rules seven times. I'm only joking. In think the rules of classic dress are important but I never follow rules if they don't make sense. Most rules make sense or have made sense at a certain time. I don't like the rule about leaving the last button of the waistcoat unbuttoned because 1. It doesn't look good and 2. I wouldn't leave a button of my fly unbuttoned either. It's good to update some rules or adapt them to one's personal circumstances. I don't think that the world stops turning if you wear brown shoes after six...

Q: If you could go back to any era, which would it be? Moreover, why would you prefer that particular era?

Roetzel: I wouldn't prefer any other era. I am very happy to live today although some people would say that I don't live today but rather in the past. I don't believe in romantic ideas about the 18th century or the 19th century or the 1920s being so much more elegant than today etc. I think it's a waste of time to wish yourself to another time.

http://mannerofman.blogspot.com/2010/04/mm-conversation-with-bernhard-roetzel.html

To this, I add: there are no rules. There never have been. There have only ever existed fashions. Fashions create trends that are followed. Some fashions are stable enough that ignoring them will make you look funny and out of place, especially in more formalised social situations. However, that doesn't make these fashion trends Eternal Rules. That's why we aren't dressed like Beau Brummell in our dark blue dress coats with gilt buttons as day wear, with skin tight pantaloons, and Hessian boots.

BTW there is no Rule against wearing black lounge suits either. There is no Rule against dinner jackets with SB lapels (step lapels, notched lapels or whatever you want to call them) either. There is no Rule against wearing brown in town. There is no Rule against wearing brown shoes in any social setting, at any time of the day. At times black suits become fashionable. At other times they becomes unfashionable. At times black dress shoes become popular. At other times they come into fashion.  If you do your research into the history of fashion, it isn't possible to conclude otherwise.

Last edited by Sator (2011-07-01 21:41:16)

l've seen old 30's photo's of blokes wearing notched lapel tuxedo's and i've also seen blokes in the 30's wearing squared toe shoos. As usual Sator is correct because he has actually bothered to do the research instead of talk through his hat.

Good on you Sator. Set `em straight mate! Tell those clowns how it really is. You are currently the best poster on the forums....about time we had someone who was for real.

Regards: a retired Shooman.

I just want to say, "Well said, Sator!" I was 62 years old when I discovered the wonderful world of the iGentry, had been occasionally perusing style guides and etiquette books that dealt with matters of male apparel for most of my life, had usually been regarded as pretty well turned out as the occasion demanded, and I was surprised by this plethora of rigid iGent rules propounded by certain self-anointed "Sayers of the Law" that I had hitherto been oblivious to.

The intense hostility to the notch-lapel tuxedo is the classic example, when research has shown that it has a respectable pedigree dating back almost to the inception of such garments--really unsurprising given the fact that the tuxedo is an informal garment in its origins.

Moreover, if one peruses an actual catalog of men's apparel from the 1930s (not just L. Fellows illustrations), a lot of the stuff looks like holy hell.

At this point, if it looks good, wear it! And be damned to the iGentry and its gurus!

Last edited by captainpreppy (2011-07-02 16:57:41)

I take it that the reference is to The Mahdi, whose troops killed Gordon, supposedly against the Mahdi's orders: the truth is that no one really knows whether the Madhi did or did not order him to be captured alive; nor even, exactly, how Gordon died - but we know why he died: because he would not leave just to save himself and, whatever the details might have been, as the narrator says, at the end, the world need its Gordons. So I register an i-Gent (First Class, please), objection to mocking Gordon of Khartoum: one of the greatest English characters; quite up, there with Nelson and Dr Johnson... as for the wannabees, who wall-hang the outside walls of fashionable places, dreaming their dreams: "dream on" seems to be enough to say to them. But the rest of your post, FNB, don't amount to a hill o' beans.

I know what Goths are but I had to google Steam Punk.

''Steampunk fashion has no set guidelines, but tends to synthesize modern styles influenced by the Victorian era. This may include gowns, corsets, petticoats and bustles; suits with vests, coats and spats; or military-inspired garments. Steampunk-influenced outfits will often be accented with a mixture of technological and period accessories: timepieces, parasols, goggles, and ray guns. Modern accessories like cell phones or music players can be found in steampunk outfits, after being modified to give them the appearance of Victorian-made objects. Aspects of steampunk fashion have been anticipated by mainstream high fashion, the Lolita fashion and aristocrat styles, neo-Victorianism, and the romantic goth subculture.''

Bring it on on!

What ray gun should I carry to go with my Allen Edmunds Balmoral boots?