Makes sense to me Jim
Finding a style that suited me and didn't look like at all like a 'costume' was a bit of a revelation, I even remember my partner commenting that a batch of vintage gear, I'd hauled back from the USA, looked 'made for me'.
Everything since that point has been an exploration in the same area, some mistakes (anything in seersucker, other than blue, makes me look like I should be selling ice-cream and a peach Makers OCBD doesn't go with anything in my wardrobe), but mostly success with the occasional 'almost perfect' find.

My taste in music is still all over the place tho'.

I don't take to the idea of a stopped clock personally, it perhaps implies everything after that point isn't of value.   In that case there would be no J. Keydges worn if the clock had stopped for some people in the 1980s.

I think creating a confident identity with a core set of interests and styles is one thing but the 'modernist' (but not former Mod) in me says keep looking forwards, refine, improve, innovate, enhance, expand, evolve.

It seems to me that many people just give up taking in new influences and become progressively less interesting as a result, they then wonder why they are bored with life or seem to bore others as they age.   It's the normal, conventional people who stop their clock but I'm using my forties to explore and learn more, experience more of life and expand my horizons.   Too many of my friends and former colleagues are aging beyond their years, locked in their own backwards looking nostalgia in their early forties.

I agree that having made a conscious choice to be interested in a topic or style, it is possible to focus in and build upon that.   Most people don't make conscious choices, they drift into laziness.   In clothing where they once made a choice, they slide down into the 'it's good enough' and go from defined choices, through M&S to BHS to Sainsburys and end up buying their clothes at ASDA, thinking they are cheap (they're not) and disposing of them continually but buying whatever is on their racks because 'it's cheap and it will do'.

There is a danger that confidence trips over into misplaced arrogance and 'it was better in my day'.   Well for me, it wasn't, it's better now.   By looking forwards there is a sense of wonder, interest and excitement that continues through life, keeping that spark of vitality alive.   

In career terms too I cannot rest whereas some friends are bumbling along without progression or influence in the same company that we were together in twenty years ago.   They'll get into their forties, become expensive, with younger people having more up to date skills and a flexible attitude and then my friends will be let go.   They will never have a career again, just fill in the time, possibly never working at all living on redundancy and then early pensions.   I know lots of men who looking forward to retiring in their fifties but have nothing to do when they do, boring men with no reason to interact with them.   They are dull people who stopped the clock in their style, their interests, their relationships and their careers.

Ivy style is for me a way of marking myself out from these people, from saying 'I have made a conscious distinctive choice and at my age I am still seeking to progress'.    Ivy style is a form of stylistic perfection, a refinement and evolution I came to only a couple of years ago and it has revitalised me.   My wife, colleagues and friends remark on it.   

Not everything is better now rather than in the past, but time doesn't have to mean decline.   

This topic has my dander up, it's been too long.   Welcome back inate Irish anger.   Thanks for the stimulus.    Forwards!

Last edited by MarkCoyle (2012-12-03 03:33:18)

^

Jim,  I do agree.   It's about finding balance perhaps, not chasing things because they are new, but still being open to possibility.   Ivy is a 'stopped clock' for me in that I won't be adopting whatever else comes along in fashion, but within that parameter I'm happy to evolve and mix it up in a way that pleases me.    When I read 'The Ivy Look'  it was a Eureka moment that drew together many threads of my thinking.    Now I buy and give the book away to people I know with the right mindset, take them to John Simons, walk them around London in their new Sebagos.   They think we are some sort of secret sect, a cult or fraternity.  Maybe we are, the scene unseen.

Anything so long as it's not dull unthinking conformity.

Last edited by MarkCoyle (2012-12-03 04:09:17)

Style should be all about personal expression - Finding what's YOU.

Last time I spoke to Jeff Garet he said that the first time he ever saw the Blue/White OCBD Uni Stripe (He used none of those i-Terms, btw, living in the real world as he does) he knew that it was 'For him' and he's worn them ever since.

Enro used to be his favourites as he was, and still is, great great Mates with the London Enro Rep from back in the day.

Ian Strachan talks about the first time he walked into The Squire shop & seing guys hanging around in Shetlands, Buttondowns, Cords & Loafers and considering the place his own personal Mecca.

It's the personal response to it all that counts. Not just the adoption of it for fashion's sake or some kind of punt on inproving your prospects (Chensvold).

I am 47 and semi-retired...

... Only due to a combination of interest, energy and something else... Ennui ?

In no order, I work part time in a famous bookshop, I sell my own range of vintage 'Natural Shoulder' clothing via two high profile London shops, I have a sales and marketing role in a nationally well known and respected publishing house, and I ply my trade as a speciallist 'Natural Shoulder' menswear consultant.

Balls to the old fashioned idea of a 'career' (They will sack you in a heartbeat, you know) - Do what you like & do it well, you'll make money.

My advice to Mr. Chensvold also. Follow your heart & not your poverty. Play the long game.

I think a lot of people end up on the golf course for decades, fraternal societies also alleviate the boredom (Masons, Round Table ...um... sk1nheads).   My dad works part time for free in a charity shop sorting the music and books which suits him down to the ground (he has free pick of anything 18 or adult in content being a Christian charity shop they won't sell it).

I'm reminded of the Auden (?) poem.... 'Stop all the clocks and hold the phone, Jim's gone natural shoulder and goes it alone'