I'm a bit embarrassed to reply. I know Harris like you know anyone on the net. I think he is bright and knows more than i do about clothes. I grew up in the northeast and basically dress the way I did as a teenager except that I wear more suits. I know the way people dressed in Connecticut in the early 60s to the 1980s. J. Press was just the local clothing store. Like Richard Thomas, a local store that carried Burberry in the 1970s, way before the fashion.  Barries was the local shoe store I went to when I was in highschool. Only did a year of prep. was very discouraged when I realized there were no girls there (this was a long time ago).
    I am a rude loud mouth, well, I'm a lawyer. I am not an authority on any of this but I have always had an interest in clothes. I spent a semester in london when I was in college and visited the other 2 of the big three European capitals. I noticed the styles. I really, really noticed the way I was treated when I wore a Rosenberg suit when I was in paris.
    It isn't right but people do make snap judgments based on your appearance. They just do. So it is probably worth it to make an effort. And the effort I make is based on the way I learned how to dress. my father was a product of the Great Depression. Clothes aren't fashionable. They have to last just like cars, just like everything. Age is a virtue. It is a measure of quality. Things that last are good. Fashion is a waste of money. I still wear my father's beautiful, thick cashmere, hand tailored on a canvas, made in USA overcoat. 45 years old, I guess we got our money out of the price of maybe $200 dollars in the early 60s.
    I have been banned on AAAC for several years. I have no idea what is going on there. Skippy, Skip, Harris in my opinion is a fine person, very knowledgable about the subjects of clothes and theology. Not perfect, but quite possibly more perfect than I.
     I am not an expert on any of these issues. I have just been around a while and know some history.
      I make no claim whatsoever about the word "Trad". Anyone who thinks I have anything to do with the phrase is wrong. I think it has been around a while and I don't think any of these internet claims of origin are accurate. When I was very young the phrase was "Collegiate". If I spelled that right.

Last edited by tom222222 (2008-01-15 21:12:49)

I sort of regret what i have done. I really don't know that much. I like this place because Mark, FNB, Horace all know much more than I do. I don't know what is happening on AAAC.
      When I was young I wore corduroy pants, I wore shetland sweaters, I bought button down shirts from Gant or Sero. The Yale Coop sold McGeorge shetlands. what else were you supposed to buy? Barries sold, I now realize, a good imitation of a Gucci loafer. very comfortable. I graduated to English shoes when I went to law school and for some reason bought the English tied shoes they sold at Barries and at the discount Church's store in Westport where I had my first mediocre paying job. Well back in the early 80s the store was in Darien.
    I knew nothing about Nanny Reds. Embroidered cords are a development of my dotage. In my teens and twenties I bought suits at Rosenbergs or the Yale Co Op or Austin Reed at some department store in New Haven. I began to appreciate fine clothes just looking at the shop windows and buying a little when I lived in London circa 1976. I have since learned that this is not the way everyone grew up. But please, I don't know all that much about clothes. At this point I think I should have posted a lot less.

Last edited by tom222222 (2008-01-15 19:51:33)

and I read some of the stuff on this site and I will say I have tried to keep one id and one identity where ever I post. Tom followed by some 2s will always be me. I hope. the switching of names that seems inherent to the internet is very strange and very disturbing. In many ways the internet is the world of the very weird and the somewhat scary.

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... and the lesson we learn is here that all of this stuff is relative...
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Last edited by Coolidge (2008-01-16 19:20:53)

Harris is from Virginia. I'm not sure what southern schools he went to but he went somewhere down there. I don't think I know his prep school but believe me he went somewhere. I think, and maybe I'm guessing he was in banking and finance at some point and then went to Divinity School at Princeton. i would be surprised to learn that he did not attend the Episcopal Church but I could be wrong. After Divinity School I don't think he entered the ministry. The last I heard he was working in New York and living in the New york suburbs. Of course I could be wrong about all of this. I have never met him.
     In large part the recent history of the country is the story of large institutions buying up all the local shops. Banking, newspapers, utilities and clothes were certainly all victims. There are still small haberdasheries in the New Haven area. It can't be easy competing these days. I have to think about the names. i don't want to leave one out....to be continued.

Last edited by tom222222 (2008-01-17 16:41:11)

Yeah, I think we all know how that story goes...

I was mainly interested in how a pre-AAAT Classic American Dresser (Tom!) viewed AAAT Trad here.

I think I know how Trip, Horace, Chris_H, Big Jim, Paddy, et al see the forum, but I would be very interested in what chaps like Tom, Mr. Meyer, Mr. Stylestudent, Mr Pollock, etc.,  thought.

We can all see that AAAT Trad has grown out of Classic American style, but pinning down the ways in which it differs from its parent style and trying to work out why it differs from its parent style in those respects fascinates me.

Why in 2004-2008 has this style mutated on the internet into its current form? Why the 'rule book' approach?

Why is dressing by numbers a hit in this day & age?

^ It'll never happen, but I'd love Harris to revisit that post & try to make sense of it.. 

No "Trad" in the South 'till Ben Silver?

And even then no "Southern Trad" in its own right, just a Yankee import?

How could he be so adamant on what "Trad" is back then and then say something so different ever since?
- For the Rainbow Trad he was 'schooled' in seems no longer to be proper Trad to him now.
- And what about the poor Squire? Can he be Trad when Trad isn't Southern?

I don't know...

Which is the biggest fake - Harris the Yankee or Harris the Southerner?



Confused...



Help?