So, chet, how on earth do you guys remotely organize your lives if you're constantly dodging stuff taken up by the wrong sorts?  If we came up with a list of all of the things mentioned on this forum as having gone to the dogs, I suspect there'd be nothing left to buy in Britain.

Moved this over from the Ralph Thread.

There's a need to worry, too, Alex, to be perfectly candid.

Do you mean niggling over small styling details?  Very mod, that.  Some of the original faces are said to have taken it to the extremes, adding to clothes snobbishness (and caring and worrying) snobbishness about, say, brands of watch, electric shaver, cigarette lighter etc. 
The views of our European friends are important here: it's a matter of history.  UK Ivy - or 'modernism' - must surely have grown from wartime/post-war roots - meaning rationing, deprivation, a stifling social and political system (knowing your place etc.)  The United States - closely followed by Italy and France - were seen as having what we didn't have: decent shoes and suits, scooters, coffee, Pepsi Cola, Bardot, orange juice, whatever you like.  What I'm calling snobbishness grew out of that, for working class people who called themselves mods, stylists, whatever.  It's English history - London history - and it doesn't matter what the Americans say, UK Ivy is not democratic or egalitarian, and anyone who thinks it is kidding only themselves.

Well, we don't worry about what outsiders think (I don't think): we tend to be indifferent.  Maybe 'worrying' is the wrong way of putting it, Alex.  I'll walk with confidence anywhere because I've got my hair cut just so, my Brooks Brothers shirt is crisp and clean (let's put 'rumpled' on one side just for the moment), and my wingtips are hefty.  Everyone else is standing round in their dodgy, un-coordinated, Chinese-made, man-made tat.  You don't even acknowledge them.  'Colding up' - in public.  Then you let go a bit, enough to be affable to old ladies.

The overall point is, outsiders don't understand.  My wife is an outsider in this respect. 

Mark Kingstonian.  He sees someone from the window of a bus, notes he's wearing the right clobber, so it sticks in his mind and he comments on it.  Because it's unusual.  What you might see, more often, is the outsider - the 'third rate ticket' - taking something without knowing its worth or history and wearing it with some nebbish crap from Asda.  It's got to be 'full on' - calm, but 'full on'.  My Dad wears it that way: crew neck jumper or polo shirt, Levis, boat shoes.  It shouldn't be bells and whistles.  In fact, I'm amazed at the amount of gear some of the bods on here seem to own: like butterfly-collecting.  I own two or three good cashmere sweaters, a bit more wool.  I acquire a bit, get rid of a bit: give it away, sell it on, whatever.  Staceyboy does a bit of that, too.  I can't keep too much - haven't got room for it. 
Simplicity should be the aim, but simplicity with style.  Yeah, I favour certain names:  Paul Stuart, Alan Paine.  I know they're expensive - or can be - but I almost certainly wouldn't wear, say, Missoni and never Gucci or Prada.  I'm aiming for Gibson Gardens' balance all the while, and a certain amount of snobbishness becomes, I think, inevitable.  Don't tell me someone walks into John Simons, spends three or four hundred nicker on a seersucker suit and comes away feeling all democratic.  I don't believe it.  Marc Feld was a little mod snob with knobs on!

Last edited by Alex Roest (2009-04-25 03:02:31)

^ Rythm & Blues, i like you but are you a troll?

that istrue, but what 'the people' dont see is the other details

Not really but carry on 

Hence the indifference, Chris.  A waste of breath explaining to the uninitiated.  They couldn't care two raps anyway.