Bruce Boyer and True Style: The History and Principles of Classic Menswear

I love picture books. But I think I love words even more than pictures and God knows I’m a visual guy. My sartorial sensei’s volumes have always thrilled me and to this day I’ll pull one of them off the shelf—any one of them—and grab a bolus dose of Flusstaciousness. The fare’s quite rich and I never tire of the visual treats. And let me not give Alan short shrift. Daddy Flusser is pretty damned skilled with the written word too. 

Oh, and shut up in advance about me heading a story about Boyer's new book with a photo of Alan's classic. Either read-on or get off of my blog. 

I said long ago that I thought Bruce Boyer’s book, Elegance might have been slightly thwarted by the sartorial picture books that appeared at about the same time. And it’s a damn shame. Let’s admit it; photos are the MSG (Monosodium glutamate for you South Carolinians. Oh hell, that didn’t clarify anything for the Sandlappers. Let me go at it another way. It’s the secret ingredient that makes all of the slop on the country buffet trough taste like something, last longer and look prettier. It's an enhancer and intensifier. Kind of a bullhorn for your country-ass taste buds.)  of sensory processing and we’ve been on an ever faster slide towards less reading and more pictures. Do you people read? I wonder because if you are reading my scrivening, you’re only a half-step away from the country buffet. Shut up.

Used without permission but with thanks from Daddy Flusser's site.

I’ll pull Elegance off the shelf from time to time for a different reason than when I feel the need to scratch my Flusser itch. There are some writers whose grocery lists would be on my to-read roster simply because of the way they write. Hitchens was one and Bruce Boyer is another. So Boyer’s a winning combination for me: Stories sartorial, but also nicely strung together. I swear I wish that I could write with the flourish of Flusser and the stylish discipline of Boyer. Here’s what I’m talking about. From page 101 in Boyer's Elegance, on the subject of double-breasted suits. "...this all sounds very Sherlock Holmes, but nonetheless and to move quickly to the denouement of this classic tale of crime and detection, when the police finally tracked down and captured George Metesky, we was indeed wearing a double breasted suit."  Most of the young I-Gents, who by the way, love Bruce and Bruce them, would throw in the towel upon getting all tangled up in the word denouement. Not me. Hell, I even save all of G. The Bruce's emails because even his most casually dashed-off missives sing.

One of the highlights of the past four years has been my growing acquaintance with Mister Boyer. 

Mathew Bruccoli in his forward to Charles Fountain’s biography of George Frazier wrote that there were "various Georges, depending on the company and setting". Well I’ve only discovered one Bruce so far. He’s authentic and consistent as hell. Whether he’s speaking about Miles Davis from the F.I.T. podium, at a book signing amidst admirers, debating and dickering one-on-one with tailors and shoe makers about crucial details, or sitting with you at lunch; he’s the same guy.

Used without permission but with thanks from Lehigh Valley Style 

Boyer offers no pretense, no bluster, and zero swagger. He doesn’t need any of those protective wrappers that the less confident are prone to rely upon.  The man knows who he is. Come to think of it, the concept of swagger seems vulgar when correlated with Bruce. But don’t get me wrong. The man is no pushover and like I’ve said before; nobody shit talks Bruce Boyer.

Thanks, Rose.

Here’s a resolute Boyer from a 2011 Wall Street Journal interview…“It is both delusional and stupid to think that clothes don't really matter and we should all wear whatever we want. Most people don't take clothing seriously enough, but whether we should or not, clothes do talk to us and we make decisions based on people's appearances”. There's probably no better tribute to Boyer than what Dr. Andre Churchwell would offer about the man. Andre, one of the best dressed mammals in the universe will essentially tell you that the greatest sartorial lessons he ever learned and the best bespoke clothing guidance he got came from GeeBruce. 

And he’s the same fella back home in Bethlehem as he is in Gotham City. I met Bruce at the Hotel Bethlehem for lunch back in the winter and his “I’m in my office at home writing so don’t expect a dressed to the nines lunch mate” sartorial ensemble intrigued me. He’s one of those guys who could get dressed in the dark and still nail the hell out of it. Boyer was sitting there in a cardigan sweater over one of his ever present neat-check tattersall shirts. Just so.

But it was the day's sneak peek of his ascot that got me. I wish I'd taken a picture of it. I say peek "of" instead of "at" for a reason. And it wasn’t really an ascot per se as much as it was a well-worn scarf, knotted loosely and set in a way that just the right amount of it showed. And what really got me was the most harmonious color play between the cardigan, the mini-tattersall, and the scarf. There was evidence of these things having been paid attention to during assemblage but not too much. That’s Boyer.

Used without permission but with thanks from Lehigh Valley Style 

You’ll also get the same Boyer should he invite you into his home. His digs are as well appointed as his clothes...well, but not over-done. And since he’s not one to brag  I’ll do it for him. Bruce’s wife is a stunner inside and out. She’s just as genuine as the Mister and to say that Bruce married way above his pay grade is an understatement. Sorry, Bruce but it’s true.

There’s lots of middling schmatta stuff to read on the internet but when was the last time you read really well written sartorial prose?  I’m happy that Bruce is offering us an oasis of tailored writing amidst all the run-on over-egged drivel like the sh_t you’re reading right now. True Style: The History and Principles of Classic Menswear is ready and waiting for you at amazon.com or wherever else you pick up your books. And like all the rest of my Boyer books, I’m looking forward to having the true north, the voice of reason and well cadenced sartorial sensibility sign my copy in a week or two.

And finally, this from G. The Bruce…

From The Sartorialist

“My dress is so conservative compared to some. You look at some of the guys in there, they are ready for Mardi Gras.” When Bruce said this during an interview for Lehigh Valley Style, I know he was talking about the book I am Dandy but he was probably also taking a shot at me.

Onward. To Boston this week for a rare these days billable.

ADG-2, Mister Mardi Gras. “Throw me sumpin Mistah!”

Just Write--Something

“Just write. Something”. Ok, I’m writing. About what I don’t know.

The above request/admonishment was posited by the one of those few readers who for some silly-ass reason seem to think that they’re missing something due to my hack-scrivener’s sabbatical.

Truth though is that I miss telling stories. And I thought that channeling my writing energies into more industry articles and white papers  for my consulting business would yield more…business. Come on. If at my peak, I could get between one and two thousand knuckleheads every day to read my “oh look at my cute daughter and these crazy ass pants I had Flusser make and oh-my-damn-goodness how they just make these papier-mâché Belgian loafers pop”—then surely I could become more of a thought leading presence in my professional space, right?

And of course there were those once per month maudlin ditties about my mama who won’t die or my daddy who left me nursing an intractable, open wound in my heart. Oh, and the divorced man uber-father “your daughter is so lucky to have a dad like you” cries. If I didn’t make somebody’s ass cry at least once per month I felt like I wasn’t hacking properly. Can one cry out of their ass? Shut up.

I can now say that after these many months not blogging, the opposite has occurred. We are amidst, albeit still a blessed one, a very slow business year after five back-to-back bell ringers. Causation-correlation? Hell, I don’t know but it seems like a good enough excuse to write maybe a story per week. We’ll see.

Oh, and the tumblr thing hasn’t helped at all. It’s the monosodium glutamate of digital media. It’s a truncated no-brainer for me and it poaches visual cues and ideas that pre-tumblr would have become a blog story.  Should I shut it down?

Is my Mojo limping back? My Groove sputtering towards a restart? I’d like to consider myself one who never really needed a groove or mojo to churn out sausage-like, the volume of caca that I did before. But I can unequivocally say that I’m about as mojo-less at present than I have been in ages. Am I trying in some kinda half-ass way to believe that if I start the time sucking five hours per week writing blog stories, my overall mojo will improve? I’m having a harder time rationalizing this than I do when justifying the dosh to pop for a pair of bespoke Cleverley’s.  

Less was never more for me—you know that. My A.D.D. gift—and it truly is a gift—always precluded any level of editorial discipline when my blog posits were strung together. That’s why you’d get one story that involved shoes, Robert E. Lee, Dover Sole, LFG’s squawking clarinet concert, the banishment of madras and GI Joe. And you’d tell me that the twisty-turny-ness of it was great. Wonder if they’d be better or worse if I stopped taking my meds?

So what will I write about? Maybe the fact that after one year of living in in my Bethesda Cottage Minimus, my move feels kinda like LFG and I planned thoroughly and collaborated precisely on a party and nobody came.

Or perhaps I’ll bemoan any kind of change or progress, even though as a consultant and teacher, I get paid to deal in, facilitate-incite-offer glimpses of its inevitability. 

And maybe I’ll lament the transitory nature of life and I’ll use LFG’s started two weeks ago, freshman year of high school—I still can’t believe it—as my latest pain point. 

Three more years and she'll be packing her bags for college. Damn. She was just learning to write her name in cursive when I first shared her with you. 

And there’s always shoes. And lately its been kilim slippers...that are becoming mainstream faster than Belgians did. And this ain't a good trend. 

Can't forget Shell Cordovan. There's always something to say about horse hide.

Or Bernese Pooches.

I'm over the top in love with this breed and I will have one. 

Maybe a ditty about beards.

And why I can't seem to let mine grow beyond 3.5 weeks.

Or the first eye exam I had in six years--couldn't pass the highway department eye test--and the fact that progressive lenses are the best invention since central damn air-conditioning. Oh, and contact lens--the newest lens material/technology is great. 

And the kick-ass resurrection of Bookster and their new and improved fishtail trousers--a waistband affectation that if everybody else starts wearing, I'll ban in a heartbeat. Shut the ....

Or the admirable, Dorothy Parker doppelganger-esque wife of Todd Hog Howell--the gal who in my own home, during her first visit, flicked a booger on me. Oh, and she nicknamed me "D-Bag" within twelve hours of plopping down her girl supplies in the bathroom. Damn. 

Oversized houndstooth? I can. You can't. Nobody should. Shut up.

And art...with the never boring back story, sleuthing, learning, correlating missions that sometimes even the most twee and insignificant sketch offers me.

Or the fact that I'm not a hoarder but I can't throw anything remotely sentimental away.

Nothing. 

And books...and the fact that this book-per-week-at-least (with meds) can no longer finish a book. 

And my mama—at least for a while longer.

So let’s see what the next few weeks hold. But should I dump my tumblr?

Onward. ADG-2

(Thank God there’s not a 3^rd one)

Tadich Ethic—Part One

As the DC area decides this morning whether or not to delay or cancel the various events and happenings that will impact my LFG chauffeuring duties today, I’ve found a moment to finish a story—one that I began almost one year ago. While I’m pleased to pick up the ball on this blog story, I hope that things won’t be delayed or cancelled today. I’d really like to see my child.

I began a story last year about my very last minute speaking engagement in San Francisco and for some reason, it just fell aside. As I now gather enough fodder to reflect on last week’s slightly less impromptu but still last minute San Francisco reprieve, it’s easy to dovetail the year-old draft story herein. The year-old stuff and the Tadich Ethic meaning will appear tomorrow.

I think it was Longwing who commented or asked over at my tumblr about how could/would  I be at the Mirage in Las Vegas the first of last week…then San Francisco mid-week and back at the Las Vegas MGM last Friday. Well here’s the deal. I did a session last Tuesday at the Mirage. Another business unit within the same company asked me to do a session to close out their week-long meeting on Friday. The client company is so large that they essentially filled three different hotels in Las Vegas. It made no sense to return home Tuesday evening and return to Las Vegas on Thursday for my Friday MGM gig.

My Las Vegas loathing is well documented. There exists no place on earth I’ve experienced thus far that elicits in me the same level of revulsion. Las Vegas renders me repulsed to the point of physical and psychological discombobulation. Wayne Newton rather sums it up for me. And I rolled in there Monday before last amidst a wobbly recovery from a 36 hour tummy bug to boot. I decided that there was no way I could survive the Wednesday and Thursday downtime between talks by just hanging out in Las Vegas and I was in no mood to rent a car and do some kinda Hoover damn Dam sortie or similar. 

So I contacted clients in Los Angeles and the Bay Area and decided I’d decamp to one or the other, based on what client; first come-first served, responded. I’d simply create a business but mostly recreational reason to be in another city. And I was delighted that the first ping-back originated in Baghdad by the Bay. Feeling mildly knocked around after my full-on session in Las Vegas, I was still more than ready to knock around San Francisco.

And the Fairmont atop Nob Hill along with The Mark offered me rooms at a buck-fifty a night. So the Fairmont it would be. I don’t think I can describe the efficacy…the cleansing salve of San Francisco’s crisp-blue skied winter air as I walked out front of the Fairmont on Wednesday morning. My two days in San Francisco were bliss. Cable cars may be touristy but I rode ‘em with glee.

And I liked standing at the corner of  California street on Wednesday evening after dinner at the University Club…when things were quieter…and you could hear the hiss of the cables running just under the street's surface.

The sartorial rounds were brief. There isn’t much to see in San Francisco clothing wise, that a clotheshorse like me hasn’t or doesn’t see in other cities. I will make it a point to get over to Union Made the next time I’m there. Tasty, eclectic, high quality goods for a younger crowd perhaps. But their website alone is enticing enough for me to wanna have a look-see in situ. Alas, I did go to Cable Car Clothiers' new, smaller digs. Let me just say that unless there’s a dramatic reimagining of what CCC was…is…aspires to be—they won’t be—for much longer.

Certainly my bucket hat and wool challis bowtie purchase won’t keep ‘em afloat.

I held no hope that these framed Vanity Fair prints of Bret Harte and Rider Haggard, along with their personal letters, would remain available at Brick Row Booksellers in that building on Geary Street where art dealers and rare booksellers have long since been ensconced. I’m generally not so lucky but alas they were there and I decided to not pass on them again. Rare book dealers and antiquarian print purveyors are a quirky lot. And trust me—I know quirk when I’m amidst it…having learned to embrace my own idiosyncrasies. Or as one of my dinner mates from the University Club on Wednesday evening declared regarding the proclivities of his high end, persnickety clientele… “I’ve made peace with crazy.” Now don’t get me wrong. None of the dealers in the 49 Geary Street building are crazy—just a bit—and delightfully so—quirky. And quirky played to my favor in that for some juju-esque reason, both of the framed images cost me less than what one of them was quoted to me a year ago. And God knows I need some framed caricatures.

With a bit of unexpected extra time on Thursday I ventured over to North Beach and traipsed the mild underbelly of a part of San Francisco that gives me more reason to love the entire city. Unlike the frenetically loud, neonelectrified smarm of Las Vegas, San Francisco’s smarm is patinated. I just wish that I’d a been there when the El Matador was still serving hooch and jazz and hosting the smart set from all over the world when they rolled in to San Francisco. The thirty something year old Barnaby Conrad was told to “do something with the money” that came pouring in after his novel Matador took off…so “I opened a bar.” 

And boy did he “open a bar”. The El Matador hosted not only the smart set but also some pretty good jazz musicians during its heyday. It seems that North Beach was a jazz destination “…in 1963 the jazz scene moved on. North Beach, with its reputation as a louche entertainment enclave, emerged as the San Francisco jazz epicenter and reigned as such in the fifties, sixties and even into the seventies…”

Here with Conrad at the El Matador is Tyrone Power who starred in Blood and Sand…as a Matador. And I suppose that Power’s role in The Sun Also Rises gave these two imbibers a bit more conversational fodder.

Caen and Conrad. Good clean fun fronting the El Matador.

I tracked down the old El Matador location. It’s vacant and man-oh-man if the walls therein could talk. Wanna re-open it or something similar? “Maxminimus” Yep. That’s what we’ll call it. And I’ll open it—from the proceeds of my first novel.

Look at the abandoned El Matador and ponder what once rounded that corner… “Part saloon, part salon, Barnaby Conrad's El Matador was nestled in the heart of San Francisco's cabaret and nightlife district. There, within the space of a few blocks of North Beach's Barbary Coast, one could catch Johnny Mathis singing at Ann's 440 Club, cross the street to the Swiss American Hotel where Lenny Bruce once thought he was a bird and attempted to fly out of a second-story window, and walk a couple of blocks to the Hungry i to check out newcomers like Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Barbra Streisand, and the Smothers Brothers. Still, despite the accumulation of dozens of bars, restaurants, and night spots, the area lacked "a truly chic and comfortable (club), a place where attractive and interesting people could congregate over a martini". Conrad's El Matador stylishly filled the void. On any given night, one might find Noel Coward, Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, or Tyrone Power in the club, or hear Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Eva Gabor, George Shearing, or Andre Previn take over the piano.” 

What will be longed for in another fifty years? Large Escalades pulling up in front of some loud-ass club…Cristal drenched bling-blingers and an upskirt shot courtesy of an iPhone? Where are the El Matadors today?

Barnaby Conrad Jr. has lived one hell of a life and I’m gonna delve into it a bit more when his two memoirs arrive.

Here’s a little glimpse… “At nineteen Barnaby Conrad vaulted into a Mexican arena and waved his Brooks Brothers raincoat at an enraged bull. At twenty-one he escalated from code clerk to vice-consul in twenty-four hours and was sent to Spain where he became El Nino de California (The California Kid) of the bull fights. At twenty-five he was selling books on the subject.”

  And of course there’s Carol Doda and the Condor amidst City Lights book store and the Beats. I’ve yet to stand at the corner of Haight and Ashbury and haven’t made erudite my Hippie studies but is there truth that the Beats felt like their call to action was more worthy than the Hippies?

And was Doda’s topless-bottomlessness plaque worthy?

I can tell you unequivocally that my plein air solo dining before heading to the airport and back to the Las Vegas smarm was plaque worthy. Stay tuned for round two of my San Francisco sortie.

Onward. Having just learned that all is open for business in DC…now I’m gonna go fetch my young’un.

ADG II