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!”

Flusser Apologetics and JMW Turner Unapologetically

I kinda miss ole Daddy. ‘specially now since I’m a full-fledged orphan. Daddy this time being God, aka Alan Flusser. God you say? Yep. He’s a reluctant owner of the moniker but not too reluctant. I mean really, it makes no difference if you are a nice Jewish boy turned Buddhist from the upper middle class enclaves of the Garden State and then four decades Gotham habitué or like me, a country-ass redneck from the Palmetto State. Everyone loves a bit of adulation.  But my life circumstances have had me missing Alan’s Washington visits and my scant Gotham sorties haven’t offered Flusser Fellowship in over a year.

I started it. I’m the one who first called Alan God. I’ve admired him since way before he ever befriended me and started taking a lot of my money. And I’ve said it a zillion times and I’ll say it again to you knuckleheads who say “Alan Flusser? What happened?” Nothing has happened, dumbasses. Alan’s riding the waves of time just like the rest of us. 

And the “What happened?” question seems always posited on those forums in context to thirty year old publicity/jacket cover photos of Alan. Unless you are splashing on embalming fluid every morning, I’d bet that a thirty year progression of your mug shots would show us a journey not dissimilar. So back off of Daddy.

I’ve aged ten years in eighteen months. Shut up.

I too used to hang on to the idea of Alan Flusser, circa 1984 just like I did with Ralph Lauren, circa 1978. These were my Ed Sullivan moments for both Beatles-esque sartorial acts. The moments when they not only forever installed themselves in my sartorial and aesthetic register, but when they were also both on f_cking fire. Shut up. These were Ralph’s horse blanket Shetland plaid sport jackets (made in the USA by Lanham) moments and Alan's horizontal dress shirted, gut end braces, chalk striped drapy trousered, double breasted days.

But things change—all life is transitory and that includes sartorial epochs. Bruce Springsteen said “every now and then you have to break your own narrative” and National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones said that “if we don’t question our patterns, they become our prisons”. Alan and Ralph have never strayed too far from their core strategies but for the sake of their own engagement, relevance, and perhaps amusement, they mix it up a bit.

Artistic licence (If he’s is anything, he’s an artist) and relaxation would be two characteristics of Alan that I’d use to distinguish the current state of his evolution.  Alan is a grandfather and is long past the need care too much about the opinions of the general public or investors or journalists. So what if most of the world thinks he needs a haircut? I hope he grows it down to his ass and then sells locks of it. I'll buy some and a make a bracelet. Shut up.

Courtesy of Gentleman's Gazette

Look at the sockless daddy...with kick ass Gucci Deal Sleds on. Stronger than wolf nooky. Yep.The one-time arbiter of beltless, Thurston braced drapy trousers and made by Old Man Cleverley himself, buckled or laced shoes, now wears slip ons and flat front belted trousers almost exclusively. His two daughters flipped out when they discovered that he actually bought a pair of jeans. 

And the man is obsessed with comfort. Lora Piana drawstring lounge togs? If they exist, I bet Daddy Fluss has them on right now. Me? I’m in a dirty, terrycloth zebra print robe that I stole from the Hotel Monaco. 

Photo from The Trad

When scores of you suggested that I remove of couple of the dingy-ass cotton bracelets from my left wrist, I added three more. I only thinned out my circular fellowship of bracelets for my mamma’s funeral last week and I hope that Alan only grooms differently for such rare situations. I walked my sister down the marital aisle twice. I don’t think I’ll have to attend a re-do of my mamma’s send off so I’m going to reload my wrist. GTH.

And speaking of “GTH devotees”, I just saw the JMW Turner Late Pictures exhibition at the Tate Britain and was blown away. Every picture in this show was Turner aged sixty-five to his death at seventy-six. Nothing earlier. Radical. Mind bending. And imagine how imposing his pictures were to the aesthetic sensibilities of the Art Establishment of the time. Oh and here's a Turner self portrait as a young man. Probably idealized a bit but still, he was a young shaver when he painted it.

“The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free is the first exhibition devoted to the extraordinary work J.M.W. Turner created between 1835 and his death in 1851. Bringing together spectacular works from the UK and abroad, this exhibition celebrates Turner’s astonishing creative flowering in these later years when he produced many of his finest pictures but was also controversial and unjustly misunderstood”.

Turner even as a young man was always an incredible capturer of water and clouds. Water and air’s movement, energy and emotion are difficult to memorialize in any medium; watercolor, pastel, drypoint, tempera, or oil. And an artist’s attempt to convey it tests greatly their mechanical skill and even more so their talent for finding and then really, really seeing these magical properties.

Whistler had the same talent for seeing and conveying dawn, dusk and midnight. Anyone with basic artistic skill could capture a lush, painterly image of the old Battersea Bridge. But Whistler shrouded it in atmospherics. Twilights and dawn peeks, mists and vapors. He and Turner saw what others didn’t but that’s only one part of the gift. The artist must then transfer it. And this is the moment when talent and skill must congregate. Ralph and Alan. Congregationalists.

The volume of Whistler’s Venice pastels exist mainly because of chilly mornings and early evenings.  When he deemed it too cold to transfer artfully his mind’s eye capture on to an etching plate with a needle, he would bide his time drawing, courtesy of a little box of pastels and light brown cards that he kept in his pocket. 

When his hands warmed up, he’d tuck away his pastel kit and commence etching. I'm just happy that there were days when his hands were cold.

Photo Courtesy of My Damn Self

Folks, to be able to do that is talent and skill combined and Flusser has it out the ass. Still does. His eye remains unrivaled and his skill for conveying it courtesy of colors, textures, and mediums is as Turner-esque as ever. I deemed Flusser “God” long ago after manifold moments of him gently pulling me back from the crag where I’d unwittingly almost fall into the Canyon of Clowndom. Had Alan not steered me to this heathery green cashmere and wool option, surely I'd have ended up with some kind of bright green hootchie cootchie coat.

Photo from Off The Cuff DC

And I'd ape the hell out of Alan. There was a time when I’d simply see what Alan was wearing at the opening of a season or a trunk show and just say, “I’ll have that.” And that was always a good decision. Why try to knock off Turner and Whistler when you can simply have the Master create one for you?

Turner was sixty-five when he threw into overdrive his slaying  of the staid opinions and calcified mores of London’s Art Establishment. And he didn’t let up until he died eleven years later.  They literally thought Turner was demented. Maybe he was and thanks be to the neurosynaptic gods for it. Look at this picture. You almost need to dress for it. Barbour at minimum. Maybe a crash helmet too. 

Turner looked like this when he opened his final can of whoop ass, punching the Establishment right in the nose. Not quite the dashing fella of previous decades but still loaded with juice.

And how could I have rambled on about all this without including my friend and soothsayer of balance and restrained playfulness, the mighty eruditey, G. The Bruce. Boyer.  Bruce’s  afterburners didn’t even feel the need to kick in till he was into his fifth decade of extolling on things sartorial.  I know of no one who has more thoroughly enjoyed…reveled practically, in the digital age of sartorial expression. Like I’ve said before, nobody shit-talks Bruce Boyer.

Flussdaddy remains the go-to man, the unimpeachable control tower for the sartorial takeoffs and landings of stick and rudder Cessna guys like me who think they are the lead solo jet on the sartorial Thunderbirds.

Now get your b_tch ass in the kitchen and make me some pie.

Onward. Going home this week to mamma’s for Thanksgiving.

ADG2. Thankful. 

Attention Deficit Disorder Country Ass Meets the Hovey Sisters

On a lighter than usual note…happy Sunday. I figured that it was time for some randomanalia and irreleventia for a change. You know, some impertinence—like the old days. The infrequency of my stories seems to have resulted in me writing tear jerkers when I do. I promise this one will spare you my sleight of hand, “here, look at these clothes” and then BAM, slam you with some gut wrenching update about my mom or other optical waterworks inducing subplots regarding my self-contrived crucible.

As a matter of fact, I’ve done a one-eighty on my mom just as she’s done on us. She has her wheelchair ramp, courtesy of one of the kindest general contractors in Florence (And of course my financial largesse, which by the way, is getting less lar-jay by the minute) and is now able to re-join the outside world. To that end, I expect her to have a part-time job, at minimum, by this coming Friday. I’m serious. No more of this propped up on a hospital bed in the family room, lounging around doing crossword puzzles, watching the Food Network and otherwise living for the moment that Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy come on. I mean. Come on.

My rental property rehab days are finally over. I attached a towel rack to a bathroom and put two more knobs on cabinet doors this week and I’m done. And when I say that I’m done I mean that I will never attempt this again. Actually I won’t have to do such a dramatic rehab again since the place is now back to rental property—"visualize this as your home, prospective tenant"—neutral. Now I just need a tenant. Please. Hurry.

The joy and fun of moving into a little cottage with great bones that offers a stage for me to reinterpret the ADG foppish man-cave…you know…with all my caricature-toy soldiers-rugs-etchings and  other Attention Deficit Disorder Country Ass Meets the Hovey Sisters nuances…has really yet to manifest.

Don’t get me wrong. There have been flurries. But my time and energy have been mostly focused on sorting out the Old Town place. So it’s hard to return from the drywall re-do, nine coats of primer to hide someone’s crazy-ass idea about making a bedroom look like Ralph Lauren’s walk-in damn closet—and then—with prematurely arthritic elbow joints from all of the repetitive (everything one must do to mitigate the half-assness of previous home design accomplishments goat rodeos involves repetitive—motion) motion, giddily ideate how to do the same damn thing in your new/old digs that you are killing yourself to vanquish elsewhere. Crazy. I did manage to devote a wall to my images of Jimmy Whistler.

And the Marlborough Club caricatures, courtesy of Bertie hiring Carlo Pellegrini to draw them, are in the hall.

And Walter Greaves' pastel of Whistler on the Battersea Bridge, along with James Pryde's image of his brother-in-law, William Nicholson ride shotgun above Ernest Haskell's Whistler.

I’m confident that as things settle down over the next month or so, I’ll be able to enjoy my new place.  And I’ll have the unhurried and less burdened time to tweak things here and there and hang another whatever—and God knows—I’ve got an overabundance of whatevers—on the rapidly diminishing wall space. I’m also shedding another round of accumulata. Honestly, I was a bit shocked to see in one place, the aggregate of stuff that I’d piled up and into my office in Old Town, my CasaMinimus and a storage unit that I’ve had around the corner for years. How can one person amass so much sh_t?

 I’m not a hoarder…but only due to one significant characteristic. Hoarders literally cannot let go of anything. You’ve seen that pitiful show on television. When gently prompted to relinquish seven of their nine-thousand, sticky with residual fountain syrup, wax-paper drink cups from Dairy Queen; those people amp-up and go berserk. Or they deflate and sulk and cry. 

Or they launch into a machine-like manifesto, explaining why they have to think about it for a month or so before they finally decide. Butcept that’s the only thing that keeps me from being lumped right in there with ‘em. I’m happily thinning out my cache of tasty accretions and a few of you readers are already recipients of some of it. And there’s a lot more to come. And go. Shut up.

The exception to not having the physical and emotional fuel to daub paint and transform this new place is our work on LFG’s bedroom. Instead of water-thin Glidden ceiling paint at nineteen dollars a gallon, my baby deserved Benjamin Moore. They should call that stuff Benjamin More. Damn. 

So LFG picked a faintly blue-ish white to transform the putty like hue of her bedroom into what’s gonna be a really nice nest for her when we finish. Better paint is worth the money. The stuff went on like butter. Thirty one dollars per gallon More than Glidden.

And as I ponder LFG’s wall color choice and newly selected color and pattern of her pillow cases and duvet cover, I see a young lady. I see someone who in three years has transformed from the little girl who giddily helped me slop vivid paint colors on her bedroom walls as we made her bedroom look like the sequelae from Dr. Seuss and Barney having a wrestling match with the Grateful Dead—to a young lady with decided ideas about how to create a minimalist, uncomplicated palette in her new bedroom. Whose child is this?

Here’s her Old Town bedroom in case you’ve forgotten what a mosh pit of color caca we created over there. Lordy.

Ok so let’s go random for a bit. First up…a Belgians lesson. Do not go over to your rental property with Belgians on and decide to touch up a few things.

Here we have my blue Belgians…still amidst the pre-rubber sole break-in period…now adorned with Valspar High Gloss White…paint. I’m thinking about launching a Jackson Pollock inspired Belgians collaboration. Butcept one of the greatest things about the Belgian Shoe sovereigns is that they don’t give a damn about branding and collaboration and all of the other dressed by the Internet hipster irony that’s part of the edgy sartorial oeuvre. Bottom line is that you shouldn’t paint cabinets when wearing your Belgians.

And it’s not like I don’t have designated shoddings for such endeavors. Just didn’t have them with me at the time.

Let’s go from shoddings to socks. By the way, and this is Florence County South Carolina talking, if the socks cost more than ten dollars a pair, they’re hose. Yep. It’s a prissy word no doubt. But you just can’t call something that costs more than what an ounce of dope cost in 1974…socks. Not my rule—and God knows I’m not bashful about admonishments and rules—but I’m abiding by it. Oh, and for the record, seriously, I have no idea what an ounce of dope costs today. "V.K. Nagrani" ... sounds like a combination Campari-esque drink and a personal lubricant. "Baby, take a sip of THIS!" Shut up.

The lovely diamond spritzed leg sheathings preened above are from Coffman’s in Greenville, North Carolina. One of the highlights of the last year has been discovering this little sartorial oasis that’s about forty minutes off the beaten track of my I-95 to mama’s house sojourn.

Chief Hog Farmer F. Todd Howell sent me a gaggle of socks to say yes-no to. FTH, knowing full well that I lack the willpower to say no to all of them, assured himself some level of register ringing ROI for his effort. After all, there's baby formula to buy. "Baby, take a sip of THAT!" So I kept three and sent three back.

And finally, a quick up and back last Monday to Gotham saw me lunching with a sartorial legend and our stunning mutual friend…a woman to whom I proposed marriage after one glass of wine. A daytime record for me. And no, my sartorial legend lunch mate wasn’t George Frazier. As my friend ADF said regarding the housekeeper’s response shouted above the vacuum cleaner whir, to her inquiry regarding where the family dog was when Sparky failed to meet her at the door… “He dead!”  Surely I’d a given a pretty penny to've had lunch with Frazier at Locke-Ober's…replete with his standing order of Finnan Haddie and a Bloody Mary—with a dash of celery salt. R.I.P. Frazier, Locke-Ober's and Sparky.

No. I popped the Frazier photo in here because of his Russell Plaid suit. I’m on the record for having an insatiable curiosity about Russell Plaid for quite some time now. But it’s a tricky medium and even though I didn’t know exactly what I wanted. I knew for certain what I didn’t. And most of what I’ve seen on the rack, I didn’t.

I’ll leave the rest of the Russell story for later when the finished work rolls in. For now though, trust me when I tell you that this one’s gonna be a doozy.

A doozy. Yep, it’s worth using that descriptor one more time as my blessed life has been one for most of 2013. The warm weather stunner above was supposed to be my Spring-Summer 2013 go-to fun jacket. And I began the bespokeydoke process with Rykken et al on this one way back in November 2012. But then my world blew up and it was last Monday that I finally got ‘round to the next to the last fitting. The thing’s been sitting in Paul Stuart for almost a year. Good news is that I’ll be busting warm-weather 2014 wide open in it. Maybe.

Ok, that’s it. Time to prep for Toronto. Leaving on Monday to help the Canadians figure out how to get long acting anti-schizophrenia medicines bumped up to preferred reimbursement status by the Provincial health plans. And you thought all I knowed about was…. Whatever.

Onward.

ADG II