The Sunday Best

There is a simple truth that often gets lost in the shuffle with style media, and it is this - that a person is free to and should dress however he or she chooses. The truth of this statement is enshrined in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

As heavy-handed as it is to invoke this passage in the context of a blog on personal style, I don’t think it’s erroneous to do so. The ability to express oneself through dress is an important and inalienable right, the fact of which is proven by the common practice of dictatorships to refuse it. Similarly, throughout history marginalized groups have turned to clothing to demonstrate their refusal to be unheard. All of us know the power of clothing to include or exclude, to bring together or tear apart, to single out or grant anonymity.

If there was a style manifesto, and please let there never, ever be one, the first article might read like this:

All styles are equal. Any statement otherwise is merely a preference. 

It might seem odd if not downright hypocritical for me to write that, considering quite a bit of thesundaybest.org’s archive is me taking people to task for the way they dress. In fact, I once considered making a “Fugly”-style takedown a weekly feature, until I realized how soul-crushing it is to continuously criticize other people’s outfits. So why the change of heart?

Two Things

The first is a good series in GQ called The Makeover. Every second issue or so GQ finds a poor shlub or two who is Simply Getting It All Wrong. (The October GQ tackles the cast of Jersey Shore.) I’m generally in favour of the advice they dispense, which boils down to “Buy clothes that fit” and “Don’t buy Ed Hardy,” but after the fifth or sixth version I started to experience nice clothes fatigue. While the subjects definitely look better (which will happen when you exchange your clothes for Ralph Lauren Black Label), a terrible sameness was evident in every look. Shirt. Sweater. Slim pants. Leather shoes. Repeat.

This gentleman put it succinctly:

The [slimmer clothes] were all good, but I’m active, so I would probably still go a size bigger.

Put another way - I look good, but I don’t really look like myself.

The second is the rise to prominence of Style Etiquette, Put This On, Impossible Cool, et al. To be clear, the acclaim each site has generated is entirely well-deserved. The young men behind Style Etiquette dress impeccably, demonstrate a genuine love for historical style influences, and take really great photos. Jesse and Adam from Put This On are doing something unique by creating a polished and interesting look at specific aspects of style. And yet, feed yourself on a steady diet of Mad Men, GQ, and these blogs, and it would be easy to think that the world was exclusively one of boat shoes and bespoke suits. 

One oft-cited concept is the idea of a classic style, invoked almost as an ur-style against which all style can be assessed. Practitioners of this ur-style include Steve McQueen, Fred Astaire, Jon Hamm as Don Draper, and pretty much any celebrity from the 50’s or 60’s. Part and parcel with this notion is the cult of origin as documented on A Continuous Lean, which essentially dictates that products are better if manufactured in the country in which they are purchased (or Japan). 

I say all of this firmly aware that I am a walking advertisement for the above. I wear Japanese chambray pocket squares made in New York. I had a suit made for me in Portland from a pattern based on Marcello Mastroianni’s in 8 1/2. This over-saturated feeling I’m getting could easily be alleviated by reading less blogs, less magazines, or a greater variety of both. 

But there’s something of the pedant about style writing that I think does a disservice to the people behind it. It seems to me that style can be presented effectively and entertainingly, without all the hoopla about proper form or “What would Steve do” deferment. It’s to this end that I start the third (fourth?) iteration of this blog, in the manner of JD Salinger’s multiple rewrites. Or F. Scott Fitzgerald - whoever is cooler.