The Change of Taste
Custom tailors and clothiers are famously wary of Fashion. We generally offer (or at least market) the more
mature, manly virtue of Style, usually based on notions of “classic” or “timeless” taste and proportion that transcend trends. For the rest of the world, however, clothing and fashion are so closely connected that they’re virtually synonymous, a happy roiling riot of whim and consumption. Even as we watch the show from the ancient ramparts of tailored menswear, we do well to remember that our fortress is itself built on shifting sands.
What drives fashion trends? “Novelty,” while absolutely true in and of itself, is probably too dismissive of the forces at play. With menswear in particular, hubris probably plays a big role: the need to appropriate and redefine what came before, to make it one’s own, to correct the excesses of past trends and (at last!) arrive at proportions of eternal, enduring, permanent style. What deliberate dresser from Beau Brummel to the Prince(s) of Wales to today’s Instagram “influencers” hasn’t thought that his own personal style strikes that long-elusive balance between tradition and modernity, between propriety and panache?
The beau ideal is of course a moving target: the cultural definition of masculine virtue changes with the times. The slender lines of young men’s suits in the 1910s and 20s rejected the look of portly prosperity embodied by their beefsteak-eating Victorian fathers. The swelled chests of the 1930s drape cut put the illusion of meat on the bones of young men whose slight frames reflected the privations of war and economic depression. The cartoonish proportions of the Bold Look made every post-WWII American a linebacker, standing astride the globe like the confident colossus his nation had become. The Space Age brought a slim, scientific precision to men’s clothes that was itself soon rejected along with the rest of the Establishment for individualistic, hedonistic swagger in the 70s.
The 80s, interestingly, marked more than just a shift from buckskin to braces; it was also the first time that a dominant mainstream men’s style was so heavily mined from the past. What had begun in the previous decade with niche “retro” looks inspired by Hollywood period blockbusters (e.g. The Godfather in 1972, The Sting in 1973, The Great Gatsby in 1974) exploded into an 80s style scene largely defined by the gauzy nostalgia of Ralph Lauren and Alan Flusser’s Apparel Arts-inspired Gordon Gekko. Even Giorgio Armani — probably the most influential menswear innovator of the decade — drew his original inspiration from the broad and baggy 1940s. If Armani’s sportcoat-with-a-T-shirt-and-Vans Miami Vice look was truly new and has continued to resonate today, the greater menswear legacy of the 80s seems to be largely retrospective; having changed so much so quickly, it was a time of retrenchment and reappropriation.
Not surprisingly, the next identifiable trend had to (again) be forward looking. Skinny suits started hitting streets around the turn of the millenium; sleek, chic, and usually black, they made their wearers avatars of urban modernity. For such a relatively extreme cut (not only slim, but eventually quite short), it has proven remarkably resilient, remaining not only an aspirational offering from high-end designers like Thom Browne, but a staple of mass retailers like Suit Supply. I suspect that the key to its popularity and longevity is its promise of Youth. It was not always thus with men’s fashions. From 18th century wigs to 19th century paunches to 20th century drape, men have long tuned their style to project maturity, prosperity, and power rather than the raw vitality of youth. Indeed, until the 70s, the advertisement of male sexuality through clothes was generally considered unseemly: a “prominent seat,” after all, was traditionally a problem for tailors to correct, not an instruction for them to create. For better and for worse, however, in today’s youth-obsessed culture, a toned and healthy physique is increasingly desired by men as much as women, and they’re seeking clothes which display their efforts.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with such clothes, of course — except that not everyone who buys them has made the effort. A skinny suit does not a skinny man make, and by insisting that their clothes cling to their every less-than-sculpted curve, many men are making an enemy of a natural ally. The tailor’s art, after all, has long been to artfully conceal, to subtly compensate, to improve upon nature. Fortunately, in the past decade or so, the tailor’s art itself has become a primary focus of attention in the menswear world, and perhaps the key to its future.
The online explosion of interest and information about the history and execution of classic tailored menswear, despite seeming at first backwards-looking, is quintessentially of the artisanally-obsessed, information-driven moment. The internet has not only enabled unprecedented access to menswear’s storied past, but to its past masters, who’ve cast aside their traditional reserve for a decidedly 21st century sartorial glasnost. Even more significantly, the internet has fostered the growth of a community of menswear aficionados, who, while occasionally underinformed, are also driving new standards of excellence in tailoring.
These new standards were of course destined to become yet another identifiable trend in and of themselves. Perhaps the most prominent is the current taste for soft, lightweight, unconstructed clothing. This is anything but arbitrary; it’s safe to say that the history of fine male attire has consistently been one of ever-greater comfort, informality, and wearability. It’s generally meant a preference for ever-lighter cloth with less construction — both of which, not coincidentally, are enabled and driven by two recreational male fixations: technology and technique.
The methods that London tailors devised to shape heavy English cloth into fashionable clothes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were later refined by Italian tailors with lighter cloths more suited to their more relaxed lifestyle and environment — which in today’s casual and climate-controlled world has effectively become everyone’s environment. Mills now compete to produce ever-lighter “performance” cloths, incorporating stretch fibers and/or weaves and special finishes to prevent stains and wrinkling. Flannels that once qualified as summer cloths are now commonly seen as impossibly heavy, and the heavily handworked structure that was once the pride of Savile Row is now frequently disparaged as unnatural and uncomfortable. Linings are now less likely to be luxurious or eccentric than completely absent in high-end garments, the better to showcase the coatmaker’s skill, which in the age of shallow-focused close-up photos in The Rake, has become fetishized. A quick appraisal of the rough, almost homemade-looking finishing that characterizes many pre-internet Savile Row garments suggests that such work was once a means to the end of a well-fitting garment. For better and for worse, details — handsewn buttonholes and topstitching, spalla camicia sleeve crowns, shapely patch pockets — are now ends in themselves, easily displayed and recognized signifiers of sartorial initiation.
What’s next? There will of course be something next. Does the current revival of interest in classic menswear fade away, a speed-bump on the inevitable downhill trajectory of tailored clothing? Or will the men who’ve been reminded of the pleasures of dressing continue expanding their tailored wardrobes, even as fashions change? Will they rediscover the pleasures of a heroically sculpted pagoda shoulder, or deeply pleated Oxford bags, or 16 oz West of England flannel? Who knows? Increasingly, everyone has their own vision of style.
Hopefully we pursue them all.
Fashion culture has become so splintered that it probably makes less sense to track trends than to identify different style tribes. Everyone reading this could probably easily distinguish a Flusserite drapist from a buttoned-down J. Press trad, or a sprezzed Armoury guy, or a juiced Tom Forder. What is the custom tailor or clothier’s role in such a stylistic soup? Are we to be a moderating influence on our client’s fancies, or do we earn our commissions by realizing them? Again, everyone will have their own philosophy and business model. Myself, I hope we can resist the homogenizing chimera of international timelessness and embrace the idiosyncrasies of our own various, simultaneous, poorly synced fashion cycles.
By Andrew Yamato