James Bond vs. Lord Brett Sinclair

   So, two Roger Moore-portrayed adventurers of the 1970s walk into a haberdashery and -

   Oh, that ridiculous scenario is not worth the contriving I'm trying to produce, but suffice to say that whilst my outfit is very much akin to 007's stylings-circa The Man With The Golden Gun - without even observing my higher heeled Alan McAfee snaffle bit slip-ons, a girl actually and facetiously told me that evening, "You scare me, Baron Samedi" (and never mind that I did in fact dress as that particular character for Halloween in Hong Kong last year to the total bafflement of the entire metropolis) - the shirt is certainly more at home in Sir Roger's Tony Curtis-co-starring, Peacock Revolution-set series, The Persuaders!, a reference that is particularly apposite, given that it was created by now-esoteric shirtmakers Deborah&Clare of Beauchamp Place, London some time between 1965 and 1975. They made the shirt Mick Jagger wore for his wedding to Bianca Pérez Morena de Macias, don't you know

   D&C will return in a future Mode Parade entry

Special thanks to The Suits of James Bond

Psych Couture Deux

Nigel Waymouth, a leader of fashion, poses in front of his infamous shop   

   Granny Takes a Trip, founded by Nigel Waymouth, Sheila Cohen and John Pearse, remains one of the most indelibly memorable of the boutique clothing operations that characterised the mod and psychedelic eras, hewing more to the latter aesthetic, as if one cannot tell by its naughty name 

   The link above directs to The Look's more involving article on this trailblazing concern and its myriad shopfronts. The video is an excerpt from the BBC's excellent 2008 documentary series on this country's protean 20th- 21st century fashions, British Style Genius:

   The ever so taciturn Mr. John Pearse (not to be confused with the late folk guitarist), who trained at Hawes & Curtis when it was still a bastion of impeccable quality, still operates today in Soho's Meard Street, roughly opposite the former home of deceased (and occasionally diseased) London-based sybarite Sebastian Horsley, one of his numerous clients. In addition to conservative-but-clever outfitting, his past is oft evoked in the bright suiting, print-or-patchwork shirting and the odd hand-painted kipper tie in raw silk, whilst even his most sober stuff bears a characteristically colourful melton underneath the coat collar. GQ US's Style Guy, Glenn O'Brien, is just one of his faithful patrons

Glenn O'Brien sports his John Pearse blackwatch tartan raincoat over an old Anderson & Sheppard suit, a Charvet shirt and a Dries Van Noten necktie

Vintage Granny, via Child of the Moon 

John Pearse bespoke tapestry jacket inspired by a William Morris print ordered from Granny Takes a Trip and worn by Ossie Clark. Orange cashmere bespoke peacoat tailored by Richard Anderson. All via James Sherwood

The Alex Wilson Portrait Shoot, Part One

  
   It's a touch distracting  - but also pleasing - to recall that I first met Alex Wilson 20 years ago, but our recent reunion brought some lost time between us into focus. And if this entry's title was not enlightening enough, that tasteless unintentional pun should reference clearly that Alex is now a professional photographer, in whose current project I was more than pleased to participate. The call for subjects has been free and open; my friend Danielle Meder of Final Fashion has also answered it, resulting in more of Alex's signature striking imagery, illuminating as he does, the nuances of his subjects in every portrait that he crafts

These two were taken using Alex's Canon 1Ds Mk II:

And this shot is good old fashioned 10x8 film:

As taken with this wondrous contraption:

Fun fact for the details fiends - I am wearing a Sulka silk bow tie with a moiré pattern, which is most evident in photograph no.2. As I wrote before, the nuances always benefit from a little illumination

All photographs are the copyright of Alex Wilson: http://awilsonphotographic.com/

Smalto

   In honour of a vintage silk suit that I did not get around to buying earlier this year, here is a post about the French fashion house Francesco Smalto

via Made By Hand, taken from a particularly worthwhile article from a focused, intelligent tailoring dissection column

   Francesco Smalto is one of those operations that jumped at the seemingly ineluctable call of wide scale commerce in the late 20th century. This is not to say that it wholly lent its brand to the same sorts of aesthetic and quality degradations that engendered a great many unkind memories of legacies that should be ironclad, such as those of Pierre Cardin and Ted Lapidus, and subsequently required the sort of Lazarus-like re-emergences of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and Dior Homme (both made interesting again by Hedi Slimane - there's a thesis in that, I suspect), to say nothing of Lanvin, but the business certainly progressed rather far from its origins as a purveyor of rather excellent bespoke under the auspices of the Calabria-born Smalto himself. Nowadays, Monsieur Francesco, who wove his own way after having blossomed as a cutter at Camps, one of the great French houses, is retired, although it is said that he occasionally furnishes the odd wealthy client with new suits; from what I've read, the prices could be rather Bijan-like, although the house presently presents high-end made-to-measure as full bespoke. Purists, check your blood pressure

   Many exposed to Smalto's advertising campaigns over the years probably cannot remove the following phrase from their minds: "Francesco Smalto, you make me weak!" This tagline is more amusing when one considers that he sent suits to the late Gabonese president Omar Bongo by way of an escort service, terming the women "corporate gifts," for which a Paris court in 1995 convicted him for pandering and fined him 600,000 francs, although the slogan actually accompanied one of his colognes. Incidentally, the court estimated that Bongo's regular orders of Smalto suits roughly equated to 3 million francs yearly. I understand that his Middle Eastern clients were kept similarly satisfied; whilst many dressers may like a little sex with their tailoring, I am not certain whether to commend Smalto for his enterprise and consideration or condemn him for being a touch overfamiliar. One probably doesn't get this at Cad & the Dandy - and they are the ex-City boys

   Other achievements include designing the garments of astronauts, creating the world's lightest-weight dinner suit in black China crepe and amassing a global client base sated by an attention to detail, luxurious fabrics and an impeccable fit; all good reasons to minimise the case of the whores when it comes to crafting his epitaph. There's ready-to-wear too (my father once owned a couple of shirts in fine lightweight fabrics), but of course, the bespoke is where Smalto shone

The idiosyncratic Smalto lapel; like the Cran Necker/Parisienne, it is the sort of halfway house between a notch and a peak that is not so easily categorised. I'm certain that I saw them on Mubarak. Another detail that I spied on the 1980s suit I considered was a same fabric belt for the trousers that, unlike those of Chester Barrie or Spencer Hart, was thoughtfully backed in leather

   Smalto is an ideal tailor, really - strong talent and the willingness to lead a colourful, indelicate life make him what he is: one of the most gifted and industrious of his kind. And lest we forget, it is still considered rude in some places to refuse corporate gifts. And escorts

A Blast of Bombast

   For all the simplicity of the palette I chose, this might be the most forceful colour play of mine, thus far:

It is certainly fair to say that my Holliday & Brown aggressive abstract acid shirts are getting quite the workout; teaming one with H&B collaborator Prada (the bootcut dress trousers) and the Spencer Hart-designed Aquascutum coat, gives the wearer an overall look of a hedonist in search of a happening 


Adding to the fun, in the Lobbs I am just shy of 6'4"


Photograph by Harry L

Tie Up

   Edward Sexton, also known to me as "My Favourite Tailor," presents an instructional on the four-in-hand, the only tie knot that connotes an unfussy mind when it comes to necktie styling. His dummy's name is Ben Fogle, reporting for NBC as part of a piece on morning dress:

   Thanks to Edward's assistant, Dominic Sebag-Montefiore, for sending this to the MP inbox

Royal Show

George Tupou V, King of Tonga. Ever think that spats could be appealing again? This is your movement's new frontman! 


See the photographs from his coronation; classical statesman style in action

Princes Charles and William, accompanied by their wives, present for last night's festivities in black tie. And whilst Charles is always the leader, particularly in this milieu, such a potentially enduring image of a famous father and son pairing is all that really matters here

Homme Couture

   Some talents deserve better words than one can give them. So sometimes, it's best to go with the reminiscence

   At the risk of producing the sort of lazy entry that is decried by exemplars like ADG and Gaye, I cannot find any better words to proffer on today's subject, the late menswear designer and shopkeeper Roland Meledandri, than those written by his daughter Nina on the Film Noir Buff forum in 2006 (and elsewhere):

My father started in men's clothing at a store called Casual Aire (I believe it was spelled with an "e") where he met my uncle; Joseph Levine.  Together they started Men's Town and Country (which was in the 50's, I think on 3rd Ave; the shot of Marilyn Monroe over the subway grate with her skirt blowing up was in front of the store).  My father left there to start R. Meledandri Inc. at 74 East 56th St. (early '60's); a full service men's retail establishment with a custom tailoring department.  Most of his merchandise was made in Italy and my father (and mother) used to go to the factories where he would have input into the designs made specifically for him.  I would risk saying that in reaction to the prevailing "Brooks Brothers" sensibility he was responsible for bringing elegance and flair back into American men's fashion; he widened lapels, raised the armholes, nipped the waist and flared the skirt.  He brought both the influence of Italian tailoring and the British hacking jacket into his designs.  Cuffs, collars and ties also went wide, and he introduced a range of colors and textures that were previously unavailable to the American male.


Of course anyone with an artistic eye and a flair for clothes would be attracted to the "Meledandri" look and his clientele included fashion photographers, advertising directors, etc; the people who dictate what the world sees when it comes to style.  He was also an extremely charismatic person, when I was photographing his friends and clients, so many of them referred to him as "one of my closest friends".  As I said earlier, his store became a kind of salon, a hang out and one his name synonymous with elegance and success (as when the phrase "the men in their Meledandri suits" was used to describe a certain sector of hip NY in the book "Edie")

Over the years he also developed a wholesale division and had departments at both Barney's and Bloomingdales as well as other fine department stores across the country.  But he was primarily known for the exquisite design and quality of his custom tailoring department.  When he died from a massive and sudden heart attack in 1980 at 51 (quite unexpected as he was extremely fit, a runner and watching his heart) he was in the process of closing "R. Meledandri Inc." and had finally run the first sale in the history of the store.  He was a man of impeccable taste, an artist who expressed his vision through clothes.

   Meledandri was a marvel; a designer with an exacting eye for quality who is still remembered in certain circles for offering some of New York's finest tailoring. He was one of the last 20th Century Stylistics; a sobriquet that sounds hollow rather than sonorous in typical Barimanastic fashion, I suppose, until one tries to think very hard about how many subsequent menswear figures successfully hewed and crafted a diverse, piercing aesthetic vision to direct the way things might evolve or expand (Hedi Slimane, whose feeling for romantic, energetic rebellion, sense of baroque theatre and sensibility for emaciated, speed-fuelled, spoiled rent boys, is thus far the only sensible suggestion for this century's most interesting game-changer)

   Of course, menswear proceeds from the details and Meledandri was no different to his other interesting contemporaries, nor even the couturier talents to whom he may be seen, in some ways, as a counterpart (recall that the defining moments of latter-day womenswear creativity sprang from the oft calmly-dressed likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior and Cristobal Balenciaga). His deft switches between his intricate confluence of great fit, expressive fabric patterns and painstaking details to a still expressive, yet more tempered mode that insinuated rather than announced itself made him friendly to those who wanted to play Quiet Assassin rather than Otherworldly Rock Star. Fitting, then, that when Roy Scheider portrayed Dustin Hoffman's Quietly Assassinated sibling in 1976's classic Marathon Man, it was Meledandri - once again sticking the knife in the grey flannel suited man he nevertheless appreciated - who ensured his corpse was good looking:

 That red sculpture in the background is named Double Ascension, by artist Herbert Bayer, and you'll find it at the Arco Plaza (now known as City National Plaza) at 555 S. Flower Street, in downtown L.A. That's in the plaza between the two towers, off the west side of Flower Street (between 5th & 6th streets) 

   Meledandri's name was brought up in my recent meeting with Edward Sexton as I intend to frame part of the resultant piece around the idea of a vanguard at the Peacock Revolution's heart. For if there was an American flavour to the clothing confections that period saw in, Sexton agreed that much of that came from Meledandri's own peculiar creativity. No matter the visceral reaction the fabric surely engenders, I'd be impressed if a cogent argument against the cutting and styling could seriously be mustered; in my dreams, the nicest single breasted suits present a lot like this:

 

Like the coat further below, this 3 piece is still in the possession of Nina. They were created for The Coty's, the men's fashion awards, in the 1970s

   Sexton is becoming known for a personal credo of "romancing" the suiting one wears - be not afraid to think out the details, balance the elements and display a palpable pride in wearing clothes of distinction and tailored grace. In other words, be one's true personal stylist, for it will always be appreciated, particularly by the wearer. Dressing to enjoy life is a free action; the stealth wealthy and the reactionary class get to bitch about it because they just don't know how to smile. Meledandri makes me smile; there's the requisite foolhardiness (up, middle finger!) in donning his most extreme stuff, but if one's in such pieces, one surely knows they're in a certain company; not only the communal kind that Nina describes below, but also the kind who lived in the same world as everyone else, though not wholly interested in seeing it in the same way:

salon: the store was often thought of that way, it was definitely a gathering place, especially on Saturday afternoons and it tended to attract people connected with the movie & advertising industries (which overlapped quite a bit anyway since many art directors and photographers of that time eventually went into film).  many of the people who hung out at the store would convene later at Elaine's.  at some point i will try to post the list i was working from for my book but since that was pre-digital, it will take some time.  off the top of my head, some of the people i photographed were (in no particular order): Dan Melnick, Billy Dee Williams, Mayor John Lindsay, Richard Benjamin, Richard Meier, George Lois, Noel Behn, Carmen Capalbo, George Segal, Joel Schumacher, David Susskind, Art Kane, Steve Horn, David Z. Goodman.


my memories: well, i certainly don't have an adult perspective, the time i spent in the store was mostly during high school but i did spend a lot of time there.  it was a very comfortable place for me which is a bit surprising since i was an extremely shy kid and it was such a social environment.  i think what attracted me to it was that my father was so in his element there, he really had an incredible sense of style and here he was surrounded by people who not only appreciated his clothes but relied on his eye.  in some ways his interaction with his clients was like a performance, not that it was contrived or in any way disingenuous  but in the sense that it drew you in, watching him oversee a fitting and then accessorize the suit seemed like magic to me

 

designer/tailor: it is true that my father was a designer not a tailor nor did he have any training in that craft. but he intuitively understood clothing and what made a successful garment.  he could look at a pattern and know what was wrong with it and he was a total perfectionist when it came to the finished product, something that i think was particularly important to his clientele.  his expression manifested itself not only in the style and fit of his clothes (the proportions) but also in his choice and combinations of colors and textures.


photos: when i get to packing that box, i will try photographing the prints, again none of this is digitalized and unfortunately nobody was wearing his clothes for the photos i took (i didn't start the project until a few years after he died).  also i will try to shoot some of the press clippings that i have

 A sampling of Meledandri's pocket squares

it is actually easier for me to answer questions or comment on things raised here, since my recollections are going to run the gambit of (somewhat) objective to highly subjective.


one (possibly) little known fact: my father loved shoes and could not refrain from buying them for the store even though he always lost money on them.  he would often say of a shoe that it was "so ugly it was beautiful".(Author's note: I have seen some of his shoes. And if ever I want to recreate my primary school uniform, i will definitely scour the earth for a pair)

   So here's to Roland Meledandri. And here's to ugly beauty; the kind one should not only admire, but also the kind one works to appreciate and  should eventually, actively revel in. Because as every good and bad aesthete knows, it's definitely the fun kind

   

Karaoke Shippai

   With my own personal Leather Lust Objects on my feet, a body in mod's clothing, a spring in my step and a song in my heart, I decided to go forth and take the microphone. No, there's no surviving audio - what do you take me for, a Guantanamo Bay interrogator?

   The object lesson of the night was to keep me away from hits that require an upper register, though one cannot discount my comedic falsetto when performing Timberlake standards. Basically, 'Paint it Black', 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' and 'Johnny B. Goode' are serviceable. 'Simply The Best' and anything sung by Axl Rose are not. Unfortunately

   I even found a little moment to do my dance - this must have been during 'Like A Prayer':

   And then it was over

 

  

   Postscriptum: Jacket sleeves and sides adjusted by Graham Browne Tailors

An Expensive Existence Failure

   Through StyleForvm this morning, I have learnt that we now have yet another Fabulous Dead Person to memorialise. Petkanas, I'm counting on you

Bijan Pakzad, 4 April 1944 – 16 April 2011

With my ego, I would have been successful anyplace, but America gave me the opportunity to show my taste

   Despite my raft of accidental globe trotting, I've never gotten around to visiting Beverly Hills, but between clever marketing, the world press and two seasoned Earth travellers whom I call "Mum and Dad," I had a wisp of an awareness about this alluring brand Bijan and how it filled the closets of the great, the good and primarily, the wealthy. Naturally, it was his range of scents - always one of the easier ways to integrate a designer's name into one's possessions - and that striking, almost graffiti-like logo that made a lasting visual impression on me; an indelible link to the glitterati of the planet might also have had something to do with that

   'The Persian Master of Fashion' - and a proud one at that, steadfast to his Iranian roots to the last, which is even borne out by the music on his website - was known for his 'appointment only' visitor's hours; highly appropriate, given that he had custody of "the most expensive store in the world," grown through his charm, good fortune, entrepreneurial nous (apparently genetic; his family was staunchly self-made) and dogged industriousness. He dressed a list of men so illustrious that they have been typed out and published in better obituaries than this one, as well as in his Wikipedia entry (his son Nicolas stated that he dressed over 40,000 clients, including all five living American Presidents). He was exceedingly fond of the colour yellow - good for him, me and you. And he loved his automobilia, did this one - every single write-up will probably mention how he enjoyed parking the jewels of his four wheeled fleet outside his store before attending to the whims and wants of those who came a'calling

   His signature flair for design splendour was hardly confined to clothes and fine living, and in the late 1980s, he sought a more luxurious way to fire bullets, achieving it with a Colt revolver made from gold. But then when of his most perceptible traits was how greatly he loved his work; you can see it in every twinkly eyed portrait taken to show that this brand had a face and it was that of a kindly, charismatic, expensive Iranian who would transform one from schlub to film star for the price of the average home and make it feel worthwhile. But back to the handgun:

The gun had a leather handgrip fashioned for a .38-cal. Colt revolver; inlaid in the cylinder was 56 grams of 24-karat gold. The revolver was placed in a mink pouch in a Baccarat crystal case embossed with the customer's name. Bijan's own signature is engraved in gold on the barrel of the gun. Only 200 such guns were made. In 2005, one of these guns sold to Jacob Nahamia at Christie's auction house for over $50,000 USD.

   The Bijan brand will endure, of course - it is a family enterprise - but naturally, the stewardship will be different and perhaps a little less aureate. So to conclude, I think it's only polite that I highlight an ethos worth sharing in:

The world said to conform, the world said to settle for less, the world said to compromise and no one would know... so I made my own world

   Godspeed, Mr. Bijan

Let's Go Airside

   I am enjoying being back in London, which is a pleasing, if stark, contrast to my feelings about this much vaunted metropolis when I left. I think that amongst the varied vagaries of my life that impelled me to take a working sabbatical from the place was that I was then losing my ability to see what it has to offer. I might be over it now, for I am taking rare pleasure in its foibles again: it still holds the most charming of Georgian architecture, the most reticent of heterosexual dancefloor patrons and the most pellucid and brief of summer dresses

   I have subsequently lowered my resistance to a number of things since my return. I have performed at karaoke on two separate large nights out in the past week alone. I visited Graham Browne Tailors for alterations. I stumbled across a group of 'bladers outside the National Gallery, performing deftly along a line of twenty overturned plastic cups no more than 3 feet apart, and resisted the urge to yell "The hardest part of rollerblading is telling your parents that you're gay!" (an old joke; one not easily forgotten). I even mustered up the urge to observe a controversy response first hand by visiting the John Snow pub in Soho earlier this evening to see what would become of the homosexual group kiss-in that was being performed in support of the two amorous young fellows who were ejected from the premises on Wednesday. My tweets say it all; I really had no idea that gay men - on their primary London stomping grounds, no less - could make a mass gathering so boring that I had to turn to micro-blogging about it and then became careless over my own spelling

   Being back has also inspired me to experiment a little. Given how the previous paragraph ended, I am sure I know what you are thinking, but no; I am actually talking about t-shirts:

   Although I don't plan to make a habit of this, I have held this design in high esteem for a few years. As a student, I became enamoured of the annual Airside T-Shirt Club, due to a fondness for its rotating cast of media designers - Cozyndan, James Jarvis, Pete Fowler, Laurent Fetis - and its singular constant, Airside co-founder Fred Deakin, whose excellent downtempo band Lemon Jelly was interviewed by me in 2002. So I joined for the 2004 run; I'm pleased to say that it was a banner year and I still retain each piece, including the above design by Deakin himself. And in a funny full circle-manner - where this post is concerned - I was actually living in Ghana that year, too

   Airside's shop can be found here. Normal flamboyance will resume with the next outfit post

Shine One On

   

Elegant slubbing, courtesy of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather

   For one shining moment last year, I owned a light grey slubbed Shantung silk suit for spring and summer; as is customary in my collection, it was double breasted, Roman made, from the 1980s (the period most associated in my mind with the Suits With Runs Look) and formerly owned by my father. And then "formerly" became "presently," so I wait for either old age or senility to make it mine once again. "This kind of suit, my son," he intoned, "is not yet for you." I don't think this was said because he perceives a lack of gravitas in my make-up; I think he just remembered that it still fits him. And unlike him, my arms are long enough for my fingertips to graze my knees, so there is that...

   I believe that each summer suiting choice, particularly Dupioni and Shantung silk, mohair and cotton, is a beautiful and unique snowflake; a catholicon to all that may feel particularly rote and lifeless about warm wools. Silks have a galvanising aspect when tailored, imputing colours with texture and hypnotic iridescence at their most beautiful (Shantung being the more flamboyant, slubbier and occasionally rougher take compared to Dupioni); mohair distinguishes itself with its sheen, crispness, lightness of wearing and valuable versatility (particularly the ones that look slightly pearlescent in various lights - see also this excellent article by good pal Winston C);  cotton and its endearingly wrinkly aspects create the most relaxed tailoring of all. I, like others, also recognise the considerable charm of linen, the most rumpled of all, and its warm weather boons to even the heavy sweaters amongst us all. But I am ultimately a texture addict, not to mention one who often, like Sixth Doctor Colin Baker, dresses like "an explosion in a rainbow factory;" this is a tendency that silk clothing enables very, very easily and is the exact reason I plan to acquire a new (or new-old) one of my own when fortune and funds permit. Mohair is my second choice and I have recently viewed a number of vintage Savile Row examples that might still be mine if anything can be done about the sleeves (I'd also enjoy seeing some from China). It is to marvel at the unique fabric designs that the 1960s and 1970s produced for summerwear

 

Two examples that may possibly be silk-blends (or just shiny), courtesy of Robert De Niro's character Sam "Ace" Rothstein in the undeniably excellent Casino. Note the iconic Ultra Goliath eyeframes

   When I commented on Roger Moore's Cyril Castle-created Dupioni suit at The Suits of James Bond today, I initially considered that I wanted a very light grey version for myself (steel blue, light or rust brown, burgundy, forest green and off white also loom large), since that sort of icy look is quite the head-turner on very bright days. I have never thought such a colour to really suit me, despite owning a patch pocketed version in ramie from good old Junya Watanabe that I love, but in a slightly shinier form, my mind's eye makes it look rather becoming. It can also handle many accessory colourings and with my skin tone, a Mr. Fish-inspired presentation of a matching white or bone-coloured shirt and necktie feels more than possible. A silk trifecta formed from the three main ensemble components also seems ridiculously appealing

Moore's first 007 Dupioni number, dark grey and double breasted, as seen in Live and Let Die, via The Suits of James Bond

   Of course, it is worth recalling that lightweight silks are vulnerable to stains, crotch rot and the accidental snags caused by the fingers and rings of an amorous partner, so those who are also tempted may wish to blend. Wool, linen, cashmere and cotton mixes, as well as heavier silks have much to offer; they can sacrifice some of the breathability, but done well, style always remains

 The Modern Jazz Quartet in mohair suits for The Cocktail Age

   London is bright again. Let's shine one on for the summer

 

Prince Charles in Dupioni silk suiting