Vivacity

 Actor W Clifford Klenk with his wife, Hope Bacon Ryan, in their Hog Island house, May 1968, as taken by Slim Aarons

 
   That traffic light approach to summer menswear that I once mentioned? This man is its avatar

   Aarons and his lens would take at least one more capture of Klenk in 1992:

   At some stage, Klenk acquired a baronetcy and continues to be a fixture of the Life that is High:

   His earlier ensembles, to me, speak of WASP style for the true character

   And nothing kills complacency like characters can

Cornelius (コーネリアス) - 'Ball In-Kick Off' (1998, Live)

And it's a fair haired, slight balding Charlton to Kick Off, Ball In - Kick Off

   In recognition of what day it is, Let The Games Begin

   Five years ago, my ILM friends and I once cultivated our own themed compilations. I forget the reasons for it, but we sought to acquaint each other with the sound recordings that, to us, aligned with the premise of each collection

   Geeks make the best musical archivists, after all

   The title of the collection that I submitted this for might be obvious. You've perhaps seen the way that I dress - what other subject could I have a particular musical view on than Maximalism?

   My review drips with dork cachet, but then I was almost satirically effusive in my writing during those days, usually because my fellows were genuinely so in theirs

   Of course, this artist is one of my inspirations. With him, my effervescence tends to be warranted

Ossie-fied

 
   Also fabulous, dead and born on this day (68 years ago, to be precise) was Raymond 'Ossie' Clark, a King of the Swingers and of the King's Road in the 1960s and 1970s. And whilst he was off swinging every which way he could, he also took time to clothe the beau monde and become one of the Great Remembered of the late 20th century

   Reputedly able to cut a perfectly fitting dress for a woman by running his hands over her body, Clark was charismatic, multitalented and driven, although like a number of creators in this life, his talent did not come without its drawbacks

   One of them even evolved out of his desire for self-betterment: in a Larkin-like twist, the stimulants given to him by his mother when he needed the presence of mind for early commutes to design school eventually lead to his drug habit

   Naturally, Clark's work for the retail operation Quorum and Ossie Clark for  Radley - the house that purchased Quorum, bailing it out as it did so - has been venerated by nostalgists, collectors, editors, stylists and students. With the highly enticing printwork and intelligently devised textiles by his then-wife, Celia Birtwell, and his nous for cutting, patterns and design, melded with a taste for chiffon, gauze, moss crepe fabric and snakeskin, it couldn't help but be loveable

   Patrons included Twiggy, Ali MacGraw, Faye Dunaway, Elizabeth Taylor, Sharon Tate, Liza Minnelli and Marianne Faithful. The Beatles were also recipients of his imagination, and he launched a menswear line in 1968. Mick Jagger, legendary for his parading and preening, also became a client

   Idle talk has it that Clark did more than a little parading of his own with David Hockney, whom he had known since college. It is certainly accepted that Hockney's 1970 portrait of his hardcore bisexual friend and Birtwell, 'Mr and Mrs Clark with Percy,' is one of Britain's most visited artworks

   Following a career and personal decline, a tentative renaissance ended with Clark's 57 stab wounds and a broken skull from a teracotta pot in his Holland Park flat; the fatality was carried out by his drugged out former lover, Diego Cogolato, who received a manslaughter conviction and six years' incarceration

   Fashion designer André Courrèges may have bemoaned that as a result of Clark's popularity, “Haute couture is as good as dead. The streets of Paris are beginning to look like Portobello Road,” but few designers of that time could turn their moment into nearly a decade of pure form and remain memorable and referenced for further decades to come

   Some still struggle with it today

Menopausal Mauve and Bowlers; Oh My

   Mr Peacock has reminded me that today would have been the 99th birthday of Neil Munroe Roger, more familiarly known as “Bunny”

   Now, Bunny is not memorialised for nothing – in life and death, his sartorial renown and his predilections spread deep and wide. Fine and exacting tailoring performed by long-defunct Savile Row house Watson, Fargerstrom & Hughes; the sexual companionship of other men; heavy powdering; carnations; couture design; punctiliousness; the organisation of greatly hedonic parties; bon mots; bon vivantism; fine art and antiques; Rolls Royces; colour complementing, and so forth

   This champagne socialite is remembered as one of the most interesting characters from the 1940s right through to his existence failure in 1997. In the internet age, he is lionised or minimised, depending on which side of the divide created by the awareness of a refined homosexual with a fondness for lurid Lurex ensembles and drag that one falls

Lurex printed Nehru and casual purple wool sportcoat from the 1970s with Turnbull & Asser shirts and sporrans, from the catalogue of Sotheby's 1998 auction of Bunny Roger's estate

   As a relatively nascent fan of extravagant libertines, Roger’s dedication to his aureate lifestyle is, to me, practically peerless. His cordwainers, Poulsen, Skone & Co., created four pairs of dress shoes and boots for his 150-strong collection of tailored suits. Each. I can imagine that he had at least three outings with every individual pair. Most enviable is that he actually had the space to accommodate 600 shoes, to say nothing of seasonal and occasional footwear such as espadrilles, slippers and evening footwear

   (I’ll bet he was a pump man)

   Also of interest is the Neo-Edwardian milieu that he exemplified (and that I've dabbled in). To most people, the term, although self-explanatory, probably doesn’t mean much until one mentions the much parodied City of London look and the performances of John Cleese and Patrick MacNee in Monty Python’s 'Ministry of Silly Walks' sketch and The Avengers, respectively. As I understand it, the label, “Edwardian,” itself puts some tailoring enthusiasts in mind of this look

The middle image, 'Savile Row/The New Mayfair Edwardians' (Peter Coats; William Ackroyd; Mark Gilbey), was shot by Norman Parkinson in 1950; Parkinson was also the lensman behind a portrait of Roger stood near his ornately printed car in 1954

   As noted in the opening photograph of Roger, Neo-Edwadianism in dress, as well as deportment, was a nostalgic exhumation and customisation of an old style. It was the ideal postwar reaction; emerging from half a decade of atrocity, loss and devastation and seeking reinvigoration in the aftermath, Row tailors advocated this fashion to entice customers back to suiting

   Of course, with the likes of Bunny Roger as a paragon, the movement eventually came to be somewhat associated with the surreptitious and the naughty

   Having viewed a number of Neo-Edwardian looks of late, I’ve noted a pleasing variation of styling, although the defining elements are clear. A bowler hatted silhouette encompassed a fitted look, with its long and lean jacket – slightly flared at the skirt – and slim, straight trousers. Pearl pins were often affixed to the ties. An umbrella, as it came to succeed canes, became obligatory. Turn ups were seemingly rare – Bunny, for one, rigorously disapproved of them. As the aesthetic's most well known paradigm, his waist (29 – 31”) and broad upper build (40”, same as I) gave him the sharpest profile of all

   The disparities were where things became more interesting. As the 1950s became the 1960s, the relative sobriety of the look grew suffused with wild abandon in the encroaching age of modernity and Modernism. Interwar austerity was over

   By the 1960s, it had integrated eight buttoned double breasteds, four buttoned single breasteds, turnback cuffed dress suits, brass buttons and a myriad of showy fabrics. The dependably ostentatious Bunny commissioned his most outré suiting designs during that time; his peccadilloes of dress had already won him the respect and following of the Teddy Boys, who were the less elite and refined, and more ragtag and youthful exponents of this Edwardian reminiscence

   They tend to be better remembered, perhaps due to being young and shifty

On the right, Hamish Bowles, photographed at his New York abode for Fantastic Man, wears one of Roger's WF&H checked suits, one of a number he acquired at the posthumous Sotheby's auction of Roger and his brother Sandy's effects. Apparently, the somewhat elfin Bowles has to breathe in to accommodate the seamwork designed for Roger's waisted physique 

   Hardy Amies had also picked up on Roger’s trendsetting. Whilst he summarised the general Neo-Edwardian/London aesthetic of the 1950s as “the average young man of position [trying] to give an air of substance without being stodgy: of having time for the niceties of life” and “uncomfortable in anything other than a hard collar and a bowler hat,” he believed Bunny’s particular cut and quirks would usher in the defining styles of the 1960s. No surprise that Roger was one of his investors, but then Amies knew tasteful change - the mark of a talented dresser - when he saw it:

 Hardy Amies Four Buttoned Suit, circa the 1960s

   Then the Edwardian look grew into something else entirely:

While its name reflected its homage to turn-of-the-century men’s fashions, the trend was equally influenced by the nineteenth century dandy and his flare for the dramatic.  The result was a highly theatrical style of dress in which no self-respecting Edwardian (emphasis: mine) gentlemen would have been caught dead, least of all after six o’clock 

   The aesthetic evolved well into the early 1970s, intersecting with the neo-Regency remixes of the Peacock Revolution, before the energetic, neo-1930s exaggerations of the 1970s claimed a sturdier hold on the tailoring world (one school of thought suggests that the 1960s did not truly end until 1972)

   Bunny, however, continued on his idiosyncratic way. The most famed imagery from his late period comes from his birthday shindig in 1981:

 At the Amethyst Ball in London's Holland Park, held to celebrate his 70th birthday, 9th June 1981 (photograph by Terence Donovan Archive/Getty Images). Naturally, anyone not in a lilac hued outfit was unceremoniously rejected

   Despite his visibility in all matters sartorial, he remained more quasi-iconic in stature. Luckily, we live in an age that can deliver information on him at the click of a keystroke

   After all's said and done, I can't help but find common ground with a man who loved offbeat formality and the colour purple

   And above all, Bunny Roger was a true gentleman

Cigars to StyleForvm, Sator and Carpu at The Cutter and Tailor, and The Neo-Edwardian Hipster

Last Stop: This Town

A further illustration of my recent keyboard ramble

Violators

These are dedicated to the drivers of Accra

Italy has nothing on you; here's to dicing with death for however long I can stand to share a road with you

The Faculty, Or, "... But I Play One on TV"

I don't know who devised this, but s/he may now be a new favourite human of mine

On the Nose

Monsieur Guerlain shares some of the currency of his memory bank:

   That the lines are bedded down within the British retail jungle (and good luck to those braving the thick Fragrance Fog of "The Cornershop's" Perfume Department) is of untimely comfort whilst I'm displaced from it. I take little more than a mild interest in fragrances, yet knowing a wearer of the Vétiver made me keen to diversify beyond the scent selections of Hermés, Chanel and Dior

   The House has produced 790 fragrances in less than 200 years; the scale of which rapidly makes me feel younger

   If one has friends whose tastes veer into the obscure, cherish them; one never knows when they will be without them and resettled in a locale devoid of, and unconducive to, non-sexual niche pursuits, stimulating conversation, honesty and olfactory indulgences

The Yellow Tie "No"

    Neckwear of such hues has been a longtime plaything of mine and yet the odd comments on its ensemble incompatibility and its limited use amongst the iGentry and iDandies would make me the iconoclast that others consider me as

   Since the colour of my skin obviates the dreaded washout effect, the only Don't working against me is which garment shades to avoid, which takes care of itself through pure pragmatism

   Whilst I wouldn't recommend, say, a navy suit of any stripe on the grounds that the inevitable white shirt would create a strange mix of shiny and washing, my odd pinstriped waistcoat is fair use because it doesn't envelop my arms, thus leaving space on the colour wheel for my grey-brown topcoat. Not pictured is the pair of olive trousers I wore, which, in tandem with the other muted colours and the obscuring effect of the waistcoat, creates a restrained palette that flatters the tie. As long as one is aesthetically skilled, the navy top with a different coloured lower half is rather sensible, as my good friend Winston Chesterfield thoughtfully exemplifies

   For the blues adherents, I’d suggest settling in the ranges of medium, ocean or grey-blue and nothing stronger or deeper than the most moderate of that French hue

   I rather think the yellow tie has more of a habitat in the land of the lighter coloured suit - your khakis and tans and off-whites are very much its friends - but it appears as comfortable in the darker kingdom of the grey. Then you have the browns - I can see one bringing a showman's dash to a chocolate coloured double-breasted or a lighter shaded tweed. Rust jackets seem almost mandatory

   The plain yellow silk or knit should be the preserve of the experts who can deploy it with a yellow shirt and the necessary impunity. For those not so inclined, stronger hues and tasteful prints are the idyllic entry point to toy with this not unappealing aspect of the palette kingdom

   Perhaps it's time to say "yes"