Month: February 2019

 

If you were on social media in 2016, you probably remember the Great Cargo Pocket War. It all started with an innocent article in The Wall Street Journal about how bulky cargo shorts were driving a wedge between people in their relationships. One of the men in the story said that, in the course of his 11-year marriage, he’s noticed as many as fifteen pairs of cargo shorts go missing. On the occasions he’s asked his wife about them, she admits to throwing them out or deflects to another subject. He’s now down to just one pair, which he guards closely (they’re hidden in a small nook somewhere). “I don’t let her get her hands on them,” he said. “I wish I had caught on sooner.”

Tom Lommel, an actor in Los Angeles, said he loves cargo shorts because they’re like wearing “socially acceptable sweatpants.” He reserves them for when his wife is away from home, however, because wearing them feels like he’s breaking a marriage vow. “I wish that were the truth,” his wife disputes. “If he was only wearing them when I could not look at him, that would be perfect.”

The article sparked a fierce internet debate. Fans of the style say cargo shorts are hard wearing, easier to move in, and practical in terms of storage space. Detractors say no one human being needs that many pockets. Cargo shorts and their related pants have become the symbol of aging frat-bros, uncool dads, and the sort of people who carry vape pens, tactical knives, and Soundgarden CDs on their body. Cargo pocket defender and International Relations professor Dan Drezner went a step further when he wrote in The Washington Post: “Cargo shorts are great and anyone who opposes them should just acknowledge their misandry and be done with it. […] Any article of clothing that helped defeat Hitler is an article of clothing that should never go out of style.”

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For the truly fashion-obsessed, the shuttering of Gallagher’s Paper Collectibles ten years ago marked the end-of-an-era. The dingy, subterranean shop in the East Village was one of New York City’s greatest institutions. Inside was a veritable treasure trove of vintage fashion magazines, books, and photo prints. Stacked in corners and along shelves, you could find Vogue in all its editions, dusty issues of Harper’s Bazaar, 100-year-old copies of Town & Country, the now-defunct Mademoiselle, and more arcane titles, some of which were published in the 1860s. 

If you think this is just a local hangout for art students and the occupationally hip, you’d be wrong. In between preparing for their seasonal collections, award-winning designers used to come here to rifle through yellowed pages and plunder archives. Michael Gallagher, the store’s proprietor, once told The New York Times: “We get them all, Hedi Slimane, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs big time, John Varvatos, Narciso Rodriguez, the Calvin assistants, the Gucci assistants, Dolce & Gabbana, Anna Sui – you name it. They all come here for inspiration. At least that’s what we call it.”

It’s no secret that designers copy. Menswear is full of work, sport, and military references, some of which have carried through into a professional dress. Penny and tassel loafers entered the canon because they were so thoroughly imitated. In the designer world, Tom Ford has been known to lift from Halston; Alexander McQueen stole from Vivienne Westwood. Helmut Lang once moved his operation from NYC to Paris to thwart copycats, but he himself replicated a disco bag from the indie design collective Three As Four. Diet Prada tries to publicly shame designers for copying, but with notable exceptions, they have little effect. Everyone knows how fashion works. When Oprah asked Ralph Lauren in 2011 how he’s been able to keep designing for so many years, he answered: “You copy. Forty-five years of copying; that’s why I’m here.”

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Selkirk is a small Scottish town perched on a hillside overlooking the Ettrick Water, a tributary of the fast-flowing River Tweed, which is where some say Scotland’s most famous fabric got its name. For generations, the people here were celebrated for their shoemaking skills, but like other Border towns, Selkirk was eventually swept into the woolens trade. People have been weaving fabric in the Scottish Borders since at least the Middle Ages, but the trade for much of this time was small, rural-based, and organized through a scattered cottage industry. In the old days, Scottish tweeds were woven at home from local and native wools, often Cheviots that were spun into woolen yarns. Whatever was made was only worn by the local people. 

This all changed sometime around the turn of the 18th century. With the signing of the Treaty of Union, Scotland and England became new state of Great Britain. The Industrial Revolution was just starting to emerge and Hawick received its first four knitting frames. Certain towns – Hawick, Galashiels, and Selkirk, included – were conveniently located along the main roads connecting Edinburgh and Carlisle. This gave them access to London and other major cities, helping them distribute finished woolen goods and, when steam power replaced water, bring in fuel. More importantly, the Union gave Scotland better trade opportunities with Britain’s colonies around the world. Soon, people as far flung as India and the Americas were wearing Scottish tweeds and tartans. 

What the first wave of globalization gave, the second took away. Like other Border towns, Selkirk is quieter now. The looms stopped chattering a long time ago and today the town is better known for its bannocks, a type of dry fruitcake. During the heyday of Scottish manufacturing, the knitwear trade employed nearly 10,000 people – more if you counted wovens. Hawick had sixteen mills and Pringle alone produced more than 66,000 garments per week. These days, Hawick has half that number and Pringle has long offshored their production. Last week, one of Scotland’s three remaining Harris Tweed mills, Carloway, suddenly stopped production and is facing possible closure. Five years ago, Caerlee Mills, makers of the legendary Ballantyne, shut off their machines after 225 years operation (the building was soon after demolished).  

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For much of the 20th century, men’s media was about general interest publications giving readers the information they needed for “right living.” They told men how to dress for the office, grill meat on weekends, and mix delicious cocktails for after-dinner parties. As Cathy Horyn once wrote, “almost no one cares about this sort of thing anymore.” Online, audiences can easily find communities that share their specific interests and advertisers can target people more closely than ever before. It’s no longer enough for a publication to just say it’s “for men.”

This is Will Welch’s challenge at GQ. Welch was recently promoted to Editor-in-Chief at the magazine, replacing Jim Nelson, and while GQ isn’t losing money, it’s lost some cultural relevancy. To get readers to return, Welch promises to make GQ to be about more than just telling men how to match pocket squares with ties. This month’s music-themed issue, for example, covers Frank Ocean and dives into John Mayer’s Visvim-heavy wardrobe. And when Welch headed Conde Nast’s smaller, but edgier, GQ Style title, he featured the romantically styled designer Haider Ackermann, cult-favorite streetwear label Noah, and Gauthier Borsarello’s private Paris showroom, which is full of vintage inspiration. With Welch now at the top of GQ’s masthead, we can expect something similar between the main magazine’s covers. 

“Instead of dictating what’s good and what’s bad from some sort of imaginary mountaintop, if we can be meaningfully participating in a community of people – helping to elevate and tell the stories of the people who we think are doing really exciting things – to me that is a higher calling than, ‘don’t wear those pants, wear these pants,’” Welch told Business of Fashion. “If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up not being much of anything to anyone. So we’re making GQ less a big tent and more the only place to go when you want a rich, intelligent, and transportive plunge into all the stylishness the world has to offer.”

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