Search Results for: italian tailoring

Over the summer, I emailed Fred Nieddu, the skilled cutter behind the independent bespoke tailoring house taillour, to see if he would be willing to extend his US trunk show schedule to include California. After a bit of emailing back and forth, I'm delighted to report that he agreed. Next month, he and his business partner will be visiting San Francisco and New York City to meet with clients and take orders (subsequent trips will happen once every three or four months, as usual for traveling tailors). 

I became interested in Fred's work at the end of 2020, when I wrote a piece for the Vulture about how the Netflix series The Crown used Barbour jackets to represent each character's relationship with power. Although the article was about waxed cotton field coats, it was the tailoring in the show that truly captivated me. Josh O'Connor's Prince Charles wears the three-button, narrow-lapel suits that the real-life Prince favored as a youth before switching to drapey double-breasted numbers later in life. I remember thinking that the silhouettes were more faithful to the Golden Age of tailoring than the bespoke sport coat I commissioned from Anderson & Sheppard in 2016. 

I later learned that Fred made all of the menswear in the series. He's also made bespoke clothes for Ralph Fiennes in Bond and all of the lead actors in Murder on the Orient Express (along with countless other films and TV shows). This, combined with the fact that he teaches pattern drafting to third-year tailoring students at the London College of Fashion, makes him a rather unique tailor. Most tailors are known for a specific house style they've perfected over time, such as Anderson & Sheppard's soft drape cut, Huntsman's padded look, or Edward Sexton's strong, angular lines. While Fred has a signature style, he's much more adaptable, as evidenced by how his clothes fit like puzzle pieces into the worlds depicted in these shows. 

No Man Walks Alone is an advertiser on this site, but also one of my favorite online shops. I've always felt that guys can build an excellent wardrobe if they simply set aside some money to shop here every season. The store carries everything from classic Italian tailoring to Japanese workwear to even some avant-garde. And from now until Sunday night, you can take 20% off all full-priced items with the checkout code FALL20. Note, since No Man Walks Alone is an East Coast retailer, this promotion runs until 12 midnight Eastern Time. Some things that I think are particularly worth checking out: 

Kaptain Sunshine Traveler Coat

If I had a reduce my outerwear wardrobe to just three staple pieces, I'd keep my Lee 101-J, Margiela five-zip, and Kaptain Sunshine Traveler. Actually, I have two Travelers. I bought one in navy Melton wool a few years ago, and found that I wear it so much, I purchased a lighter version for autumn (the Melton can only be worn in the wintertime). For me, this is the Ultimate Long Coat (ULC). It's the one piece you can always grab from your wardrobe and feel confident about how you look. The coat's power is all in its cut. Kaptain Sunshine's Traveler is roomy and voluminous, comes down to your knees, and has an A-line silhouette. When worn, it covers almost your entire body, effectively making it your whole outfit. I wear it with everything from chunky Inis Meain sweaters and tailored trousers to stained J. Crew sweatshirts and repaired RRL work pants. It's literally impossible to look bad in this thing. No one can do it, not even me. 

Twelve years ago, J. Crew menswear designer Frank Muytjens and his team debuted their FW10 collection at New York City's Milk Studios. There was a lot of anticipation in the run-up to this event. At the time, J. Crew had become one of the more visible faces of the heritage menswear movement and had just opened the doors to their menswear-only Liquor Store. On this day, they served journalists Dark 'n Stormy cocktails to loosen up the mood before bringing out a procession of models. The models, who stood atop distressed wooden shipping pallets, wore slimmed-up Donegal suits, raw denim jeans, puffer vests, chambray work shirts, and waxed cotton field coats. Scarves and thin neckties adorned every neck; many ankles were left bare. Some models wore so many clothes that the jacket buttoning points strained from the layers piled underneath.

If you weren't following menswear blogs at this time, you might have missed how significant this moment felt. When photos of the presentation hit blogs such as A Continous Lean and Secret Forts, people went nuts. Nearly everyone could see themselves buying something from J. Crew—if not mainline, then at least one of the In Good Company partners such as Alden and Barbour. Before menswear became splintered into a thousand different factions, everyone talked about this one thing. Whether you were new to menswear or a seasoned pro, whether you had thousands to spend on a wardrobe or only a few hundred dollars, everyone could find something that made them excited. I once called this "menswear's last big moment" because of how it felt so uniting. 

Much has changed since that day's presentation. J. Crew's gingham shirts have become a punchline, inspiring an Instagram account lampooning people who wear them. Prep has been declared dead thousand times over. In May 2020, J. Crew filed for Chapter 11 protection in federal bankruptcy court for the Eastern District of Virginia, making them the pandemic's first major retail causality. Additionally, menswear has been fragmented into countless bits. The middle of the market has thinned out, and everything nowadays is either high-fashion or fast fashion. Micro-communities allow people to play and stay within very niche aesthetics. To the degree that there are still trends, they are no longer about the earnest, flannel look that J. Crew once championed. We've seen Italian tailoring, Hedi's appointment at SLP, the rise of streetwear, normcore, dadcore, Demna's appointment at Balenciaga, the return of 1970s sleaze, and so forth. The market today is much more dispiriting for guys who are just getting into menswear. Everything is either too expensive or alien. If you shop at financially and conceptually accessible brands such as J. Crew, the most you'll get is a half-hearted shrug from fellow jawnz enthusiasts.

In the summer of 1830, French publisher Charles Gosselin grew tired of Victor Hugo's excuses. Hugo was working on a novel titled Notre-Dame de Paris. He wanted to write the book because he was worried that Paris' Gothic architecture was being rapidly replaced by more modern structures (this is why large sections of the book go into exceeding detail when describing the buildings). But between Hugo's procrastination, writer's block, and other deadlines, he struggled to complete the book. Gosselin kept pestering the French novelist for updates, and by the summer of 1830, he demanded that the book be finished within six months. 

Realizing that Gosselin was serious, Hugo concocted a scheme to keep himself writing. According to his wife, Hugo bought himself a bottle of dark ink and a huge grey knitted shawl, which "swathed him from head to foot." He then locked up all of his "outside clothes" so that he wouldn't have access to his outfits. Without the distraction of his clothes and the temptation to go outside, Hugo was able to write continuously for six months while confined to his study. Notre-Dame de Paris was published the following year, and later renamed The Hunchback of Notre-Dame for the English translation. 

In the last year and a half, it has become crystal clear that dressing well is inextricably linked to the experience of moving through the world. In one of my favorite articles published last year, New Yorker staff writer Rachel Syme wrote: "What I’ve felt, perhaps, is a yearning for the spontaneous ways that clothing and public life can collide -- the feeling, say, of riding the subway, en route to a holiday party, wearing something sparkly and foolish underneath a puffer coat." The world still isn't fully open -- who knows if things will ever be what they were -- but it's more open than before, and I'm thankful to be able to dress up again. Hugo was right. Clothes are a distraction, yes, but a wonderful one as far as distractions go. Here are some things that I'm excited to wear this fall.

At the Sotheby’s auction house in Hong Kong, a man in a dark blue suit shouted into a microphone as hands kept rising, pushing the price of Zao Wou-Ki’s triptych masterpiece, Juin-Octobre 1985, ever higher. Initially commissioned by I.M. Pei for his Raffles City complex in downtown Singapore, the painting represents the artist’s “Infinity Period.” Across three giant canvases, warm hues of peach, saffron, and lilac silently danced and exploded along a horizontal axis, giving the viewer a sense of the cosmos. In 2005, the painting was taken down from its Raffles City location and sold to a Taiwanese art collector. Then in October 2018, it appeared at this port-city auction house. That night, as arms flew up — many sheathed in silky worsteds, black lambskins, and gauzy blouses — the price kept climbing. By the time the hammer fell, the price for this marquee piece had landed at a staggering HK$450 million (US$65 million), setting a new record for an art piece auctioned in Hong Kong.

Born in Beijing in 1920, Zao was the scion of a prosperous family. His father was a well-heeled banker; his grandfather held the title xiù cai, which signaled a certain level of success in Imperial China’s civil service examination. Zao’s family encouraged him to follow in his father’s footsteps and pursue finance, but he had artistic ambitions. As a teen, Zao spent his days clipping images out of European and American art magazines, and pleading with his family to allow him to attend art school. His parents relented, but not without requiring him to at least get a classical Chinese education. So in 1935, a young Zao went to to the China Academy of Art, where he spent six years studying calligraphic ink painting. Upon graduating, he spent a few more years there as a teacher. Then in 1947, as the Chinese revolution drew nigh, Zao hopped on a plane and flew to Paris, intending to pursue two more years of art education.

Even as Paris was lifting itself out of the wreckage of the Second World War, the city had a vibrant and flourishing art scene. Much of this was thanks to the diversity already present in the French capital. Before the war, Paris attracted talented sculptors, painters, and printmakers from around the world. Many of these immigrants were young Jewish men who resettled on the Left Bank of Paris, where artists, writers, and philosophers gathered in cafes, salons, and galleries. Such artists included the great Amedeo Modigliani (an Italian painter known for his sleek and beautiful portraits), Marc Chagall (a Russian-French pioneer of modernism), and Chaïm Soutine (a tailor’s son whose impressionist portrait of a woman has since become a symbol of democratic protest in his home country of Belarus).

Fashion is often criticized for its creative destruction. Trends are constantly coming and going; new brands are always emerging. What some see as a pointless field, I see as a subject where there's always something new, something interesting, and something different to talk about. For the past few years, I've been doing annual roundups about new brands I'm watching. To be sure, not all of them are actually new -- some have been around for a while. But they're new to me and, hopefully, you. This year, I have so many brands on my list that I decided to break this post into two parts. The first part was published last week. This is part two. 

GIULIVA HERITAGE

If you've seen the 1948 Italian neorealist drama Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, sometimes mistranslated as The Bicycle Thief), you'll know that post-war Italy was not always the carefree European paradise we imagine today. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the country's economy was in tatters. Allied forces had bombed the country for years until the German Army surrendered in May of 1945, leaving Italy's manufacturing and transportation infrastructures in the rubble. Yet, it was only about a decade later when the Italian economy rebounded — so much so that economists call the period from 1958 until 1963 the "Italian Economic Miracle" (or what Italians call "Miracolo"). This period transformed Italy from a poor, mostly rural economy into a global industrial power. It also propelled Italian fashion onto the world stage.

In the last few months, the fashion press has been abuzz about whether the coronavirus pandemic will sound the death knell for the suit. Over on Savile Row, bespoke tailoring houses are getting crushed by soaring rents and the lack of overseas orders. In the United States, three of the largest companies to declare bankruptcy this year — J. Crew, Brooks Brothers, and most recently Men’s Wearhouse — are known for their affordable tailoring. In her recently published New York Times Magazine article, Irina Aleksander wonders if Americans may have settled into sweatpants forever.

As most people only wear tailoring to the office, suit sales will likely be in a slump for a while. But for people who dress for pleasure, I imagine the suit and its accoutrements will remain relevant for some time. The fact is, it feels good to dress up. “Outside” clothes help divide the day into distinct periods, which is especially nice now that work-from-home culture threatens to make every activity feel the same. A few weeks ago, I got coffee with my friend Peter Zottolo outside of a cafe, where he told me that he and his wife still try to find occasions to dress up now and again. One day we’ll return to bars, restaurants, and perhaps even offices. And when we do, “nice” clothes will return.

The good news is that the tailored clothing market has never been better. Ten years ago, if you wanted a semi-affordable suit, your options were mostly limited to J. Crew, Brooks Brothers, and various haberdashers who worked with Southwick. You could shop second-hand, of course, but what you saved in money, you spent on time. Today, there are many more options at affordable prices, particularly for people who favor classic Italian style. If you’re looking to get a suit any time in the future, here are three places that I think are worth being on your shortlist.

The end of the year always brings some reflection on what’s happened. The closing of this year, however, is special because it marks the end of a decade. So, this past week, I’ve been thinking about what are some of the biggest changes in fashion in the last ten years. Is it about the rise of specific trends, the emergence of certain subcultures, or something else? The more I think about it, the more I think this decade will be remembered not for its looks, but the ways in which we engage with clothing. 

I often go back to this 2015 article by Cathy Horyn, where the then New York Times writer suggested that we may have entered a post-trend universe. That is, where fashion used to be cyclical — going from skinny jeans to baggy, and then back to skinny again — it’s now possible for many styles to coexist together. As she puts it, “there is no single trend that demands our attention, much less our allegiance, as so many options are available to us at once.” She credits this to social media, the ability of brands to create their own universe, and a greater acceptance for diversity in dress in general. An excerpt:

Throughout the 20th century, the way women dressed was governed by trends — from the hobble skirt of the 1910s, a Paris invention that spread to small cities and was ultimately sold by Sears, to Dior’s radical New Look of 1947, to the ’60s miniskirt. But for lots of reasons, mostly to do with economics and, inevitably, the Internet, the industry has moved away from that model. The last big trend that I can recall, one that started on the runway and exploded among mainstream manufacturers, was the hospital-green cargo pants that Nicolas Ghesquière made for Balenciaga. That was more than a decade ago. 

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