Tag: men’s fashion

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Accessories Footwear Intellectual Property Menswear Textiles

Perfect Fit – Part II

An interview with Simon Crompton, creator of the blog Permanent Style

Photograph Copyright © 2018 by Alan Behr

In my last post, I reported on my conversation in London with Simon Crompton, who runs the website Permanent Style (www.permanentstyle.com), which is devoted to the world of bespoke (custom-made) menswear. We discussed elements of style for men, but when the conversation moved to the topic of how a website proprietor protects his own intellectual property, Mr. Crompton had some decidedly pragmatic ideas.

Permanent Style is authored almost entirely by Mr. Crompton, who, last year, was finally able to devote his full professional time to it. The site features the latest developments in bespoke, from tailoring to shirtmaking to shoemaking, around the world. It is supported by advertising, and it also promotes its own limited line of products, from surprisingly stylish watch caps (ski caps) to Oxford shirting for readers to provide their bespoke shirtmakers. Prominent on the site are reviews of makers of bespoke clothing and shoes, with Mr. Crompton serving as live mannequin and photographer’s model throughout, reporting on each step of the process.

I asked Mr. Crompton what kind of legal protections he employs for his work. Because his writing originates in Britain and not the USA, he is spared the unique (and to those of us who have done it for clients or ourselves, often frustrating) requirement of registering his copyrights. His pragmatic view: “It isn’t as if it is a novel or song lyrics. Anything on the site obviously comes from me, and no one is going to run out and say I’m Simon, I wrote this.”

As for protecting his brand, he holds to an equally pragmatic approach: be first out, keep a solid reputation, and you win. “The site has been up just over ten years, and it is well-known. That’s a very good position in the world relative to others who might be trying to establish themselves.”

Mr. Crompton also noted a key advantage to prose authored in Internet time: “What I write is so fast-changing, and there is such a high volume of it that it’s not that easy to protect, but at the same time, there is not much virtue in somebody copying. I already have the biggest traffic. If someone were to start copying my articles, that would never generate much traffic for him. He would still have to attract readers and then subscribers by offering something different, and unless that should happen, I would always do better on search engine optimization.”

That goes to the heart of a key debate in copyright circles—what utility is legal protection in a world in which almost everyone can read just about anything, and anyone can publish just about whatever he or she chooses to write, on platforms from Twitter on up? Registering the copyright, to say nothing of suing to stop infringement, can look old-fashioned in the context of a business (and social-media) model that values “reach,” often by free access, and loyalty for the generation of revenue more than it does traditional legal protections.

In short, Mr. Compton is conducting a very contemporary business to promote many very traditional crafts. If by so doing he helps craftsmanship flourish, we can only commend him-even if the model depends more on lawyers reading about dressing well (and, we hope, attempting to do so) than on offering legal advice. When it comes to what we do, however, lawyers can only continue to recommend to their clients that they reach out and consult with their counsel whenever making important decisions about their intellectual property. If you do not make these decisions yourself, the marketplace will very likely make them for you.

Credit: Alan Behr

Categories
Accessories Footwear Intellectual Property Menswear Textiles

Perfect Fit – Part I

An interview with Simon Crompton, creator of the blog Permanent Style

Photograph Copyright © 2018 by Alan Behr

Readers of our blog have probably noticed my interest in custom-made clothing. There is a professional reason: because we represent so many different brands of ready-made clothing, wearing something more esoteric allows me not to show favorites.

For over ten years, Simon Crompton has been reporting online, in his website Permanent Style (www.permanentstyle.com), about the refined world of custom-made menswear—which, in British English, is known as bespoke (as in, asked for in advance). Mr. Crompton may be familiar to intellectual-property lawyers from his years of service as the lead writer for the International Trademark Association’s annual meeting newsletter—among other publications. I recently sat down with him at a café in London, and we talked about lawyers, protection of his own intellectual property and the finer things in menswear.

“I like the fact that lawyers seem to man the last bastion of dressing a little bit formally—because that’s generally what you want from your lawyer,” said Mr. Crompton, echoing the advice of the American tailor and author Alan Flusser. And he agreed on the reason: it is all about building a sense of trust. He hastened to add, however, that it is not about conformity: “All over the UK, and I’m sure it happens in the US as well, you see young lawyers outside of a pub on a Friday night, and eighty percent of them will be wearing a navy suit, white shirt and black lace-up shoes. It looks completely predictable. There is no expression of individuality.”

Bespoke, he explained, is about looking smart but in your own way: all fine tailors have a “house style,” but within what is typically quite a broad range, the customer in effect participates in designing what he will wear. Indeed, I had just come to Mr. Crompton from visiting my own London tailor, Henry Poole & Co., where I was able to plan a future suit as purposefully as a chef planning a meal: a gray pin-dot cloth in wool and cashmere. A peak or a notch collar? This time, the notch. Lining: abjure the bold prints for something more reserved, a contrasting gray pattern, but still quite unique. And a collared vest (called here a waistcoat)—because, as a transplanted New Orleanian, I still am not quite used to New York winters and because, to be frank, it adds a touch of style. That is what bespoke is all about.

Our next topic was dear to my editorial heart: I have delved several times on these pages into the mysteries of the necktie—that one item of a man’s workday dress that has absolutely no discernible function except to make him look better. It also relates to a very important fact about the male physique: a well-cut suit jacket forces the eye upward, to the neck and then the face. Having it pass along a v-shaped crop of chest hair does not support an impression of a man of consequence. “A suit without a tie can work sometimes,” Mr. Crompton offered, “if it is a very casual suit, but most times, it just looks as if something is missing.”

Indeed, although Mr. Crompton was wearing a dark green Neapolitan suit (by the tailor Ettore de Cesare) made of corduroy—that ribbed cotton cloth that is the winter-weight mirror to the informality of linen for summer—he was quite correct that it would have worked far less successfully without his blue woolen knit tie by Trunk Clothiers of London.

But what about those—relatively speaking—more casual days even lawyers are sometimes afforded? “I think it is important for a lawyer to try to master the art of wearing sports jacket and trousers,” said Mr. Crompton. His use of the word master was not an accident. Most professional men wear that outfit often; doing it in a stylish way, however, is a challenge to many. “Start off with Navy jacket and gray trousers and start experimenting slightly—with brown trousers and a different kind of jacket with subtle patterns.” In other words, make it stylish, but make it your own—even if every bit of it was purchased off-the-rack. Remember that bespoke customers also buy most of what they wear, from jeans to raincoats, ready-made.

And that is what bespoke is really about: doing it smart, doing it stylishly and most important, doing in a way not necessarily done by others.

In my next post, I will explore how Mr. Crompton looks to protect his own intellectual property.

Credit: Alan Behr

See post…“Perfect Fit – Part I“

Categories
General / Musings Menswear

Alan Flusser – Part 2: The American Male and His Wardrobe

Photographed by Rose Callahan

I was discussing the history of style with Alan Flusser in his office on East 48th Street in Manhattan, a convivial nook that shares the floor with his showroom and workroom. I turned to a topic about which I knew, from Mr. Flusser’s informative writings, that he had much to say: how it is that the typical American businessman or professional man used to look so natty and how is it that his descendants came to look—rather as they now do.

“First of all,” Mr. Flusser told me, “in between the wars, you had a situation in which a lot of people couldn’t afford clothes. It was the Depression. On the other side of it, there were still a lot of wealthy people. And there was also Hollywood, and in Hollywood at the time, when moviemaking was at its zenith of popularity, you had great male leading actors whose job it was to project Hollywood glamour, not just on screen but in their social lives.”

Anyone so young as to wonder if celebrity worship started with iPhone apps and social media should read a good history of American popular culture to know what Mr. Flusser means. My mother, a spiritual child of the Golden Age of Hollywood, grew up hoping to copy every button and bow on her favorite stars and still sees actors as transcendent personalities. For men, however, as Mr. Flusser went on to note, the catalyst was a “confluence of male sartorial role models,” from British aristocrats, politicians and businessmen to those movie stars. Men were taking an interest in dressing well, in part due to those examples, which were regularly offered in the new media of film, picture magazines and, later, television.

“In Hollywood at the time,” continued Mr. Flusser,” you had about twenty men who individually set their own kind of style” and thereby marked the path for those millions interested in following. He noted in particular Cary Grant and Fred Astaire. “In terms of learning how to dress, there developed between the two world wars the kind of clothing that we wear today, soft clothing that you could move in comfortably—lounge clothing, it was called—not stiff and Victorian.” Indeed, although the modern business suit’s origins can be traced back to nineteenth-century military uniforms, it was the resulting lounge suit of British gentlemen that evolved into the contemporary international business suit. (If you do not believe that, put on a suit of the London cut, turn up the collar and pull the lapels toward each other. You will look just a bit like the Duke of Wellington.)

That is all well and good, but who in the public eye right now would a young man seek to emulate? Attention, Millennials, this one is for you: “I would be hard-pressed to come up with a single person,” said Mr. Flusser, a note of frustration overtaking what had been an assertive tone. He suggested George Clooney, who is not in his first youth, of course, but did not feel comfortable naming anyone else in entertainment.

As I now knew was his method, Mr. Flusser offered history: “In the 1960s, you had the Peacock Revolution. There was a rebellion against ‘the Establishment’ and the more traditional dress that people associated with their parents. From about 1968 until the 1980s, there was a void of good guidance on how men should dress. If you take the generation after that, you get pretty close to where we are today, and you find two complete generations of men who never had the benefit of having any kind of solid information on the elements of stylish dressing. By then, you had had a complete inversion. Instead of style being handed down from above, it bubbled up from below—from the street.” And street wear, as we know, makes its mark by aspirating toward a state of cool—a hard state to reach and an even harder one to maintain.

Where does that leave us now? “It’s a very confusing period of time in terms of trying to learn how to dress and come to terms with what you know about how to present yourself,” concluded Mr. Flusser. True enough, but at least, because of our conversation, I had come to understand why that is so.

Credit:  Alan Behr

See post…”Alan Flusser – Part 1: A Question of Balance”

See post…”Alan Flusser – Part 3: Listen Up, Counsel: This One is for You“

Categories
General / Musings Menswear

There Ought To Be A Law–Against Bad Manners

There has been much in the news lately about the law and the appropriateness of conduct. Here is a short summary: groping people you come across during the course of a workday is illegal. That was easy. Now try this one: when hosting a business lunch, should you direct the seating or let your guests choose their own seats? If you draw the task of picking the wine for the lunch meeting but may not end up paying for it, what sort of bottle should you choose? These and other questions (that may be of small moment to celebrities who risk arrest for sexual harassment or worse but remain of considerable consequence to those very many of us who want to host a successful business lunch) were answered for me in a private session by Skype with the British etiquette consultant William Hanson.

Young, well-spoken and serious about his subject, Mr. Hanson, who appears regularly on British television, proved uniquely qualified to help guide me through these muddles of my own making. The host, he advised, should take it upon himself or herself to assign seats to the invited guests. That was comforting to hear because it is often the case that, in any group of people seated for business, there are one or two you especially want to speak with—and there may also be one or two you know would not take particularly well to speaking to each other. Mr. Hanson’s license to direct the seating was therefore gratefully accepted.

As for the wine: although many has been the time I have thumbed the wine list to survey first-growth Bordeaux bottles from triumphant years, I know better than to stick my host with a four-figure drinks tab. Mr. Hanson recommended a practice I have actually been following (to my relief): ask what everyone is having for a main course, choose an appropriate style of wine and (if needed, with the help of the sommelier) pick a bottle two or so notches up the price scale from the cheapest.

The question of who pays is an interesting one—especially when everyone is presumably on an expense account and is privately measuring the price of the meal in relation to his or her firm’s rules or expectations. One the nice things about bringing guests to your club is that the question of who pays is thereby settled. In a restaurant, Mr. Hanson advised, the host should consider setting up payment with management before the first guest arrives. Failing that, slipping away discretely before the bill comes is also an easy way to handle a sometimes-delicate situation.

There ought to be a law. That has been said so many times about things that are merely annoying, albeit consistently so. For me, there ought to be a law reprimanding any food and beverage manager who permits servers to pour water intended for tea into a coffee chafer urn—because once the urn has been permeated with coffee, the tea will taste from coffee no matter how long you let it steep. Mr. Hanson addressed my related concern: the speaker has stood up and everyone is drinking that so-so coffee or even worse tea—and returning cups onto saucers with clacks that can make the speaker feel as if he or she is addressing a room full of obedient crickets. The solution: practice doing it in silence or muzzle the fall of the cup with a paper napkin.

And finally from Mr. Hanson, a fashion tip (and one I have been giving): for those of us who wear bespoke suits: button all the sleeves—no leaving a couple open so everyone knows you have a tailor. It is obviously a good suit, and the buttons do their assigned good work when closed.

As Mr. Hanson reminded me, good etiquette is simply about putting others before ourselves. If everyone does it, everyone, in business or socially, will feel blessed.

Credit:  Alan Behr

Categories
Intellectual Property Menswear

Not My Bag(gy)

It had to happen, and it did in, of all places, The Wall Street Journal. Late in February, Jacob Gallagher contributed an article persuasively advocating for a new appreciation of baggy pants. Even as The New York Times obsessively writes about President Trump (Not long after the inauguration, I counted twenty-six pieces revisited to him on The Times‘ home page.), here comes the more conservatively leaning Journal to bring us news we can use: the ins and outs of wearing slouchy trousers.

Menswear runs in somewhat erratic cycles, with lean and trim tailoring having been the look in (roughly speaking) the years following WWI and the 1960s and much of this century, with looser cuts, often led by trousers with pleats, having been in vogue in the decades in between. Risking a generalization, when youth dominates fashion and popular culture, slim is in. Consider The Beatles and all those earnest young and lesser bands of our present era. Giorgio Armani rose to fame when he helped end that earlier cycle with his looser cut suits that draped, rather than seemingly adhered to, Richard Gere in American Gigolo (1980). In his Journal story, Jacob Gallagher quoted Patrick Grant, the designer for E. Tautz (London): “A lot of people are just not built for skinny trousers, particularly those of us who have a few years under our belt.”

All well and true, except when it isn’t. As Mr. Gallagher just barely hinted, baggy is hard to pull off if you are what he politely termed “vertically challenged”—which is to say, you can all too easily end up looking like a bar mitzvah boy forced to wear one of his father’s suits. I am not short but not anywhere near tall and not in my first youth. Having slimmed down to my high school weight and buffed up in the gym, however, I slide into the trim, Italian-inspired Brooks Brothers Milano cut like a cartridge into a revolver breech. My London tailor, Henry Poole & Co., had to snip my pattern down to comply with the requirements of my new physique. I trimmed the trousers of the Henry Poole suits already in my wardrobe and have gone down two waist sizes, even as I only buy slim cuts in casual wear. A leading fashion stylist who had worked hard in the svelte-deprived ’90s to get me to puff out now says I look great while deflated back to slim. Who wants to upset that?

And so: a thank you to The Journal for letting me know that slouchy has again gone mainstream. This time, I am having none of it. As I said in these pages before, I realized late in life (as a Uniqlo customer), that I have the taste and build of a Japanese teenager. Every other guy can and, if it strikes him as correct, go baggier than Bozo. This fit but not so tall guy is sticking with the trim cut that suits him best.

As my partner Helene Freeman has blogged, we await word from the Supreme Court about what standard will be used to determine what designs on cheerleader uniforms are properly protectable by copyright. (Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc., et al.). That case could have wide implications for anyone whose after-school activities include jumping up and down in decorated tennis dresses in front of football bleachers—and potentially for many others as well. The debate on the cut of trousers, shirts and jackets will, happily, be unaffected. In the USA, despite sincere efforts to change the law, the pattern (outline) of a garment is unprotected as long as it is a functional element—which it nearly always is. Designers and their customers have free reign to go baggy or keep it lean, without interference by lawyers or judges. The question, I am happy to report, is one of taste, not of jurisprudence, at least under American law. Apply your own style sense or consult your own personal stylist, and best wishes with that.

Credit: Alan Behr

Photo Credit/Source: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland (Creative Commons)

Categories
General / Musings Menswear

Too Stylish to Stay at Home—Or Go Back There

German Police Jacket

While attending the annual meeting of the Copyright Society of the USA in Newport, Rhode Island last year, I walked into a military surplus store and came out the owner of a Swiss military field jacket. I had found a row of them crowded into a single rack. All were a bit malodorous (often a hazard when buying often questionably stored surplus clothes), and although none bore a size label, all were unworn. The first one I tried on fit almost as well as something my tailor might have done up for me, and so, sacrificing the eight-dollar purchase price, I took it home. Much of the summer was occupied with airing it out, but with the first chill of autumn, I wore it on the streets of Manhattan.

It hardly drew a notice from my dinner companion that evening, which was a bit discouraging because she was Swiss. But the payoff came next time out, during a horrid day of wind, chill and rain. The jacket, intended to keep hearty Swiss conscripts dry and toasty in the worst Alpine weather, answered its calling brilliantly. Weaving among New Yorkers who stomped along in the wet ground as if persecuted, I kept up a merry pace, as warm as if I were wearing a space heater. I thought that the nipped-waist, gray-green, single-breasted, many-pocketed jacket, which would have enabled me to blend in seamlessly in an Alpine pine forest, was also quite stylish. It was undeniably practical: there was even space for a Swiss Army knife. But when my prize at last emerged from the foul weather again to rest under the sweet lights of home, my wife had this to say: “Where did you get that ugly jacket?”

That intramural sartorial challenge next led me to a website where I found a green German policeman’s jacket. This wardrobe caprice set me back a relatively dear eleven dollars plus shipping. Also unworn, it bore the fading hang tag of its manufacturer under the name it was called during the days it was a state-run enterprise in East Germany. The jacket appeared to date, however, from a time near the end of the last century when the cops in the German state of its origin (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to you geography buffs) switched to much cooler SWAT-team coats of blue. Indeed, these green jackets do tend to make even the most warlike German Polizist look like a bureaucrat—which might well have been the intention in a nation grown uncomfortable with symbols of armed authority.

This time, the outerwear debut took place in the parents’ lounge of the Deutsche Sprachschule (German Language School) attended by my first grader on Saturday mornings. Everyone recognized it, and I got quite a few compliments, but a room full of German expats is not exactly a statistically supportable random sample for this stylistic boundary-pusher. As my son and I were heading up Lexington Avenue on our way home, we saw Eliot Rabin, who owns and designs menswear for the sophisticated Peter Elliot stores. He was busy on his mobile phone, but the moment he saw us, he excused himself to his caller, put down the phone and ran over to say, “That’s a great jacket.”

I was suddenly feeling the kind of confidence in my taste that is unmatched by any male who has not done a turn as the GQ Style Guy. As my wife opened the door for us and caught first sight of my new success, she said, “Where did you get that ugly jacket?”

So much for the old spousal imprimatur. I’ll take that under advisement–even as I troll the web for something chic in a size 38 that is a leftover from the Soviet navy.

Credit: Alan Behr