www.lover-fashion.com The Deities of Men’s Style

The Deities of Men’s Style
Whenever men’s wear designers find themselves in need of inspiration,
they turn to the pantheon: Cary Grant, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.
Though roughly 330 million deities populate the Hindu heavens, there are only a handful most people worship daily and know by name. Similarly, though there are about 330 billion images of celebrity divinities floating around the web empyrean at any given moment, when it comes down to it we seem inevitably to worship the same group of guys. This is meant in terms of style.

One hardly needs name them. Just utter the words “male style icon” and images inevitably form of celestial beings like Cary Grant, Paul Newman or Steve McQueen.

At least they do among that segment of the population that came of age before all manner of visual information was streamed directly onto the cerebral cortex by way of Instagram. That group would, of course, include most men’s wear designers, never in any case a culturally progressive group and less so when it comes to frame of reference — or, as image theft is often euphemized in fashion, “inspiration.”

“A lot of designers latch on to the same handful of guys,” the designer Michael Bastian noted recently, declining to point any fingers, both for diplomacy and because he himself has made frequent withdrawals from the familiar image bank. “It’s Steve McQueen, it’s Paul Newman, it’s Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, all done to utter death,” Mr. Bastian said.

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Cary Grant (shown in Paris in 1956) helped define the term “fashion icon.” Credit RDA/Getty Images
It is probably worth pointing out that there are good reasons why the same small group of men continues to exert a disproportionate influence on what we here at Men’s Style think of as men’s style.

Not only were Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Cary Grant uncommonly handsome humans, they were also possessed of that certain ineffable quality we categorize as cool. They looked great in clothes seemingly no matter what they wore. In part, this was because they looked as if they gave clothes and fashion not a moment’s thought.

“Perhaps the first thing I learned about style was that if something makes you feel good, chances are you look good,” Remo Rufini — the 54-year-old Italian billionaire who made his fortune by restoring cool to Moncler, a fusty and largely forgotten ski-wear label — said during the recent New York Fashion Week. “I think what makes people ‘icons’ is the confidence they give off wearing whatever it is they love to wear.”

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Preternatural confidence is a signal quality of the male icons under discussion. And it is, to be sure, a highly limited group, lacking altogether in racial and social and gender diversity. “So few black leaders have been allowed to shine forth,” and find an enduring place in the style pantheon, said Horace D. Ballard Jr., an essayist on black style and curator of education at the Birmingham Museum of Art. “Where is Marvin Gaye or Paul Robeson?”

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Marvin Gaye in 1970. His style has transcended generations but has been largely ignored by the fashion elite, according to Horace D. Ballard Jr., an essayist on African-American style. Credit Afro American Newspapers/Gado, via Getty Images
The available images of each of those men, no less than those of Newman, McQueen and Grant, convey a powerful sense of the difference between wearing one’s clothes and having them wear you. And in this they are all starkly unlike the dress-up dolls turned out in borrowed tuxedos at the Emmy Awards or any of the now ubiquitous and wholly purgatorial red carpet events.

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“The distinction between then and now is this idea that celebrities, the supposed role models, tend to be styled,” Josh Sims, author of “Icons of Men’s Style,” said by telephone from London. “They have assistants and their look is a professional, very deliberate creation of a team.”

That is not to suggest that the male Hollywood stars of the last century were unconcerned about image, he added. It is well established that Steve McQueen required that his bluejeans were tailored in such a way that one of his favorite assets, his behind, was well accentuated.

The care McQueen took with his off-screen appearance was also mirrored in the stylish cut of the clothes he wore in some of the films that seem to play in an infinite rerun loop in the imaginations of many men’s wear designers — classics like “Bullitt” and “The Thomas Crowne Affair.”

“Even the khakis he wears in ‘The Great Escape’ were not in any way accurate to the period,” Mr. Sims said. Standard-issue trousers for members of the Allied forces during World War II would have been wide legged and with a high-waist, ample in the rear. “McQueen had his cut to a ’60s proportion” for the film, Mr. Sims said. “They were much slenderer and much more fitted than the traditional trouser cut.”

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Sexy Lingerie Outlet Online Sexy Lingerie Outlet Sale Sexy Lingerie Online Sexy Lingerie Outlet Steve McQueen, considered one of the godfathers of modern men’s style. Credit John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images
The Italians have a handy term — sprezzatura — for sartorial gracefulness achieved through artful nonchalance. The concept behind sprezzatura was first codified by Baldessare Castiglione in his 1528 treatise, “The Book of the Courtier.” In it he steered young Renaissance gentlemen away from dangerous shoals of artifice and affectation, guiding them toward the safe haven of a public comportment predicated on making all a man does or wears “seem uncontrived and effortless.”

Naturally, sprezzatura is abused all the time in modern practice.

Think of a necktie deliberately knotted that slight bit wrong. Think of the absurdity of a half-tucked T-shirt. Think of shoes without laces or sneakers with suits. Think of the overwrought pocket square. The great cinematic icons would never have been caught dead betraying the amount of care that went into transforming, say, Paul Newman — a middle-class kid from suburban Shaker Heights, Ohio — into the quintessential sexy rebel or the archetypal cowboy of “Hud.”

“The personas stars created fulfilled a particular need of the times,” said G. Bruce Boyer, a men's wear expert and the author of the recently published “True Style.” “In ’30s stars, what was needed was an overt sex appeal and an extrovert personality necessary to cope with the Depression. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was expressions of rebellion against corporate consumerism, but safely and acceptably.”

It hardly matters that often the great style gods portraying rebels and adventurers and sportsmen were putting on a performance. What counts is that they kept us from noticing it all was an act.

“The best thing in style is a man who pulls off wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt perfectly,” Gert Jonkers, the co-editor of the influential men’s wear bible, Fantastic Man, said by phone from Amsterdam.. “That is almost the ambition everybody has. Every fashion designer you ever speak to says: ‘Oh, men shouldn’t wear fashion. Men should wear just jeans and a crew neck sweater.’ These style icons are the ones that did that first.”

And the gorgeously offhand photographs of them racing sports cars or riding motorcycles or popping open a beer were not necessarily the products of a candid camera. Almost all but the semi-nudes and stoner snapshots the photographer William Claxton took of his good friend Mr. McQueen were to some extent staged.

The photographic quality and rarity of those images adds to their potency and timelessness, Mr. Jonkers said. “It’s not like today’s celebrities, where there are so many bad images of them,” he said. “It’s great to look at Ryan Gosling until you see that picture of him running to the supermarket to get a carton of milk.”

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clubwear for women Last year, all five of the surviving U.S. presidents gathered in Dallas. They were there to dedicate the presidential library of George W. Bush; the show ended up being stolen, however, by the honoree’s father. And, more specifically, by the honoree's father's socks—which poked out from beneath the wheelchair-bound ex-president's pant cuffs, revealing themselves to be a particularly sassy shade of cotton-candy pink.

This wouldn’t be the first time that the elder President Bush would experiment with adventuresome hosiery; George H.W. has also been photographed sporting designs of lavender and orange and varying combinations of red, white, and blue. In that, he has been in good company. The statement sock—whether distinguished by a bright hue or a bold pattern or both at the same time—has become the go-to fashion accessory for guys from Wall Street, where “Friday socks” is a thing, to Silicon Valley, where every day is Friday. (Startup guys, according to one Bay Area buyer, favor not just colorful socks but also socks decorated with “words like ‘bacon’ and ‘beer’” and also “anything with ninjas.”)
Call it brosiery. Or man-gerie. Either way, it’s giving the tie and the pocket square a run for their money.

All of which helps to explain new sales numbers released today by the retail analytics firm NPD, revealing a 2-percent growth in sock sales between August 2013 and August 2014. That's a rate that has, in a weak economy, outpaced the general growth of the $206.7 billion global apparel market. And NPD speculates that it has been men, in particular, who have driven the increase. As Marshal Cohen, NPD’s chief industry analyst, explains it: “Over the past year, socks have become yet another outlet for expressing the extra splash of pattern and color they seek.”

* * *

The appeal of the statement sock—an answer, perhaps, to the statement jewelry that has long added versatility to women’s wardrobes—has contributed to a somewhat counterintuitive phenomenon: Last year, for the first time in more than a decade, the sales of men's apparel outpaced those for women. Driving the growth, according to the Wall Street Journal? “Double-digit gains in outerwear, pants, and socks.”

In part, to be sure, that increase has been due to sales of athletic socks. In part it’s been due to an increase in the average price of socks, which rose 24 percent between 2011 and 2013 (from $1.76 to $2.18 a pair, according to the NPD Group's Consumer Tracking Service). The other cause, though, has been less about socks as cushion and more about socks as fashion: the appeal of a flash of ankle peeking out from beneath the pant leg of an otherwise hum-drum suit. As the writer Josh Bearman explains it: “Socks are like lingerie for men. Only you know it’s there under your pants, but then when you walk, you give a little peek of what you’ve got on underneath.”

Call it Victor’s secret. Or, um, man-gerie. Or, um, brosiery. Regardless, it's giving the tie and the pocket square a run for their money when it comes to adding pizzazz to guys’ outfits. But the rise of the statement sock also makes you wonder: Why this? Why now? Why did it take so long for socks to become sassy?

* * *

One theory: Europe. Experimentation with gussied-up ankles, NPD’s Marshal Cohen told the Journal last year, started there, and then—like so many Windsor knots and slim-cut pants and spread-collar ginghams, migrated West to the States.
'The consumer-born trend sparked the whole idea of dressing the foot up.'

Another, complementary, theory: Nike. “Socks used to be a commodity part of the basketball business, but we developed a new innovative sock," the Nike executive Jayme Martin recently told a group of the company’s investors, referring to the Elite socks that Nike released in 2008 and issued in various colors and prints. At an average cost of $14 to $18 a pair, the Elites form a crucial component of Nike’s annual $100 million in sock sales. And that’s not just because they are, as barriers between shoe and skin, practical. "Kids aren't just wearing them on the courts,” Martin explained. “They are social currency."

That idea—that recognition that socks can be both commodity and currency—encouraged the company to see them, and sell them, as fashion accessories. As Cohen told the Journal: "What Nike Elite did was bring attention to the better-socks business. It's no longer just grabbing white socks out of the drawer. Now it's got to be this sock. The consumer-born trend sparked the whole idea of dressing the foot up."

Which wasn’t, of course, a wholly new idea. Almost since their invention, socks have doubled as decoration. The earliest versions were made of animal skins, gathered and tied around the wearers’ ankles; later versions—like those worn by the ancient Greeks and Romans—were made of matted animal fur. And socks have long been a kind of status symbol. By 1000 AD, socks—which are, given their shape, labor-intensive to produce—had become symbols of wealth among European nobility. They often included elaborate decorations.
???? A statement sock, made of cotton, from 12th-century Egypt (Wikimedia Commons)

Brosiery continues that tradition. “Socks are a way that I can stand out at work,” Roland Gonzales, who works in finance in New York, explains. “Everyone wears the same sort of conservative uniform,” he says. “This is a way to personalize my work wardrobe.” Rob Kardashian’s line of socks, which he sells at Neiman Marcus, feature messages like “Kiss Me” and “YOLO” on their soles. Sales for these all-too-literal of statement socks tripled in the first six months of business, a success Kardashian attributes to the fact that “everyone is wearing colorful socks.”

An added bonus: Statement socks are an easy and often inexpensive indulgence. Though high-end designs are certainly available (you can buy $185 socks at Barney’s, should your path in life lead to that), you can also buy the socks at stores like Forever 21 and Target, the latter of which says it "has seen a steady interest” in statement socks since introducing them in 2012.

Socks also have also, unsurprisingly, made their way to online retail, where services like Nice Laundry (“the Warby Parker of men’s socks”) sell packs of six pairs with names like "Chief," "Hot Shot," and "Prepster II" for $49 to $59, shipping included. "We make it very easy for you to refresh your entire sock drawer," Ricky Choi, Nice Laundry’s co-founder, told the New York Daily News.

Choi should know: His own sock drawer, he says, has more than 150 pairs
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