Sartorial heros

[marcelo]

Adolphe Menjou' autobiography has a quite suggestive title: "It Took Nine Tailors". Has anybody read it?

Is this also a pun on the nine tailors which are part of the passing bell at a man's funeral?
NJS

Yes, "nine tailors make a man in Christ." It certainly would have taken a plethora of tailors to outfit Menjou. Have you ever seen pictures of his closets?

Menjou' autobiography is out-of-print and second hand copies are quite expensive. Does anybody know whether the book shows photos of him? If so, would anybody post some of them?

[storeynicholas]

Alfred Duff Cooper is another who is missing - British politician, diplomat, historian and biographer. He made a greatly celebrated maiden speeches in the House of Commons and was Minister for War in WWII. Afterwards he was British Ambassador to France; married to Lady Diana Cooper; when he was later created Viscount Norwich, his wife decided to keep to Lady Diana Cooper as Norwich rhymed with porridge.
NJS

[Mark Seitelman]

Is this also a pun on the nine tailors which are part of the passing bell at a man's funeral?
NJS

Yes, "nine tailors make a man in Christ." It certainly would have taken a plethora of tailors to outfit Menjou. Have you ever seen pictures of his closets?

Menjou' autobiography is out-of-print and second hand copies are quite expensive. Does anybody know whether the book shows photos of him? If so, would anybody post some of them?

The book has some photos, but they are nothing extraordinary from the viewpoint of "dressing". I believe that you can find photos by doing a Google search under "Adolphe Menjou photographs." There might also be a fan site.

Menjou lists a number of tailors that he patronized. When I get a chance I shall list them.

[storeynicholas]

Yet another contender is Robert Cummings (amongst many other roles, the wife's lover in Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder). Never, ever carried anything in his pockets apparently.
NJS

[storeynicholas]

I am sure that I have mentioned Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch before - but I have found this old photograph of him in a group of Fowey yachtsmen and, from his apparent age, it was taken sometime in the1930s. The Dutch writer Maarten Maartens, who visited him, wrote in a letter to another correspondent that Q was king of the place - in a quiet way - and, seeing him here, in a group, all apparently completely at ease with each other, although (without any shocking distinction), he has a clear edge for clothes, the picture demonstrates just what Maartens meant.

[img][img]http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg55 ... oupOWN.jpg[/img]
NJS[/img]

[Costi]

What a beautiful picture, NJS!

[storeynicholas]

Thank you, Costi. He always delivered his lectures at Cambridge in full morning dress and I have been told, by someone who knew his family, that one of the coats that he wore (between appointment in 1912 and his death in 1944) had been his wedding coat from the early 1890s: I am sure that they don't make many coats like that anymore! One of his aphorisms in relation to the development of language and the emergence of new words was Let us reject no coin for its minting, but only if its metal be base which I take to mean that orderly change in language is to be welcomed and that language is not static; maybe the same principle might be applied to the evolution of dress too.
NJS

[Scrumhalf]

As a pianist, I would like to nominate Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli - very stylish and obsessed with his appearance, much like many of us, I suppose

[storeynicholas]

CS: 29th December 1895 - 25th September 1972
My paternal grandfather - always 'Tom' to me, although that was not his real name - had had a fairly difficult early life. About the difficulty he never spoke and we just inferred from the gaps in information and the silence that sometimes reigned that it had been so. About some things he would, though, speak - of favourite haunts - King's Wood, Pentewan Valley, the square and terrace and a line of stones set in a wall, at the foot of the Old Hill, where he and his friends had used to sit as boys; the artificial harbour, built to transport China clay - last used in 1940 - and the channel to it long silted-up; now just a walled expanse of stagnant water, moved only by the breeze; the Winnick - an area of windswept, grassy dunes beyond the beach; Trenarren valley, Hallane beach and, no doubt, all enhanced in his memory by hot summer days and autumns full of silver-grey-leafed, yellow-flowered gorse and drifting, reddened leaves; of apples and of sloes, the sweep of swallows’ flight over susurrating, cliff-hanging cornfields; the sweet whispering of rising larks and the comforting sounds and smells of horses shifting and of cattle lowing; long before the world went quite mad and started to tear itself apart in the trenches of the First World War, in which he served in muddy, bloody trenches; against a mad German’s pointless fight and where he suffered mustard gas attacks and, besides doing his duty, I am sure, went beyond the call of it; full well enough to earn a record which helped him later on. He also earned the friendship of a German Jewish doctor who (according to the doctor’s son), when captured as a prisoner of war, he saw starving and gave his own meal: they remained friends long after and his boy became my father’s friend until another mad German probably murdered them - never heard of again. after a certain point, in the 1930s. I still possess the little bronze medal, bearing an eagle motif and the dates 1914-1918 with the legend ‘Fur Osterreich’ which the doctor gave to my grandfather after the war - such a worn and tarnished little thing - a metal artefact as intrinsically near nothing as could be, minted as a medal of defeat - but carried always in my grandfather’s pocket: a souvenir of many things, some dreadful - but signalling Hope and Friendship triumphant somehow over all things.

Most people we recall from a certain age but Tom I recall as ever having been there and always someone to seek out: not that he said very much and, even though I was just a child, we enjoyed the easy silence that normally only old friends can afford. He used to take me for walks and drives and just show me places that I might never have seen otherwise - some even lost now to the developers and in those places no larks rise again. But with the memory of those days, his essence - calm more than anything - calm and quiet most of all - comes back to me - and I recall as well the way he stood: full square to the world and upright but easy and loose-limbed, arms swaying by his sides as he walked; his speckled, slightly restive, hands often coiled and gently concealing his thumbs as though he knew that he had nothing to demonstrate; always hatted outside - normally in a felt hat or tweed cap, maybe a straw or linen cap for playing bowls later on - at which he was very good and always carefully turned out even for a picnic in the countryside - but favouring some old-fashioned things - boots rather than shoes and long combination underwear in every season.

But the things that I remember most about his appearance are his simple cleanliness, especially his hands and feet and carefully brushed hair; how he often cut himself shaving; the high shine on his shoes - and his generally slightly bagged-out, lived-in trouser knees - and then the way he wore his hat. In this - as in the song They Can’t Take That Away From Me - he had that indescribable certain something that we instinctively recognize although we can never describe, explain - still less - imitate it - and photographs are no substitute for the living man.

His shirts and ties varied so little that, although he had different sets of clothes, he generally looked the same; as though he had, very early on, settled on a simple style, devoid of too much anything - but especially too much brightness - and just kept to it, so that you saw and thought of him and not of his clothes - they were plainly there and might even be remarked upon for their fit and state but they comprised just a part - and he would have thought a small part - of himself and took a correspondingly small part of his time and attention because, just as he worked to live and did not live to work, he also dressed to live and never dressed to kill and did not make the mistake - out of true worldly vanity - vanitas vanitatum - of turning these two necessities into ends in themselves and so everything worth doing into even more of a demonstration than it needs to be that:-
‘....Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play’d in a Box whose candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
Ed. FitzGerald.

NJS

[Guest]

my heroes include:

Cary grant
Marcello Mastroianni
Bryan Ferry
David Bowie
Oscar Wilde
James Dean
Michael Caine
Marlon Brando
Alain delon
Clint Eastwood- as a cowboy
Sean Connery
John Steed- TV character
Pierce Brosnan
Patrick Bateman- fictional murderer

[garu]

Alfred Duff Cooper is another who is missing - British politician, diplomat, historian and biographer. He made a greatly celebrated maiden speeches in the House of Commons and was Minister for War in WWII. Afterwards he was British Ambassador to France; married to Lady Diana Cooper; when he was later created Viscount Norwich, his wife decided to keep to Lady Diana Cooper as Norwich rhymed with porridge.
NJS

Quite so, but at least she wasn't in Coventry...

garu

[ottovbvs]

In the catalogue of older politicians I'm surprised no one mentioned "Brummagem" Joe Chamberlain the dominant figure in British politics between the decline of Gladstone and rise of Lloyd George. He looked very modern in around 1900 when most politicians wore beards and moustaches. Another fashion plate from this era who lasted into the twenties was Admiral Sir David Beatty. I haven't figured out how to embed here or I'd put in a couple of pics.

[ottovbvs]

Joseph Chamberlain was the father of, amongst others, Neville and Austen. Joseph was one of the few politicians ever to split both the Liberal and the Tory parties (over tariff reform). He held a series of high offices, beginning his career as a fantastically successful screw manufacturer and popular and civically improving mayor of Birmingham. He was returned unopposed as the MP for Birmingham (I am sure that no one wants full dates do they?) and held various high offices in several administrations on both sides of the floor. His son Austen won the Nobel Prize for Peace, in securing the Locarno Pact in 1922 and a then continuing peace in Europe and he was also made a Knight of the Garter. His brother, Neville, realized too late that Hitler could not be trusted and failed to keep the nation's forces up to strength in the 1930s, leading up to Hitler's invasion of Poland and the British ultimatum to Germany leading, in turn, to the famous wireless broadcast ending "and consequently, this country is at war with Germany" . A remarkable family, Joe was an undoubted sartorial hero. The Spy cartoons of him (the very last was of him), don't do him justice and the best portrait is in the Carlton Club. He was a great orchid fan and always wore a spectacular orchid buttonhole; the plants for these his great wealth enabled him to employ a full-time botanist to tend in vast orchid houses. He also wore an eyeglass. Austen was also well turned-out (again sporting an eyeglass). Neville was neat but not really a sartorial hero; moreover, hoping, diplomatically for the best., as many did, and exerting every effort to avoid a repetition of the carnage of WWI. His reasoning was well-intentioned even if his trust was misplaced. At least his failure to avoid war, gave rise to the opportunity for Britain's last lion, a hero of every kind, including sartorial , to come forth from his den and contribute more than any other to the saving of the world from (in a paraphrase of his own words), the stain of Hitler's corrupting fingers.
NJS

Storey:
Sorry I missed this ref to Joe Chamberlain who was exponentially tougher than either of his offspring. He wrecked two parties after all. Austen modelled himself almost slavishly on his father and gave rise to the famous quote sometimes attributed to Churchill but more likely coming from F. E. Smith: .....Austen always played the game... and always lost it. Neville was massively wrong but his approach wasn't in the least bit irrational in the context of times. The British Empire by 1938 hadn't the remotest chance of winning a war against Germany with France as its only ally. Going back to the 1900's Joe Chamberlain was the only leading British politician who had any sensible ideas about how Britain was to remain a great power able to compete with Germany and the US. You mention his orchid houses which were at his home in Birmingham and is called Highbury, it's still there, a rather ghastly late Victorian villa type residence that was furnished hideously in what Margot Asquith called the "late Pullman" style.

[SV]

I wonder about Jeremy Irons outside the screen. He's not always Charles Ryder but not the worst of the stars, either.

SV

[storeynicholas]

Here's Clive Brook from a 1930s Gallagher cigarette card:



And here is Rex Harrison in a still from The Rake's Progress

[/img]


NJS