The London Lounge

Gentlemen,

Please allow me to introduce myself: I am 30-year old resident of Amsterdam and have had a keen interest in high-quality, timeless men's clothing for a few years now. I own a few MTM items (2 suits, some shirts), all of which are partly hand-made. I buy a pair of hand-made shoes about once a year (as often as my limited budget allows). Most of the items I wear were made either in Paris (RTW Charvet shirt, Charvet ties, Weston shoes), or Italy (my suits, most of my shirts and other shoes). I have not had the opportunity to venture into the world of bespoke clothing, but plan to do so before the year is over. I thought it would be wise to register at the London lounge now, because I'll certainly want your advice when my first trip to a real tailor is due.

In the meantime, I'd very much like to know what you gentlemen think about this article, in which Giorgio Armani unabashedly bashes Savile Row: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/artic ... 73,00.html

Looks like he's trying to do what Savile Row's already been doing.

Well, nobody ever accused Armani of being a poor salesman. I found it interesting that he made no mention of that other seat of established men's sartorial excellence, Naples. Perhaps he doesn't consider the Neapolitan style to be much of a threat to his success.

Shameless! Armani, with a sharp sense of the men’s apparel market’s trends, notes that more and more men have started to drift away from the fashionable (and often tasteless) OTR “designer creations” and are rediscovering the true basis of elegance, the origin of fashion’s various “re-interpretations”. But he hijacks this liberating tendency back to the spheres of fashion and proves a hypocrite who denigrates that which he is attempting to mimic, pretending he is reinventing the suit. Armani is actually reinventing the the hot water and takes advantage of the sartorial ignorance of many modern men to milk them of shamelessly high amounts of money which have nothing to do with the actual value (material or sartorial) of the clothes he offers. He probably cares little (if any) about cultivating the virtues of elegance, he just hopes to have found a way to get men to SPEND. It reminds me of Joel Grey and Liza Minelli’s “Money, money…” song in Bob Fosse’s “Cabaret”: “Money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round…”

Costi wrote:He probably cares little (if any) about cultivating the virtues of elegance, he just hopes to have found a way to get men to SPEND.

... which he practically confesses to by stating that his new couture line is aimed at Russian billionaires and the like (or am I now being unkind to Russian billionaires?).

All the same, should the Row be worried about his offensive?

The 80's are over, but timeless bespoke clothing is always in fashion.

Best Regards,

Cufflink79

Armani wrote:something made exclusively for them to define their social position

Armani wrote:If the customer wants a particularly luxurious, rare fabric, say a double cashmere with a particular wash, and a specially dyed silk lining, he can have it; provided he can afford it; said Armani

It is quite disappointing that Armani needs to slander Savile Row in order to draw attention to an effort which amounted to exactly zero to date. Read in conjunction with the second quote, Armani does show his colors in a way that I do not like at all.

I think that the RTW/MTM clothing is much overpriced Armani, particularly the Armani Jeans range of products.

Regards,
Don

On the one hand . . .

Armani is the CEO and spokesman for a clothing empire seeking to enter a new line. He has to drum-up some noise.

On the other hand . . .

Armani represents the clothing that people wear and want. He is more in tune with the general public than Savile Row.

Popular - yes, he is. But does that entitle him to insult IN CORPORE the foremost representatives of the very source of inspiration of his "new line" ? He may drum up all he likes about being DIFFERENT, but to offend Saville Row like that... is very much in bad taste, in my opinion.
I wouldn't mind if such an appreciation came from the "general public", with which Armani is indeed more in tune than Saville Row (because in great part he generated that "tune") - but coming from him, it only says a lot about his insecurity and lack of arguments.

Armani wrote:If the customer wants a particularly luxurious, rare fabric, say a double cashmere with a particular wash, and a specially dyed silk lining, he can have it; provided he can afford it; said Armani

He seems to be going down the same path with the pricing of such things that, sadly, has become par for the course in the luxury watch world, adding a few hundred dollars of precious cloth (or metal, in the case of watches), and doubling, or tripling the price.

Mind you, it's the opposite of most of the Armani lines, where the more expensive garments are the bizarre ones made out of various synthetics or even metallic fibres...

Too bad he made that comment, that was in poor taste.
Personally I prefer Saville row over what Mr. Armani is introducing.
He promised expensive materials but I don't remember the promise of a sartorial masterpiece. (I don't mean to aim a rebuff at him but, his statements do not strike
me as one who is very interested in the art of tailoring.)

More on "Armani vs. The Row":

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b79606b6-1e18-1 ... e2340.html

It includes a bit of Armani's recant from the Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago.

Also, for those of you who didn't catch it, here is how Tom Mahon and his business partner Hugh Macleod responded to the initial article:

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type ... 03065.html

Well, I think he is enemy #1, not for the row but for the whole tailors world. He already managed to destroy in the 80s big part of the male clothing culture, with customers who went to tailors asking for armani styling. I'd get his menace seriously.