The London Lounge

People have often asked me to explain how it is that a person who has written so much about dressing and dress can be so entirely unenthusiastic and disbelieving about clothes. Maybe this story will ring a familiar bell with some of you.

God was kind to me and unkind. He gave me a solid frame and then decided to get creative with it. He put bumps, nooks and niches where architecturally speaking they did not belong.

Because of these mild and otherwise benign deformities, I never felt very comfortable in my clothes. Either they did not fit me very well, or they said things about me that I didn’t mean or want to say. My clothes were uncomfortable in every sense of the word.

One day I expressed this bit of sartorial unhappiness to my grandfather, a very well dressed man, who understood that the time had come. He took me to the tailors and for the last thirty-five years that is where I have dressed myself.

My grandfather told me that a man’s dress was something he needed to sort out early in life so as to be able to forget about, dispense with, file it away as a mission accomplished and get on to more substantive matters. “You feel your clothes are a problem, and this problem can be solved. But remember one thing”, he said,” clothes can’t do anything for you. Men who believe in the powers of cloth finish the prey of affectation. The most you can hope from clothes is that they do nothing to harm your appearance or distract others from seeing who you are. You want clothes to get out of your way!”

That was my first lesson in developing my own style. It is one I have never forgotten though like many of you I have challenged the veracity of the underlying truths with varying but always comic results.

Surely this bit of tough sartorial love is not going to make people who promise you 007 looks, instant success with ladies and commerce, very happy. They propose an alchemy in which you are the materia prima and the only gold that issues forth is that which passes into their bank accounts.

Just learn to get your clothes out of the way of your personality so it can shine clearly and unimpeded.

Cheers

Michael Alden

Just learn to get your clothes out of the way of your personality so it can shine clearly and unimpeded.
Cheers
Michael Alden

Learn what suits you and your lifestyle and reflects your true personality.The clothes are only the frame..You are the picture. But how do you wear them?

Alden http://www.thelondonlounge.net/forum/vi ... lit=seduce

You will also understand what clothes, colors, fabrics bring out the best in you. The environments you frequent, clubs, bars, restaurants will be those that are conducive to your comfort, excitement or need for adventure. The company you keep, the number of mistresses, friends who challenge you, friends who laugh with you, friends who drink till late hours with you will be the circle of your intimate contacts.

Having first mastered what clothes, colors, fabrics bring out the best in you, I feel that you now need to look at how you wear them.
I believe that real style also demands the patina of wear. Not only does the elegance come into the clothes with wear and breaking in etc, .. but also the mental patina of confidence that comes when you wear the clothes with the unselfconscious confidence resulting from over familiarity.

Alden http://www.thelondonlounge.net/forum/vi ... lit=seduce

The ease and confidence you exude will inspire confidence and pleasure in others. It’s the Style golden rule: “If you are comfortable with yourself, you will look comfortable to others, and others will feel comfortable around you.

To gain and exude this ease and confidence you need to be over familiar with yourself in these clothes( and with your accessories). You may have invested much of your time, financial resources, risk of disappointment etc., in your bespoke clothing, to the point that you find it tempting to be precious with them and stockpile them. So, even though the colours, texture, lifestyle expression might be correct ... they will never have the patina of wear nor will you have the patina of confidence that true style requires. If you have a beautiful fountain pen, e.g., that you keep for special occasions, you will never look stylish using it. Your body language will display that you are not used to writing with it and that you're not comfortable with it. However, if you use it daily.. it is just your normal pen and others will pick up on how unaware you are and how normal it is for you. It is just You .. it is style.
Therefore, I suggest that you must proactively develop this Patina of confidence in your clothes, pens, watches etc. etc., otherwise you might come across as a Dick!

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Dairyman Dick
All the week:--
On Sundays Mister Richard Crick.

To summarize

Re: Clothes get outta my way!

I couldn't agree more with the importance of this philosophy in pursuit of real style.
I say, " Carefully maintain, but use with disdain!" .. Then, hopefully your clothes ( and accoutrements ) will get outta your way !

I think some men make a confusion between a photograph in a fashion magazine, or even a live model on a catwalk, and themselves in real life. In the former case, the clothes MAY make the man - the so-called "look" is all they are about. But in real life clothes are, as Proust writes about nobility and money, just a ZERO that multiplies an existing value (if any). For dress, that value is STYLE.

I have had the real pleasure of watching a few young men getting clothes out of the way of their personalities recently. I have watched their personal magnetism take root in fertile soil, flower and bloom. So here's a bump to this old thread to explain what the hell I mean.

Cheers

Thank you Alden.
I didn' t read this gem.

Thank you Alden.
I didn' t read this gem.

The average Charlie* who writes on clothing forums is convinced that the secret to style is “sprezzatura.” So he sets out with all his might, will and fortune to get it.

Poor Charlie does not understand that it is impossible to “try” to have sprezzatura. It’s like trying to stir fry ice. The minute you do it, you wind up with something you didn’t intend to get.…..steam and hot water. And Charlie winds up confused, steamed and in hot water with bills….and no sprezzatura.

If you get clothes out of your way, and let your personality and personal magnetism shine, the Charlies will applaud your sprezzatura…even though you don’t even know what it is! And the less you know, the more you have. How great is that? You spend every dime you have, and yet your bank accounts swell to overflowing every month! Its magic.

Cheers

*Charlie Read about him here …viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5162

The species of Fop that interests us with respect to a discussion of elegance is known in our argot as "Charlie." Blinded by many of the intellectual limitations of a standard, run of the mill Troggie, Charlie has escaped from the deepest pits of bad taste and has seen enough of the light to desire more of its glow. His intense desire, his wanting so badly to appear, to belong, to be something makes him a notorious pretender and notable arriviste. Ambition and ego are his ultimate undoing. And unlike the "rich" of the nouveau riche, he has a decided taste for bespoke. 

Spotting Charlie is quite easy and once again there are Charlie channels on the internet where you can listen to their discourse. Charlie knows that elegance exists, he thinks of it as being stylish or beautiful, and therefore desirable. But ornamenting oneself with stylish and beautiful things renders only distant facsimiles of elegance. 

Charlie studies everything, and consequently his look is "studied." Charlie conspires to be elegant on the cheap, and his look is cheapened. Charlie does everything he can to imitate the elegant, and his look is an imitation. Charlie asks advice from everyone and anyone, but is incapable of the first step towards elegance which consists in interrogating oneself. 

Charlie cannot conceive that elegance radiates from within, and is always seeking the magic pill that will transform him into the prince he imagines lives under the skin of the beast he sees in the mirror each day. To his constant dismay, no artisan possesses the magic formula, the Ring as it were, so he wanders hopelessly to any and all who will take him as a client. He is always dissatisfied and despite all his travail it never occurs to Charlie to imagine that the magic pill does not exist. It never occurs to him to simply see himself in the mirror, and see a prince if he desires it to be! 


PS Rowley’s and Costi’s responses are pearls as well. Thats the way the LL used to be. There is a lot of mining to do in the LL but everything you need or don’t need to know is here.

It’s like Jazz - in the great words of Satchmo: “if you gotta ask, you ain’t gonna know”.

Thanks Alden.
I feel a little urge to read everything on LL and make a book out of it

It’s like Jazz - in the great words of Satchmo: “if you gotta ask, you ain’t gonna know”.

Pops had style to spare...

armstron by The London Lounge, on Flickr

Just look at this hat...who else could wear it? Pops! That's a great style test on its own.

The hat by The London Lounge, on Flickr

Cheers

I feel a little urge to read everything on LL and make a book out of it

No one would read it. The quickest way to lose a reader's attention is to speak true (unless you happen to be the Bard or something.) And that is especially true of fundamental human vanities like dress.

If you want to write a book you'll do better to tell readers they need a few more ticket pockets if they wanna dress like and be a real English gent with loads of spazzatura.

Anyway, it's been done a dozen times. In the early days, the bloggers came and cut and pasted everything they found in the LL onto their infomercial sites. They sorely needed substance. They still do.

Cheers