Stroller suit-advice please!

[davidhuh]

I pose a question that departs a bit from the thread thus far. While going through a Harrison Moonbeam cloth book I was taken by the black with subtle hounds-tooth pattern--one of the traditional stroller cloth patterns though in a softer texture. It seemed to me this would work well with grey trousers and turtleneck for smart casual business. The look is a take on the stroller look and would give an old stroller an extra use. This leads me to want to get a coat made from the black Moonbeam cloth. Is this a good idea?

Dear Doug,

in my understanding, the Moonbeam bunch is for elegant city sports coats (lambswool/angora mix). This is not the cloth I would consider for a stroller... Have a look at the formal and dress wear bunch under the Smith Woollens trade mark instead. Lastly, I would not go for black, but a dark charcoal grey or a midnight blue. Unless you want to look like a concierge

Cheers, David

[culverwood]

The stroller is the dress code at Fortnum and Mason (at the bottom of the Burlington Arcade) for staff unless it has changed recently.

[hectorm]

It seemed to me this would work well with grey trousers and turtleneck for smart casual business. The look is a take on the stroller...Is this a good idea?

the Moonbeam bunch is for elegant city sports coats (lambswool/angora mix).This is not the cloth I would consider for a stroller...

I´m not sure I would call it a stroller, but I think the black herringbone Moonbean would work well with grey trousers and a turtleneck, more for evening drinks with friends or the theater during the colder season than for casual business. The herringbone pattern is really black-on-charcoal and that makes it more gentle (and interesting) on the eyes.

[Noble Savage]

I think the black herringbone Moonbean would work well with grey trousers and a turtleneck, more for evening drinks with friends or the theater during the colder season than for casual business.

There’s something irritatingly à la contre-culture about a turtleneck worn with a jacket that makes one stand out even when one doesn’t intend to stand out.

[Melcombe]

I think the black herringbone Moonbean would work well with grey trousers and a turtleneck, more for evening drinks with friends or the theater during the colder season than for casual business.

There’s something irritatingly à la contre-culture about a turtleneck worn with a jacket that makes one stand out even when one doesn’t intend to stand out.

That made me laugh.

I have to agree. Although based on one memorable exemplar.

Many years ago, my then girlfriend had a job working in the household of a man who wore fine gauge turtle neck cashmere sweaters under a suit rather than a shirt and tie. It was his 'signature' look.

He had amassed a reasonable fortune in the arms trade before falling out with his business partners in the Middle East. On reflection he was probably lucky to survive to early retirement.

His wealth did not allow him to buy into respectability to his annoyance - and his habitual pursuit of women of half his age did little to enhance his reputation of being (putting it politely) something of a cad.

More recently, I was talking to an acquaintance about - of all things - the price of cashmere, when the conversation came around to this individual. My acquaintance described him as "... the sort of chap who will start speaking to your wife while at the same time turning his back on you".

It was such a memorable (and accurate) description I fear I can never look at another turtle-neck cashmere sweater without that thought sneaking up on me. Oh well !

[couch]

Well, it can be done well . . .





Although if you associate the look with French philosophy instead of Ivy style or secret agents, M. Deleuze won't dispel that stereotype:

[hectorm]

There’s something irritatingly à la contre-culture about a turtleneck worn with a jacket that makes one stand out even when one doesn’t intend to stand out.

In essence, the turtleneck is a garment created to be worn outdoors in the company of more rugged cloths (think boots and hats, fishermen and commandos). Wear one in open air and nobody will give you a second look. But wear it indoors with a tailored jacket (think ice cubes clinking around the glass in your hand) and you run the risk of affectation because the functional justification is no longer there. Now the coordinates shift to more pure form, style and even values, which could be irritating indeed.

[couch]

This is an interesting analysis, hectorm. Parsing the semiotics of dress, and specific garments especially, seems to me to be an exercise that is precisely about the relationship of form and style to values shared among larger and smaller groups at any one moment in time. Put another way, about what message a set of people agree is being sent, and their approval of and willingness to receive that message--or not. And of course these things change. As Sator used to point out here frequently, the lounge suit started out as casual wear suitable for the beach. Blue jeans originally clad California gold prospectors, then cowboys, then tradesmen. Now both are generally accepted for a much wider range of social situations. Shooting coats are now worn over city clothes in town by many, including Leonard Logsdail. If one disqualifies garments based solely on their rugged or sportif functional origins, our wardrobes would be decimated. No rus in urbe.

But Noble Savage associates the turtleneck/jacket combination specifically with the counterculture, and (if I understand him correctly) assumes that one who appears to be associated with said counterculture will stand out (presumably among those who do not approve of said association). This could be unpacked in several ways. Certainly in the very early '60s a bulky turtleneck with tweed jacket was a staple of "Ivy style" and practically de rigeur among the New York literary and art set for downtown parties, especially if the turtleneck was black. So the mix of influences on the look (and messages that could be inferred) included New England traditionalism, intellectual and aesthetic pretensions (French existentialism, etc.), and a further retreat from business-associated formality. Two of these might indeed be construed by many to be "countercultural" influences, but the look was not outside establishment circles at that time. That was the era when Miles was still "warlord of the weejuns."

The fine-gauge turtleneck with jacket, blazer, or suit worked its way into mainstream pop culture as the decade progressed:





So some might associate the combination with an era that is remembered in shorthand as a countercultural moment (a reductive view, but common).

As I get older, I have less concern for what messages others choose to impute to my dressing choices (though of course I confess to having limits of my own). I particularly prefer not wearing my politics literally on my sleeve. Those who make assumptions based on seeing me in a bespoke suit may be just as wrong as those based on seeing me in my Coop tweed jacket with a black ribbed cashmere turtleneck and gray flannel trousers.

I do agree with the general sentiment expressed in this thread that a fine-guage turtleneck with a worsted suit (especially if a white turtleneck) is seldom a successful look, but I base that merely on my (formal and stylistic) sense that the combination needs more texture. Not on its political/countercultural associations, and only vestigially (if that) on the functional history of the garments.

As Michael has said, throw on things and look in the mirror until you find something that pleases you. That's what those who first moved the lounge suit off the beach and into the boardroom did.

[Luca]

I have little to add except to say: some well thought-out posts. I remind myself of that simple man who, having heard a raft of well-delivered campaign speeches was at a loss as to whom to vote for because they all made sense...

Historically / culturally, I think that the 'alternative' or 'counter-cultural' semiotics of turtlenecks have 95% faded away, within the 'general population'.

The massive swing towards ever more debased average dress has removed much of the subtler symbolic baggage of 20th century dress.

[hectorm]

I do agree with the general sentiment expressed in this thread that a fine-guage turtleneck with a worsted suit (especially if a white turtleneck) is seldom a successful look, but I base that merely on my (formal and stylistic) sense that the combination needs more texture. Not on its political/countercultural associations, and only vestigially (if that) on the functional history of the garments.

Dear Couch,
I wish you had taken one step further in your analysis. You reached a point in which you discard functional or cultural associations as a basis for rejecting that turtleneck/jacket combo, but that seems to be a dead end. Why does that primal sense tell you there´s lack of texture? I´m sure we were not born with it the same way we know unleashed fire hurts us.
Can we synthesize knowledge and experiences which lead us to that specific alarm sounding in our brain at the sight of a flimsy white turtleneck? Not that we have to rationalize too much what happens when you "throw on things and look in the mirror until you find something that pleases you" but just enough for the sake of an examined life.
For me, that thin gauge silky white thing is tactical underwear and belongs as first layer under a ski jacket. Add some texture, as you say, and now we are talking. Add too much and now you´re out of place being indoors. The discordance in functionality can be overridden, of course, by fashion, political statement, or other considerations, but it´s always better to be aware.

[couch]

Historically / culturally, I think that the 'alternative' or 'counter-cultural' semiotics of turtlenecks have 95% faded away, within the 'general population'.

The massive swing towards ever more debased average dress has removed much of the subtler symbolic baggage of 20th century dress.

Indeed, among the hipster younger set, I often observe a gleeful combining into a single look of historical garment and grooming styles that would never have been seen on two people in the same room "back in the day."

I'm sure scholars have done interesting work on this kind of phenomenon; a kind of flattening of the past, perhaps partly due to the easy availability online of the visual cultural record. Those without personal associations with particular periods can mix and match from the grab bag freely (one might perhaps say without prejudice).

[couch]

I wish you had taken one step further in your analysis. You reached a point in which you discard functional or cultural associations as a basis for rejecting that turtleneck/jacket combo, but that seems to be a dead end. Why does that primal sense tell you there´s lack of texture? I´m sure we were not born with it the same way we know unleashed fire hurts us.

Dear hectorm,

That's a fair question, and indeed why I felt compelled to add "only vestigially (if that)" to the sentence you quote. You are right, I think, to point out that for those of us with a sense of personal historical associations, the "etymology" of a garment or combination must inevitably influence our sense of what "works" visually or with our own sense of identity and suitability to occasion. My quarrel is just with any all-or-nothing approach that disqualifies a class of garment based solely on what may once have been "correct." If to "wear it [a turtleneck] indoors with a tailored jacket (think ice cubes clinking around the glass in your hand) . . . run[s] the risk of affectation because the functional justification is no longer there" rules out all turtleneck/jacket combinations indoors, I can't agree. As mentioned, we have benefited from too many garment types "branching out" from their original settings. But to say that a person of taste should consider the characteristics that suited a garment type to its original milieu in deciding whether to adapt it to a new one--that I can heartily agree with. Your personal textural scale for turtlenecks is an excellent example of that kind of individual thinking.

As I mentioned in my response to Luca, many younger people come to images of these garments without much in the way of historical or class or political associations, and happily assemble some combinations that seem wild to me, precisely because I can't completely jettison my own associations with the individual components. But if I put myself in their (spectator) shoes, I can see how it might be fun to be a little freer.

[Noble Savage]

As I mentioned in my response to Luca, many younger people come to images of these garments without much in the way of historical or class or political associations, and happily assemble some combinations that seem wild to me, precisely because I can't completely jettison my own associations with the individual components. But if I put myself in their (spectator) shoes, I can see how it might be fun to be a little freer.

The modern designers are, in fact, mixing up the components and flaunting these associations in an ironic manner. Were there no associations to begin with, they wouldn't enjoy doing so. Let us not deny them the fun by removing them. A turtleneck with a stroller, surely, is not far off the mark then.

[hectorm]

..many younger people without much in the way of historical or class or political associations .. happily assemble some combinations that seem wild to me,.. but I can see how it might be fun to be a little freer.

But, couch, it's much fun already. Actually, most of the fun in games derives from the fact that there are precise rules to follow (or to break and run the associated risk).
And old master from my art workshop always used to say that real creativity came alive when we had only 2 o 3 colors allowed in our palette and a few given symbols to combine in certain ways.
The fun with dressing and clothes enjoyed by freer people without much in the way of historical or class or political associations seems to originate in ignorance. I rather have fun my old fashion way.

[couch]

I think some of the designers are indeed invoking postmodern irony, NS, but that mode has been around for more than two decades now, and I'm not sure how much it explains of the current street fashion. I think a better analogy is sampling in music. By now many artists are just mixing things from the vast archive of recorded music to get the textures and moods they want to combine in their tracks, and sometimes to give a nod in tribute, but the ironic twist no longer seems the dominant driving force to me. Maybe it lingers a bit more in realm of men's dress, but it's hard for me to believe most guys who wear "mixed" outfits are consciously aware of any irony. Either they're mixing for their own expression, or wearing somebody else's mix because they think it's cool.

I think of all the weird versions of semi-formal and formal dress, some promulgated by the wedding industry. Most just seem to me to be attempts to differentiate a product by variations on the traditional elements. And the stylists who package celebrities for the red carpet in such things are presumably striving to make their clients appear cool and trendy, rather than making an ironic statement on the order of "I know what a proper dinner suit should look like, and here's what I think of that."

So in my own view, whether a turtleneck with a stroller was a successful mix would depend a lot on the turtleneck (see above discussion). If I found a turtleneck that seemed to complete a harmonious ensemble with the right stroller components, I might feel confident in wearing it for the right occasion. If it felt to me as though it would be perceived as making an ironic statement instead of merely an interesting or creative look, it would never leave the house. For me personally, much would depend on whether the outfit called attention to itself. As others have observed in this thread, most people don't recognize a "correct" stroller as such anymore anyway, so a very dark jacket, a medium weight charcoal cashmere turtleneck, and milled gray POW trousers, for instance, might be understated enough to work together—who knows. I'd be unlikely to wear such a combination to an occasion that specified daytime semi-formal wear, however, because the mere knowledge required to specify such dress would suggest to me that creative variations would not be appropriate on that occasion.