An approach to style

[alden]

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

WB Yeats

Let your imagination lead you, not your brain. Try to see the world as you did when you were a child, capturing images spontaneously without thought. Put those images together and let your eye be your guide. Have fun, laugh and make others laugh with you! If you can do these things, you will be at the doorstep of style.

We pass from the joys of innocence into the turmoil of experience. We are taught to be builders. To survive we must use our brains, design, lay foundations, add infrastructure, elaborate, furnish, render things useful with logic and reason.

WHAT the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

W. Blake

Do you dress yourself like a builder, layering clothes one upon the next? If so, does the result appear studied, forced, can your intent be read and blunt the apparition of style?

Put down your measure, let the ruler fall from your hands, close your eyes and imagine the walks you took when you were a child, the smells, the colors, the textures, feel the breeze and your mother’s hand. Now look at your dress with the same enlivened eye.

Cheers

Michael Alden

[andreyb]

Michael,

You probably already tired of hearing me saying this again and again, but still: GREAT!

Andrey

[Costi]

Well, Andrey, if you can do it, I can do it: sublime!
The silence that often follows such posts is like the one appropriate after listening to a Portuguese Fado: you don't applaud, you just cough slightly, if anything. And it's good if there is nothing to be said - it means the message landed where it was meant to, not in the mincing machines in our brains.

[alden]

Andrey and Costi,

Thanks very much for your kind comments.

Crafting a new vocabulary and method to explore the roots of masculine elegance is a pleasant challenge. It isn't, in my mind, enough to say, "dress with sprezzatura", or look like you haven't a care for your clothes. We would be best to find thoughts, images, memories and sensations that can key us directly into the vein of It.


Cheers

Michael

[storeynicholas]

I couldn't agree more with this and look forward to the next instalment.
NJS.

[alden]

Allow style to happen to you...young men!

[andreyb]

It’s ten years already... mamma mia!

And in all these years not a yota changed... Ah, OK — I’m not being called a “young man”, like I used to be, anymore!

Andrey

[Melcombe]

More about the performance of "fabric" than "style", I like the imagery of Herrick's lines:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes.



I think I'd rather like a summer jacket which does that..