Mandatory Finishing-School

Appendix 3.

In our previous installment, all the way back in Chapter 10, we discussed the importance of deportment and etiquette to be a well-rounded, as well as a well-dressed, person. Actually, the phrase I used was, "We seem to be desperately, hopelessly in need of mandatory finishing-schools." I left you at the end of that essay with the exhortation, "You can do something about you. Start with you."

Well, for those of you who have been left hanging by that rather broad, vague dictum, I have a couple of books to share with you. Think of it as a virtual finishing-school, that will help put the polish on your actions. Both books are included here for your use: old and musty, but still full of the classic goodness that modern men need to know.

There's also, amongst the useful bits, a fair amount of antiquated curiositae, and detailed regulations for activities and events that simply don't exist anymore; so I'll summarize each book first by their chapter headings. You can then skip to the relevant sections, or read the less-relevant passages for the historical interest.

(These books are currently hosted and imbedded with GoogleDrive; if bandwidth limits prevent them appearing below, click the "download" link in the window, which will switch the window from a GoogleDrive viewer to a PDF viewer. If this continues to be a problem, I'll try to find a more suitable hosting service.)

First, we have the  

Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette 

and Manual of Politeness, 

written by Cecil B. Hartley. The publishers specialized in books for young men, with a focus on history and self-improvement. Because it's geared toward young men just entering society, it's exceptionally easy-reading for a book published in 1873. Tellingly, Hartley notes that etiquette may seem unnatural, but stiffness is not the same as politeness. This is utterly at variance to what most people today think of mid-19th century manners!

Chapter 1, covering "Conversation," (p.11) is useful no matter what the era, and just as applicable to the social-media driven world of today, as well as the oft-neglected art of face-to-face communication.

Chapter 2, "Politeness," (p.31) is defined as how we treat those that we find personally disagreeable, and is distinguished from etiquette; one being internal thought, the other the external manifestation of rules. There are several good thoughts in this chapter that would be good to internalize, (although it tends to run a bit long into the Quality of a Gentleman that today rings a tad rustic.)

Chapter 3, about "Table Etiquette," (p.50) at first blush seems hopelessly dated in the details, but it contains so much common-sense wisdom, and is written so well, it is worth a read to take the spirit of the chapter to heart.

Chapter 4, "Etiquette In the Street," (p.66) is largely antiquated today in its detail, beyond the observations of general courtesy; and chapter 5, "Etiquette for Calling," (p.75) is a mere historical oddity -- the shorthand of calling cards were the Victorian equivalent of instant messaging.

Chapter 6, "Etiquette for the Ballroom," (p.91) although the specifics are far past their sell-date, contains many useful tips for proper deportment when entertaining in general. (If one is into ballroom dancing, some of the details are historically enlightening.)

Chapter 7, on "Dress," (p.115) is the one that should be mandatory reading for all men. A more concise summary of the attitude of proper dress, and its attendant hygiene, has rarely been written. Even taking into account the peculiarities of whiskers, hairstyles, and subtle classism, the wisdom underlying the words remains.

Chapter 8 concerns itself with "Manly Exercises." (p.154) Today we're if anything over-educated on rigorous exercise programs, but this look at some more practical and enjoyable 19th century pursuits, like riding and driving, boxing, sailing, hunting, skating, swimming, and yes, even cricket, is worth a read.

Chapter 9, "Traveling," (p.176) is deceptively useful, whether you actually travel regularly or not.

Chapter 10, "Etiquette in Church," (p.183) is a good general guide when you are in any unfamiliar situation, church or not.

Chapter 11 is "One Hundred Hints for Gentlemanly Deportment." (p.186) This is another mandatory chapter, and indeed could be a separate book in its own right. Some 'hints' are summaries of points previously mentioned in detail, and some are 'catch-all' generalities that don't fit into neat categories. Each point is short, to the point, and most of them are general enough to be just as true today as much as they were in 1870.

Chapter 12, "Parties," (p.222) has become passè in its detail for the most part, as the sort of soirèe described is not seen today outside the realm of historical re-creationists. Similarly, chapter 13, "Courtesy at Home," (p.228) presents antiquated specifics of keeping house, and is only relevant today in its broadest strokes, which are amply covered by other chapters.

Chapter 14, "True Courtesy," (p.244) is an elegant presentation of politeness without affectation, native dignity without vulgarity -- this chapter is essential reading.

Chapter 15, "Letter Writing," (p.252) is almost shockingly relevant, in this world of e-mails, tweets, and IMs.

Chapter 16, "Wedding Etiquette," (p.280) is somewhat out of the sphere of common use, but weddings are so poorly done today, following this chapter would be a vast improvement. Chapter 17, "Etiquette for Places of Amusement," (p.294) is along the same vein. Going to the theatre or opera are not now commonplace...but if you were to go, this is how to go about it and not look like Larry the Cable Guy.

And finally, chapter 18 is a "Miscellaneous" (p.298) melting-pot of ideas, some relevant, some less so, and a couple bordering on ridiculousness.



The second example we'll look at is

Martine's Hand-Book of Etiquette 

and Guide to True Politeness, 

written by Arthur Martine in 1866.  In counterpoint to the well-ordered chapters of Hartley, Martine's sections, written only a decade earlier, read like collections of 'bullet points,' which hit wide targets like scattershot through a musket.

Martine's is pointed to both men and women, and is more noticeably dated because of it. The suggestions given to men are the more timeless, fortunately, and should not be shunned because of the old-fashioned advice he gives to the gals.

"The Art of Conversation" (p.8) and "General Rules for Conversation" (p.24) are excellent companion pieces to Chapter 1 of Hartley's book.

"On Dress" (p.48) treats mostly of women, but the words to men echo Chapter 7 of Hartley nicely.

"Introductions" (p.57) and "Letters of Introduction" (p.61) have largely passed into history, and there is little here to recommend it to the modern reader.

Martine has much to say about eating. "Dinner Parties" (p.63) are seldom given today, and when they are, are usually not given well. If you are inclined to attempt them, it's a useful section.

However, "Habits At Table" (p.67) "Wine At Table" (p.74) and "Carving" (p.82) are equal parts surprising common-sense and high manners to modern sensibilities, and are an essential read, superior to Hartley's Chapter 3.

"Etiquette of the Ball and Assembly Room" (p.93) and "Evening Parties" (p.104) are best read as adjuncts to Hartley's Chapters 6 and 12: useful for re-enactments, but little else today. "Visiting" (p.113) is interesting only as a historical curiosity--but it's very interesting, as is "Street Etiquette" (p.127)

"Traveling" (p.133) has some good pointers for those who still use public or mass transit.

"Marriage" (p.136) and "Domestic Etiquette and Duties" (p.144) are addressed primarily to the chicks, and of all the sections in Martine's, suffers the most from outdated standards -- but there are still good-intentioned ideas for men to glean as regards La Bonheur Domestique that is applicable to modern life.

"On General Society" (p.154) is a mixed bag, out of which may be plucked the occasional plum.

Click here to go back to the installment that this Appendix references.

The Calculus of Dressing

Appendix 2.

Back in the installment Chapter 70, called “Keeping Your Balance,” we looked at the concept of weighing specific style variations, each against each other, to achieve a harmonious whole within a single outfit. To help visualize this, I devised a graphic representation of the continuum of balance as a three-dimensional cube, each of the axes standing for one range of opposites—the Continuum Cube.

That was all well and good for an overview, but it was the stripped down, basic version – there’s actually more to the theory than what I posted there! I gave a more complete view in my published works, but here in the Appendices I am going to share with you the fully-realized, advanced theory.

The complete theory of balance is visualized scientifically here by use of a four-dimensional theoretical construct of the Continuum Cube—a Grand Unified Theory of dressing well, if you will, that graphs every possible option of menswear for every possible circumstance.

There have been numerous philosophical postulations over the years concerning the art of dressing well. To those we can now add a mathematical theorem, a graphic distillation of the musings of D’Aurevilly, Wilde, Bulwer-Lytton and de Balzac, which clarifies and concretizes their ideas in a clear way: that dressing well is an ethos, an attitude and outlook on the world that just happens to be reflected in its external appearance. The most obvious aspect of your appearance is your refinement of the art of dressing well: to be correctly and impeccably attired in any given situation. As Brummel said, “If John Bull turns to look after you, you are not well-dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable.”

Let’s start with the idea of formality. You have an innate sense of the degree of formality of any outfit you might be called upon to wear. You wear nicer clothes to church than you do to work, and nicer clothes to a wedding than you do to church; and if you were playing golf, you would be dressed better than if you were playing tennis. If you were to graph all the different sorts of clothes you wear, you could represent them as a line, with the dressiest at one end, and the most casual at the other. We'll call the two extremes “formal” and “sporty.” What we would have is a bit of geometry: a line. It would look like this:

Notice that from any point on the line, you could choose something more formal, or sportier (you could also call it “casual” or “informal.”) Our line extends forever in both directions, as lines do, but that won't do for us; for you can't go on increasing formality forever.

The solution is to make the line asymptotic and the end-points as a limit, which can be approached infinitely closely, but you actually can’t truly “get there.” Reaching the limit is relativistic—the closer you get, the further you have to go, and the harder it is to get there. One limit is the point beyond which you can't get any more formal. That point represents the dress suit: for white tie and tails is the most formal thing a man can wear in the Western world. In other cultures it may take a different form, but the result is the same.

Logically, at the other end is an asymptotic limit beyond which one can't get more casual – which, it stands to reason, is being entirely naked. (Why is this, you may ask? Patience…we'll discover why soon.)

So our line segment, our X axis, if you will, looks like this:

Every element and article you wear fits somewhere along this line. The goal is an average between two extremes that is not too far out of the range of “normal” for your particular place and circumstance; whether this is attending a wedding or shopping for groceries. In other words, for any point on the line, any deviation on one side of the point must be weighed carefully against its variation on the opposite side of the point, to achieve a harmonious whole. The problem in today's world arises when a man doesn't know what to wear at all, much less how to find what an average value is, and even less how to work the extremes to maintain that balance properly.

As an example: everyone has at some point been subjected to such aberrations as a tuxedo jacket that has been paired with sneakers, or a patterned shirt, or a loosely-knotted long tie, or a silly hat, or sloppy jeans. Their misguided thinking is that a dinner jackets' formality will be offset by the other things, and the average will be dressy-casual.

This doesn't work in practice, because the attempt to balance two variations is increasingly unlikely to create a harmonious average the farther apart those extremes are. In fact, dinner dress is so extremely proscribed, it takes very little to push its balance to a place of informality: all that is needed are minor alterations to detail, like a subtly-colored boutonniere, a flash of pocket square, a rakishly-designed waistcoat, or even the material of the jacket itself.

It seems pretty easy so far, doesn't it? Well, we have another line, which describes another dimension of being properly dressed: the difference between “town” and “country” wear. Whilst the “Formal/Sporty” line describes the differences in the purpose and cut of your clothes, the “Town/Country” line is concerned with your clothes' color and pattern: for mens' clothes should properly match the environment in which they are worn. A “town suit,” for instance, is plainly cut and conservatively tailored, with smooth fabrics and dark colors, usually in shades of black or blue: the colors of steel and iron and concrete, the textures of glass and chrome and macadam.

A “country suit” tends toward the rough tweeds, pebbly or textured fabrics, in browns or greens, in plaids, checks, or other patterns, with details like collar tabs, elbow patches, or flapped pockets: the colors and textures of nature, with details that reflect outdoor pursuits.

This line, too, has two asymptotic limits, and those limits are of necessity the same as with the formality continuum: the most “Town” you can get is a dress suit of white tie and tails, and the most “Country” is not dressed at all. The two scales that we have seen operate independently of each other: for every point of formality, there can be applied the complete range of values in possible color and pattern. We can graph these against each other on an X and Y axis.

Most men have a passing experience in the art of color and pattern matching. At its most basic, it is an intuitive reflex. A dark suit needs a light shirt and a bright tie, for instance; or else the suit looks muddy and somber. A light suit looks better with a patterned shirt of a darker color, and so on. Making informed decisions regarding pattern takes more experience, but is also largely intuitive. Matching a plaid shirt with a plaid tie may look busy if they are in the same color range and size, especially if paired with a plain suit; but a suit with a subtle pattern paired with a very light plaid shirt and a very strong plaid tie may look very handsome indeed. It's all in the balance created between the factors.

If we were to graph every possible combination of these two groups of extremes, we would discover the result is the limit of a square, each point of which describes one individual shade of purpose and cut, color and pattern.

Dressing well now becomes a matter of determining your purpose and location at any given time, charting that point on the graph, and making your clothing suitable to that point on the X-Y axis. The closer the average effect of your clothing is to that point, the more “correctly” you will be seen to be dressed. On this square, the front right-hand corner, representing maximum values of Town-Formal, would represent the dress suit; and the rear left corner, representing maximum values of Country-Sporty, would be nudity. (This latter corner, naturally, is to be avoided if you desire to be a well-dressed fellow.) The relationship of all four factors taken together is the balance of your outfit.

Where the axes cross, (we'll call it point 0,0) is a theoretical neutral outfit that is all-purpose, neither too dressy nor too sporty, that would not look too out of place either in the city or out camping. This theoretical middle-of-the-road outfit would not be a panacea that would be instantly accepted anywhere, mind you! It would, rather, be bland porridge, neither one thing nor another, and you would likely be seen everywhere as not quite fitting in, no matter where you were or what you were doing. The neutral point at the center of the graph is not a target at which to aim – it is a sinkhole to be avoided!

Before we continue, let's look at some examples of how to use the scale as we have constructed it thus far.

You can adjust the balance to your immediate purpose, by changing a single detail to adjust the point along both axes. A matching three-piece looks official and professional for a business meeting, and would occupy a place well in the Town scale, and moderately in the Formal scale. Simply change out the matching waistcoat for a tattersall version, and the outfit looks less stuffy for an evening out, by skewing the point both towards the Sporty and Country.

You can also make an adjustment to either scale independently. Running to the auto-parts store to buy an oil filter and spark plugs in a suit and tie may raise some eyebrows, but you can keep the same point along the Formal continuum and slide the Town continuum strongly into the Country realm with a hardy tweed jacket, open-collar shirt and dungarees: the message is that grungy business is at hand. A seersucker suit, loafers, and a bow tie looks fine on the boardwalk, firmly in the Sporty-Country quadrant, but you wouldn't wear it to church without skewing it into the Country-Formal quadrant.

These basic style decisions can be complicated with variable factors such as the time of year and the immediate weather conditions. For instance, on a bright day, a pair of tan trousers may look fine with a mid-gray plain weave jacket; but on an overcast day, it would appear too Country, and a darker gray herringbone jacket to skew it slightly towards the Town side may look better. In the heat of summer, a shirt and tie may look overdressed in lieu of a simple polo shirt under your jacket; but in the fall, going without a tie may result in an underdressed appearance.

Now that you've gotten familiar with the two-axis system of clothing balance, we'll add a third measure to the continuum. Just like the other two, this third balance factor operates independently, and can be applied to every point in the square. This scale will be applied to your clothes' style and detail.

At one end, we have the historical extreme – the traditional, conservative, classic styles. At the other end, the contemporary extreme – the avant-garde, imaginative, futuristic, and innovative styles. We'll place this continuum at right angles to the other two, along the Z-axis: and call the extremes “Historical” and “Innovative.” Simply, the further along the “Innovative” direction you go, the further away you get from tried-and-true style trends.

When we graph every possibility of style against our other two measures, all the major factors of sartorial balance are accounted for and can be reduced to three continua. These continua can be visualized and plotted against each other as axes on a three-dimensional graph.

This is the Continuum Cube. Any point within this cube is defined by our three balance factors. The continuum is the limit of a cube; it is not unbounded on all sides. The ideal, as it was with the two-axis plane, is not the intersection of the axes at the exact center of the cube. Near the external faces of the cube are the limits of perspicacity, where clothes become costume. And just as you've seen with each individual scale, and also with the X-Y axis, the X-Y-Z axis has the same oppositional value, viz., the “Fully Dressed Point” at maximum Town-Formal-Historical is counterbalanced by its logical opposite at maximum Sporty-Country-Innovative – the “Fully Undressed Point.”

Let's use the Continuum Cube now to briefly demonstrate how skewing works along all three axes. We'll start at an easy point to visualize: the top right corner of the cube that pegs all three scales for formal, town, historical wear. Of course, it's the dress suit again: bespoke tailcoat and trousers, boiled-front shirt, pique Marcella waistcoat, stiff detachable wing collar, white tie, and patent leather pumps, with all the accompanying studs, links, straps, braces, and buttons that go with it. You can't get more Formal-Town-Historical than that. It's a very exacting and unforgiving point on the cube, right at the end of the limits, and must be followed precisely, because right on the apex of the cube is where it belongs.

Because of its precarious position, the dress suit is easily knocked off its apex by the addition or alteration of any detail. A simple boutonniere will skew the outfit slightly down the X axis, ever so slightly away from Formal. Substitute balmorals for pumps, and the skew jumps further down the Sporty scale, as well as the Country, and even slightly Innovative, and just like that – you're off the face of the cube and into the interior. This lone example also demonstrates why proper white tie is as exacting as it is.

Why is nudity the “Fully Undressed Point,” and not, say, swimming trunks, or even underwear? Because even swim trunks are subject to variations in sportiness, color, texture, and historicity, all of which will place it somewhere within the boundaries of the Cube, even if it is just adjacent to the apex. There just isn't a garment that is the opposite of a dress suit: as the limits of the axes are reached, the options of the furthermost point dwindle down, until the point of the apex is...nothing.

The apex and surface points are for our purposes theoretical: since a limit by definition can never be reached, you won't be dealing with the extremes on the faces of the cube. You will be dealing with any number of factors that will average into a value somewhere in the middle interior of the continuum.

Now, the three-dimensional Continuum Cube only works as far as the physical aspect of your clothes – but as we’ve found, how you wear your clothes, your degree of insouciance and panache, has an effect on where they skew on the Cube as well. This is of particular interest, as a properly insouciant attitude is integral to being perceived as well-dressed. So we must bring another axis in play – a W axis, at right angles to the other three, to make a hypercube.

What’s that you say? You’ve no idea how that works? Well, let’s work through the progression mentally. Take a point, and put another point at right angles to it. (Since a point has no dimension, technically “right angles” is any direction at all, but we’ll call it “right angles” for the sake of consistency of the illustration.) These two points form a one-dimensional figure: a line segment. It runs in one direction—length. Now take a line segment, and put four of them at right angles to each other such that they define an area. You have made a two-dimensional square: it runs in two directions—length and width. Now take six squares, and put them at right angles to each other so that they define an area. You have a cube now: three dimensions, three directions—length, width, and depth. Of course, here on your computer screen it’s merely a shadow of a three-dimensional form, but your brain recognizes it as a cube, even though all the sides aren’t the same length and the angles aren’t ninety degrees.

So far so good, but now it gets tricky. Continue the pattern: two points, four lines, six squares – now what? Of course, eight cubes; at right angles to each other such that they define an area of four dimensions. The problem comes when we try to imagine the W-axis, at right angles to the X, Y, and Z axes. What’s after height, width, and depth? The best we can see is a three-dimensional shadow, reduced again to two dimensions on your screen – a mere shadow of a shadow.

Because it is so devilishly hard to imagine a four-dimensional hypercube, and even more difficult to represent it on a two-dimensional computer screen, I won't even attempt to include it graphically. That fourth dimension represents the manner of the method and attitude of wearing your clothing and the degree of precision of its physical execution. At one limit, we have nonchalant, detached, easygoing, and breezy. At the other extreme, calculated, purposeful, precise, and severe. 

Graphed against the other 3 axes, the limit of Nonchalance coincides with the “Fully Dressed Limit” of Town-Formal-Historical, and the limit of Precision coincides with the “Fully Undressed Limit” of Sporty-Country-Innovative; thus, the closer to fully dressed one is, the more nonchalance is required. Contrariwise, the more casual your clothing, the more precision is required to offset the ever-present danger of slovenliness.

This presents a useful method of representing the fourth dimension of the Continuum Cube in relation to the other three directions. We know the limits of Nonchalance/Precision coincide with the limits of the other three continua, and we know each three-dimensional point is subject to the complete four-dimensional variance. (If this is befuddling, just reduce the exercise by one dimension: every single point on the two-dimensional graph of Formal/Sporty and Town/Country is subject to the entire scope of the Historical/Innovative variation.)

If the four extreme limits located at opposite apices of our hypercube (the F/T/H/N and the S/C/I/P limits) are then connected by a line, it will also pass through the midpoint of the W, X, Y, and Z axes, (at 0,0,0,0,) and a new axis is created: what I shall call the DANDY AXIS. (Dandy in its historical sense: as representing the apex of the art of dressing well from a holistic mind/body standpoint.)

Quite simply, for any circumstance, the most elegant mode of dress will exist at some particular point along the Dandy Axis, wherein all four continuua shift together in an equalinear progression. All four factors will then be in harmony, no one variation will stand out among the others, and for any given situation there exists a correlating given point on the Dandy Axis wherein you will assuredly be properly dressed, and John Bull will be given no reason to turn his head to look after you.

The relationship of the Dandy Axis to the four directional axes W, X, Y, and Z can be easily illustrated by separating the four dimensions out and placing them alongside each other, as scales on a slide rule. The Dandy Axis is represented by the movable cursor, which intersects all four axes perpendicularly along congruent points. This is a handy mental tool for determining correct dress: when only one factor is known, the other three are immediately apparent. In other words, for any given known Purpose (X-axis,) the proper relative degrees of Location (Y-axis,) Tradition (Z-axis,) and Execution (W-axis) are revealed in their correct place.

But now, back to the Continuum Cube itself. The Dandy Axis is the average of all the values at each point of the cube. This is an important relationship: for at whichever point in the interior of the cube you may find yourself, that point will always be perpendicular to a correlating point somewhere along the length of the Dandy Axis, as well as set a certain distance apart from it.

The Dandy Axis is thus very useful in revealing instantly, in a relative way, both “how dressed” you are, as a function of the point along the Dandy Axis' length, as well as any deviation from the proper standard, as a function of your point's distance from the Axis.

It can also be a useful compass, to give you an “absolute value” of just how dressed you are compared to any other point in the Continuum Cube. Let's take an example, and a rather obvious one, that demonstrates graphically how “more dressed” doesn't necessarily equate to “more clothes.” First, we'll take a tee-shirt, flip-flops, and cargo shorts, and plot its point within the Cube.

This graphic is looking straight down along the Dandy Axis, through the cube, to its S/C/I/P apex. The cube has been “sliced” through our point on a plane perpendicular to the Axis, resulting in the small tetrahedral figure. The size of the tetrahedron indicates that our point is close to the “undress limit” of the cube. Note, too, the distance of our point from the Dandy Axis.

Now, let us compare this to a different point, this one representative of a polo shirt, Bermuda shorts, and boat shoes.

This outfit covers the same amount of skin, and fulfills the same function, as the previous one. Its relative position in the Cube, skewed toward the Historical and Formal ranges slightly, cause it to sit perpendicularly to the Dandy Axis further along its length from the “undress apex,” (indicated by the larger size of the tetrahedron; due to the larger “bite” of the cube the cut has taken) and closer to the Dandy Axis itself: resulting in being “more correctly dressed,” with the same amount of clothing. (This assumes the optimal dandy values along the W axis for each point, as well.)

With practice, you can keep the Continuum Cube in your minds' eye as you decide what to wear, place a target point within the cube along the Dandy Axis, and choose clothes that will average into that target point. By looking at what you wear in this theoretical way, and fitting it into this matrix, you needn't be operating solely on intuition and guesswork, and you will have a solid guide for making wise sartorial decisions that will never inadvertently hit wide of the mark, by being too showy, anachronistic, or situationally inappropriate...or as Brummel would say, “too stiff, tight, or fashionable.”

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The Political Uniform

Chapter 92

The election is over. This isn't a political blog, so I'll spare you any of that which you doubtless are already inundated. I was correct in my prediction as to the outcome, however:

The man in the black suit will win.

This isn't a large stretch of prognostication. Let's take a quick tour of the last couple of political months.

We'll start with the Republican nominating process. Observe: from left to right, black suit, black suit, black suit, black suit, black suit, and black suit. Not shown is Herman Cain, in a black suit, and Michelle Bachmann, who was not a man, and thus beyond the scope of this blog. So the Republicans chose the man in the black suit.

Let's skip to the conventions now. First, the Democrat convention. Obama at the podium, basking in the adulation with his court jester: black suit, and black suit.

Bill Clinton? Black suit.

Even Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the convention chair, provided comic relief with his "maybe you didn't understand the question" routine in a black suit.

Perhaps there is a trend here. Let's compare this with the Republican convention: RNC Chair Reice Preibus -- black suit.

Reice and John Boehner? Black suit and black suit.

Ebullient Chris Christie -- in a slimming black suit.

Clint Eastwood, the Republican's answer to Villaraigosa, also a black suit.

Even Wisconsonian Sol Grosskopf, with a chessehead hat and purple polka-dotted bow tie, somehow can't shun the black suit.

Surely at the debates this dreary costume must be averted?

No. Presidential debates: black suit, black suit.

Vice presidential debate: black suit, black suit.

What do we see here? A depressing uniformity and a stultifying lack of imagination. Arenas full of ill-fitting black suits. A House and Senate full of black suits. A Capitol full of black suits. Men at the highest levels of American government, no matter their party, have given up on their sartorial free expression. And what happens on the surface is an indication of what is going on underneath.

Let's draw a quick comparison between the modern day and Presidents past -- and just to keep it fair, we'll look at past political conventions here as well. The dapper haberdasher, Harry S. Truman, makes his acceptance speech at the Democrat National Convention in style, with a double-breasted linen suit.

Notice the light, breezy, and confident air a bright suit gives. It's hard to tell in monochrome, but this is likely a very light eggshell or cream linen.

Let's jump forward to Eisenhower in 1952, greeting the press outside the Republican National Convention, at a constituent's house. Hardly a dark suit to be seen. Ike is most likely in a salt-and-pepper suit, whilst his glad-handed throng are in a variety of tans, creams, and rusts. Notice the straw fedoras, and the spectator shoes on the gents at the far left.

Here is a jubilant Richard Nixon also at the RNC in 1952, looking far from dour in a light, possibly straw-colored, suit.

Moving ahead to 1972, Ronald Reagan hands off the ceremonial chair's gavel to Gerald Ford at the RNC. Gerry's in a dark suit, perhaps a sign of things to come, while the Gipper is in what appears to be light grey.

Up until the 1976 Republican Convention, light suits were still seen, although less rarely than in previous years. RNC Chair Bob Dole is wearing a poly suit in what I think might be a then-fashionable light brick color. But beyond the bicentennial, dark tones predominated, and for the last several decades, color has disappeared completely from the palette of the politician.

When everyone wears black, it's more difficult to tell who the good guys are. If there are any, that is.

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The Futurists Lied To You

Chapter 72

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, we're well into the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we've been told how much easier our future was going to be. Books, magazine articles, and lavish displays at dozens of World's Fairs have assured us that the future was going to be one of push-button ease and luxury. The newest and most ingenious time and labor saving devices were going to save us hours of tedium each and every day in the next fifty years. Well, the "next fifty years" came and went, then came and went again, several times. We're well beyond the year 2000, darn it. The future is here, now. We're living smack in the middle of it...so why aren't we living like the futurists claimed we were going to by now?

We should be saving so much time with our time-saving stuff that we'd be living in Utopia, where the largest problem we have is figuring out what to do with all of our free time. So why do we as a collective society work more than ever, with less free time than ever, and multitask our way into endless, stressful, thankless toil? You hardly see anyone who truly enjoys themselves on their down-time anymore -- nose down, buried in cell phones, texting away, pushing the next contract, making the next connection, constantly, always working. You'd think we had fewer hours in a day than ever before.

The futurists got it wrong, for one simple reason: they underestimated the power of human nature. For humans are stupid; yes, stupid and greedy. Instead of enjoying our newfound leisure hours, we pack the extra time with more work. Life in centuries past forced us to relax from time to time: for example, when the sun went down, you stopped working, because you couldn't see. Time saving devices have not given us more free time: they've taken away what free time we had, and filled it with a twenty-four-hour work cycle that follows us wherever we go. And stupid and greedy humans that we are, we will work ourselves to exhaustion -- because we can. It's a never-ending pursuit of more money, to buy more stuff, with even less time to enjoy the stuff we have.

Lest you think you have stumbled upon a socio-economic essay; no, this is still about dressing like an adult, and here's my point: dressing properly is dismissed by many otherwise intelligent men, because it is a "waste of time." Busy men, that are too busy to put on a shirt, tie a necktie, go shopping for a decent pair of shoes, or have their suits made by a tailor. Busy men, who can only be bothered to wear the same childrens' clothing day after day, unless the occasion calls for a formless, shapeless sack suit bought off-the-rack, sight unseen, from a warehouse of identical bland suits.

Balderdash, I say! It is high time you freed yourself from the endless speeding treadmill of labor-saving-devices, and let those same devices actually save you some time. Start living in the future you deserve; the future that you should have been living all along. Like the frog in the kettle who allows himself to be slowly par-boiled, you are unaware of the cumulative effect of a hundred years of innovations that, instead of freeing your life, pack your life ever tighter around you.

For thousands of years of modern human history, we'd done things pretty much the same way. Only in the last few decades of the last hundred years has our way of life profoundly changed. The power of steam multiplied our ability to produce work a thousandfold. Then a century later, the power of electricity increased our breadth of communication a thousandfold. And now, another century later, the power of the Internet, fueled by electricity driven by steam, has increased our breadth of knowledge a thousandfold. It's easy, too easy, to assume that the world we have created for ourselves in the past five years is indispensable, that our lives would be unlivable without the constant lifeline of communication and electrons that connect us.

Strip the layers of invention away from the things you take for granted, and discover how much leisure time you really have. You awake in the morning, and it is chilly, so you turn on your electric furnace, and within seconds warm air is blasting out of your register vents all over the house. You've already saved time: it would have taken a good ten minutes to pad down to your freezing basement to manually shovel coal into your furnace from the scuttle, and then you have to wait for your radiators to boil. That radiator system is itself a time-saving device: you'd save a good half-hour in not having to crack anthracite and carry it in buckets to your fire grates, revive the ashen embers from the previous evening, and repeat for every room in the house. And coal grates saved time; for a fireplace demands you split and carry wood, arrange the tinder, and light and care for the fire, for each fireplace, which can easily take an hour if your wood is even slightly damp. So there you are -- as soon as you awaken, you have freed as much as an hour of your schedule. Consider that an electric furnace is completely maintenance-free, and doesn't require polishing and cleaning of soot and ash, and several more hours are saved every week.

Next, you eat breakfast. Mister Coffee (or that most sublime of British inventions, the Teasmade) has your cuppa ready for you, and your English breakfast is out of the refrigerator and ready in a flash thanks to your microwave oven and stovetop. You then put the dishes in an automatic dishwasher. And just like that, you've freed up another hour, without having to stoke the ovens, prep the meal, and clean up afterward.

Then you turn your attention to hygiene. You hop in a shower, soap up in steamy water, and you're done, saving you the trouble of drawing a bath, heating water on the stove, or filling a wash-basin. The benefits of internal plumbing alone save at least fifteen minutes, and an electric shave saves you ten minutes of stropping your straight razor and whipping up lather.

So what about all this I'm-too-busy talk now, Mister Big Shot? You've barely rolled out of bed, and you have compressed a morning routine that would have taken an hour or two into a mere twenty minutes. Enjoy your leisure time. Don't try to pack more stuff in -- use the time that you've actually saved, by not cracking coal and stoking your oven. Read a book, take a stroll, or more importantly, put some extra time, effort, and thought into dressing for the day.

This is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. You can go through your entire day and find all sorts of "lost time" that is simply squeezed out and re-filled by all the modern stuff. You perhaps take for granted that you have a car that starts instantly and takes you effortlessly along broad concrete byways? Consider the half-hour you save every time you turn the key, by not having to pack grease cups, top off oil and water, lubricate the valvetrain, prime the cylinders, and crank the engine. Think of the time you save by driving at 60 MPH on smooth roads, instead of 25 MPH on plank roads and rutted wagon trails. And then add another half-hour of free time simply by not having to vulcanize a rubber patch on the side of the road to repair the inevitable blowout. Even as slow and cantankerous as they may seem today, the earliest automobiles were a blazing time improvement over the time it took to tack and saddle Ol' Gray, and were much faster than a horse, even at full gallop. For thousands of years, life moved at a walking pace. Remember that the next time you're in line at the airport: you're not wasting half an hour in line -- you're saving two weeks.

Going to send a text? Email? Phone call? We take instant communication for granted -- enjoy the time it saves you. Try waiting for a clear party line, then getting an operator to connect you. Still, that was a massive time-saver compared to walking down to the Western Union office to have a telegram tapped out and delivered hours later. And that was lightning fast compared to a letter, that may take weeks to reach its recipient.

But it's the Internet that has changed the world. There's an entire generation now that can't conceive that a scant couple of decades ago, if you wanted to learn something, you went to the library and spent hours poring over card catalogs, and miles of shelves of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. If you were lucky, you found a lead, and if you were very lucky, the library would have it available. Otherwise, you just didn't discover what you wanted to learn. Having the entire repository of the planet's knowledge at your very fingertips IS The Future. Too bad we chose to use it for LOLcats.

Don't get me wrong; I love the Internet, and all the labor-saving devices that we have at our disposal. I'm not one of those guys that wants to live a retro-Edwardian gas-lit lifestyle. The Internet makes this blog possible, after all. A weekly missive like this one, read the world over, would be impossible otherwise, especially with a complete accessible backlog of previous weeks' installments. Otherwise, Dress Like A Grownup! would probably be a mimeographed zine, run off and distributed once a month, which would take many extra hours a week. Mimeographing would certainly be a time-saver over devoting my life to cutting copperplate engravures, typesetting, printing flyers, and mailing them out, which would take the better part of a week -- unless I got a deal with the weekly newspaper, which might sell me space, but only for local readership.

So when you get home after work and turn on the lights, think of the time you've just saved over lighting a gas mantle, which saved time over lighting an oil lamp, which saved time over lighting candles. It's a century-long piggyback of inventions that were unthinkable in the mid-nineteenth century.

The "Electrical Servants" of the turn of the last century do more to save our time than anything else in the history of modern man. Embrace the mid-century wonder of machines that do your work for you...but don't use them as an excuse to pack in more work. Live the Future as it should be lived. Work in moderation, enjoy the fruits of your labor, let the machines do the work that you would have had to do otherwise, and bask in the leisure time that you will find surrounds you. If you are unsure what work is being saved that men of the last century had to do with their bare hands, use the Internet and look up some history.

Before long, you will find time for many sartorial pursuits that you may have previously thought you were far too "busy" for. Victorian gentlemen were ridiculed for having time to change clothes several times per day...but you may notice that when you take true advantage of your "time-saving devices," you have more leisure time than Victorian gentlemen ever did. Time for careful dressing in the morning, certainly. But also time to get fitted for a new pair of good shoes, and find a tailor to alter your clothes. Time to expand your wardrobe to fit your new leisure pursuits. Now that we're into the torrid heat of summer, it's a fine time to attune your wardrobe for outdoor vs. air-conditioned activities, and change accordingly throughout your day. Perhaps most importantly, you have time to change clothes and sit down for a proper dinner with your family. Even time to spend in the evening with a smoking jacket and a good book, before changing into a dressing gown for bed.

Remember, one EMP will make it all go away...so take advantage of the benefits of electricity while it lasts. Our modern future-wonderful life is built entirely on an increasingly fragile card-house framework of delicate electronics to support our communications, transportation, and services -- and if anything happens to that card house, we would find ourselves instantly plunged into a pre-Industrial nightmare. And on that cheery thought, I shall leave you until next week!

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Proving the Rule

(Part Thirteen of the series, "Dressing the Average Guy.")

Chapter 71

You might think this week would be my traditional look at recent formal awards ceremonies in the media, for there have been a couple noticeably influential ones: The Tonys and the Cannes festival. In fact, that was my plan going into this week: but something much more interesting has come up. Besides, we've covered formal wear quite a lot this year, and there's much more to Dressing Like A Grownup than mere tuxedos.

The impetus for this week's change of venue was a typical sort of what-are-the-stars-wearing feature on the web's MSN. At first blush, just another filler article chock-full of jiggling Kardashians. "Stars who don't dress their age," or some such fluff. Nothing to see here, move along. But then, a fascinating subtext hit me across the face, and I knew it had to be this week's installment -- for this is a perfect, in-your-face, textbook example of the Second Great Secret of Dressing Well.

For those of you unfamiliar with the format, last year, I posited Great Secrets, that the average guy who was just getting started along the path to sartorial excellence needed to know. The first one would seem to be common sense, despite millions of men who ignore it: "The purpose of clothing...is to make you look better than you really do." The second one is cautionary in nature, and a warning: "Left to himself, a man will dress back to the era in which he was happiest, or imagined himself happiest."

So let's look at some fabulously wealthy famous men -- who are in the media's glare, have the public's eye, and can easily afford to wear anything, absolutely anything, they want. Given an entire planet full of fashion with hundreds of years of clothing history, what do these men choose to wear when they could wear anything at all?

Let's start with John Christopher Depp, II. Johnny is 49 years old now, born June 9, 1963. He got his start in the mid-eighties on 21 Jump Street, but didn't really hit his stride until he teamed up with Tim Burton on Edward Scissorhands in 1990, when he was 27 years old. What followed was Depp's decades-long golden era of movie after successful movie. Now observe his choice of clothing. Does this look like the suit of a 50 year old screen actor, or a 27 year old bleeding-edge hipster circa 1990? Behold the Second Great Secret in action!

Next, observe Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr., a.k.a. "Snoopy Diggetty Dogg" or something like that. He styles himself as some sort of singer. He was born on October 20, 1971. Snoop was a Crip gang member while in high school. Shortly after graduation, he was arrested for cocaine possession and spent six months in the cooler. His music career began in 1992, at age 21. "Doggystyle" catapulted him to unimaginable worldwide fame. His attire? Still that of a child: arrested, so to speak, in his late teens in the early ' 90s, despite now being 41 years old.

Similarly, Robert Matthew Van Winkle was born October 31, 1967. In 1990, as "Vanilla Ice," at age 23, "To the Extreme" became the fastest selling hip hop album of all time. (Let that sink in.) After a failed suicide attempt in 1994, he re-evaluated his life, got married, and focused on motocrossing and jet skiing for awhile. He then studied real estate and renovates and sells houses. But do you see a 45 year old realtor here? Nope, from the askew hat to the annoying soul patch to the sloppy skate duds, what you see is a hippy-hoppy teenage kid in the late 1980s -- which was Vanilla Ice's Camelot.

What is this, an age-progression of Miley Cyrus? No, it's fifty-nine year old Philip Andre Rourke, Jr., who was born September 16, 1952. Poor Mickey was perhaps too good at everything he did. From 1964 to 1972, Rourke was an amateur boxer tallying up 27 wins (17 by knockout) and only 3 defeats. He then turned his attention to acting, and by the mid-1980s, thanks to Kim Basinger and 9½ Weeks, he was a bona fide leading man. In 1991, Rourke decided that he "had to go back to boxing." Following some messy bouts in the ring and facial reconstructive surgery, in 1995 he retired from boxing and returned to acting, where plastic surgery was more "voluntary" and less "life-saving." With multiple acting awards and boxing wins under his, er, belt, this outfit is befuddling. It's certainly not the dinner attire of your average 60 year old male. Whether it's that of a brash 18-year old boxer in 1970, or just the sad result of forgetting your pants due to one too many blows to the head, is something only Mickey knows.

Adam Richard Sandler was born September 9, 1966. He was hired as a writer for Saturday Night Live in 1990, when he was 24. After making the move to the front of the camera, he rode the wave of popularity to the silver screen in the late 1990s, in such films as Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy, and others. He's 46 today, but his attire still dates him as a post-teenager in the mid 1990s in New York, churning out jokes for cash.

Steven Victor Tallaricco was born on March 26, 1948. This is perhaps the most tragic example of slavery to the Second Great Secret. Aerosmith's run on the airwaves was from 1970 to 1978: in many ways, Steven Tyler's music defined that decade, for better and worse. When the folks at American Idol (for those worldwide who didn't know, yes, we have one too, and we're just as sick of it as you are) rolled Steven Tyler out of cryogenic storage and defrosted him to serve as judge, apparently no one told him what decade he was in, or how old he is. This poor 64 year old AARP retiree is rattling around in the glam rock threads of a 25 year old in the 1970s, right down to the danglers and chains, the lank greasy hair, the platform heels, and the bell-bottoms made of Chrysler upholstery. It's just a constant reminder of just how old and out of touch he is, and how much he desperately wants to be that young man again.

Compare to William James Murray, born September 21, 1950.  Everyone knows Bill's Golden Years: beginning in 1976, at age 26, on Saturday Night Live, and a string of successful motion pictures through the 1980s, including Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Tootsie, Where The Buffalo Roam, and the Ghostbusters franchise. So it should surprise no one by now that Murray's "Festival of Plaid" suit at Cannes this year places him sartorially squarely in his late 20s, and in the early 1980s. But where Bill Murray differs from similarly-aged Steven Tyler is in the execution. Instead of a sad sort of historical costume, it evokes the past without being slave to it. This is not a bad suit at all. Does it show Murray as a 62 year old guy lost in the 1980s? Sure, but more as an homage: he is able to have fun with it. It follows the strictures of the Second Great Secret, but Murray makes it work for him. It's a good example of color and pattern matching, and as a breezy summer suit, it works as a whole without being ocularly jarring. In short, he uses elements of that era over which he ruled, and incorporates them in such a way that it becomes comfortable for him, while keeping the cut and style thoroughly classic. In other words, a proper method of the working-out of the Second Great Secret.


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Generation Degeneration

Chapter 68

This week, we're looking at influence. Specifically, what the young-and-impressionable set do when they see adults acting and dressing a certain way: they copy them as best they can.

Children learn through imitation. 'Tis always been so. If they were fortunate, they learned from their parents first, then from tutors, then professors, then professionals. If they were less fortunate, they learned from orphanage directors, then from Dickensian factory masters. All right, there were also shades of demarcation between those two extremes...but the point is, for most of human history, kids were the passive observers. The adults were going about their adult-y business, and the kids absorbed the proper way to go about things in an adult mode.

Then, media happened, and very wealthy men who should know better discovered that children were commodities that could be pandered to directly. Instead of children looking up to adults, the adults stooped to the level of children. And they kept stooping, lower and lower, each generation.

So, let's peek at the adult side of the equation, through the most childish of the "serious" awards events. (We're discounting venues like MTV and the Kids' Choice Awards, as these are deliberately aimed at a child's maturity level; there is thus nothing to be learnt from them.) No, we shall look at the Billboard Music Awards. Specifically, the Magnum- Jergens- Bioré- Sunkist- ABC- John Frieda- Chevrolet- Sundrop- Sony- MGM Grand- Billboard Music Awards. Unlike most of the Hollywoody events that reward talent, ability, originality, or excellence, the BMA gives out trophies to who sold the most crap. That's all -- trophies to whomever had the broadest, most general appeal to the largest number of average meatbots with access to iTunes.

Their music, and its effect on young ears and young minds, is another issue entirely. Fortunately, this is Dress Like A Grownup! and the focus here is on the threads, not the sounds, that these cats are throwing down out there.

Because of events like the Billboard awards, we have a unique opportunity to see who the children of today are looking to for their stylistic adjuvants. This is not a formal awards show; there is nary a tuxedo to be seen. This is an event for the uber hip and mega trendy. And while there are some truly mind-numbing aberrations, there is also some hope for the future.

Because this is Dress Like A Grownup!, we're not going to focus on the girls here, as most are doing at Miley Cyrus' typical post-Disnoid idiocy; but look instead at some of the going trends among the men present. As always, where necessary, I shall adjust the contrast of the images to highlight the details.

We'll start off with the worst of the bunch. Not surprisingly, a child tops the list. Multimillionaire Justin Bieber is dressed --albeit poorly-- for the first day of a lower-middle class urban high school. His handler probably dressed him thusly. Note the chunky trainers and long sleeves pulled to the elbow. Notice, too, a textbook example of the striking disproportion of modern fashion: his torso appears quite literally twice as long as his stumpy little legs.

A bit older that the Beeb, but notice Chris Brown's trainers, elbowed sleeves, and tee shirt. It's a more mature suit, but the kiddy fashion trend remains. Worn properly, the suit might even (barely) pass for a tux, but this is the extent that dressing-down takes. And it looks, I'm sorry to say, patently ridiculous.

Josiah Bell, more of the same: Miami Vice up top, Rosie the Riveter down below. The frustrating thing is, worn properly, this wouldn't be a bad outfit at all. Sleeves down, real shoes, and a day cravat under the tee, and he'd be quite stylish.

Robin Thicke, now we know you're just glomming on -- you look far too ill at ease to believe you actually look good. In fact, you look disturbingly like your dad thirty years ago.

As bad as the above examples are, it looks outright elegant compared to this. I don't know what, if anything, Kuba Ka was thinking here.

Wiz Khalifa proves that a (potentially) nice waistcoat does not always save the ensemble from absolutely everything else.

Michael Lockwood models the latest in burlesque clown-suittery. Just, what? Ever see a five-year-old girl go through her grandparents' closet? This is actually worse than that.

Now that we've hit rock bottom, we'll draw some attention to some guys that understood what was going on. Not brilliant execution in some cases, but at least some effort was given.

Gavin Degraw, at least, is trying. A nice suit with a belt, even an acceptable tie --remember this is not a formal event-- but the red hat and black shirt just end up looking goofy. Notice the trendy trousers that are so extremely narrow that they are forced to gather in folds above the shoes, unable to break properly over them.

John Legend, oh! so close! The jogging pants and sneaks are just stupid, and unutterably out of place with the jacket. Sleeve length notwithstanding, I kinda dig the black band collar shirt with the futuristic grey fly-front minijacket. Because, like, buttonholes are so passé.

Luke Bryan's summery casual ensemble almost works. White jackets are quite acceptable in this venue. Even the bit loafers can't atone for the open shirt, unfortunately. Even without a tie, a simple day cravat would have nailed the look.

Linkin Park did a fairly good job channeling the Carter era with their denim leisure-suity ensembles. This is a good example of striking the proper balance for this casual event. Any less than this would have looked too casual because of the nature of the material involved; any addition to it would end up looking affected.

Miguel shows the hazards of mismatching. All the parts are there, but they aren't coalescing into a unified whole. The matching trousers would have worked much better -- even with the untucked shirt. And I don't say that often.

Compare with Eric Benet. This is actually a really nice suit in all regards, and an expert study in color and pattern matching. If I were to nitpick, it's that the double breasted waistcoat, with the low crossover, is better suited to a bow tie. Perhaps overall the suit is a little too bright for this function: it would be better "suited" to an outdoor event, or a resort.

Co-host of the event Ty Burrell got it right, a good casual mix that hits the right buttons. All wrong for formal wear, of course, but for this, not bad at all. The batwing tie is especially nice, and a great reminder that bow ties do not always equal formality.

The Wanted tried to pull off a unified mid-century retro vibe within the current minisuit fashion, but it turned out looking a little over-staged. You can see their handler in your mind's eye, a la The Wonders: "You're the front man; you wear the vest. You, no tie; you're the bad boy. You, just loosen your tie, 'cuz you don't care. You, you're the goofy one; you wear the bow tie, and everyone wear a square except....you." Still, high marks for the attempt at a choreographed put-together classic look.

Especially compared with, say, Patent Pending. Ush. At least they are wearing ties, and that puts them all head and shoulders above the Beeb.

We'll end this installment on the best of the evening: 

Jason Derulo has it down cold, and wins my award for best dressed at an event where no one is really dressed at all. This is a perfect outfit for a casual awards event. It's not formal wear, although it is quite dressy and elegant: it shows just the right amount of interest and fun without calling undue attention to itself. Proper shoes, trousers that fit, and a diamond patterned tone-on-tone shawl collar smoking jacket, over a white band-collar shirt, buttoned up with no tie. The fit is impeccable -- this is how it is done. Children, pay attention.

There were many good examples of smart dress in attendance for children to emulate...but for each tastefully casual example, there were legions of musical yahoos who were so busy trying to out-unique each other, they ended up looking identical in their awfulness. These guys are in a unique position: they are not only stars, they are ad hoc fashion icons for the millions of young'uns that listen to their music and follow their concerts. Too few -- far too few -- take that responsibility seriously.

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