Tennis Whites-A Protracted Discourse.

I like the decorum associated with white. Mark Twain seemed jaunty while swathed in it. There was a time when as a kid, I'd have to wear whites on the municipal courts in my hometown. Shut up.

Dr. W.G. Grace carried off the Cricket Whites scheme in good form. He’d have probably looked swell in a white General Practitioners jacket but the calling of G.P. was trumped by the cricket pitch. Not sure that he ever really practiced medicine. I am sure that he and Lord Hawke both refrained from entering the pitch in the same moment that professionals...you know...men who played for a wage...emerged. 

Tom Wolfe revels in pissing people off with white elegance. His counter-bohemianism in full.

And look at this guy. Toad has never looked more regal than this. What kind of shoes did you have on?

The U.S. Open would be marginally more elegant if a tennis whites only rule was in place…for players and officials. This poor lady redefines high waisted trouser induced celibacy. These trousers on a woman, coupled with either Crocs or Birkenstocks would pretty much seal the deal for me.

And sorry about the foot fault controversy Andy. Might the outcome have been different if you'da cleaned up a bit and donned maybe...whites? Whitey.

But would tennis whites influence crowd behavior? Tennis seemed to be one of the last bastions of “no fist-fights in the stands.” That would be until this punk decided to cock off on a seventy something year old man. The man was protecting the honor of his daughter—nothing more than I would do for LFG. Shameful. Granted, they were all a bit on the rough side...way up in the nosebleed realm but still...no excuse. 

So here’s a trip down tennis whites memory lane. What a fun looking bunch. They left shortly after this photo was taken and headed over to Hooters to drink beer and eat wings. 

Renee and Roger. France and Switzerland. Ashford and Simpson. Laurel and Hardy. Mickey and Minnie. Adam and Eve. Bill and Hillary. Starsky and Hutch. Hansel and Gretel. All of them would have looked fetching in white. Shut up. I'm bored.

I have nothing to say here. Nothing. Not a damn thing. Now give me a cigarette.

If you don't believe that physical power is the core strategy of sisters Williams, then go read The Art of War or something silly like that.

This is Tintin. And his older brother Stinky.

Fred Perry

Tony Trabert

And please. Let's just end this drivel with a stunning example of physicality. Nancy Kulp...better known as Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies.

Onward... A.Whitey G.

The Pinned vs. Clipped Collar: A Protracted Discourse

Clip on collar pins are like clip on ties and clip on suspenders. Under no circumstances shall anyone over the age of nine utilize these sartorial aberrations. Either impale your collar or leave it sans girding. Skewer it or let it be. Impale the cloth or anchor that collar through its pre-sewn eyelets. Take a cue from aplomb master Astaire.

Why? Because the difference between a pinned-through collar and one anchored by some type of slide-on ditty is like being seated in the Cub Room at the Stork Club versus Sherman Billingsley ordering you and your party to Stork Siberia. Clip-on slide-on and your collar will be relegated to the cheap seats. Let me say it another way. Anything other than pinned-through shouts sartorial rookie. Poseur is too strong and frankly, an unfair characterization but plebe certainly isn’t. Here’s Papa pinned nicely in the Cub Room

Here's Astaire again...and he's pinned this point collar to perfection. I’ll touch on collar types and the damage pins  inflict so sit tight. Astaire also tarted up his shirtsleeve nicely with an inconsequential monogram. The point collar just takes to the pin better than any other collar style.

Australian pilot Sir Norman Brearly was known to pin it down before taking to the skies. I’d love to live in a world where half this level of sartorial precision was the norm.

Frank’s sartorial acumen was unimpeachable. However, I’ll use his pinned collar example to make a point about club or rounded collars. Once you pin them, the already modest collar essentially disappears. The resultant look is, at least to me, a bit underpowered. It’s “off” in some way and ends up looking like the antithesis of the anchored aplomb of the Astaire point collar. Sinatra also appears to be wearing a collar with sewn-in holes for said collar impalement. I’ll take that issue up in a moment as well.

Here’s George Frazier pinned to perfection. Surely he would cut you down to size if he discovered you sporting a clip on anything. I suspect for Frazier it was either a Brooks Brothers oh-so-properly rolled button down or it was a point collar pinned to perfection. And God help you if you wore a carnation and a pocket square.

Let’s bring Wolfe and Merkin into the fray. Obviously the issue of collar girding was one of significant import for both of these dandies. In Wolfe’s dedication of The Right Stuff to Merkin, he mentions not only the collar pin issue but a Frazier corollary of some sort.

Ok, so let’s talk hardware. While some may spend significant bucks on collar pins I never will. I buy the gold and silver plated ones at Paul Stuart because I’m prone to lose them. And who the hell’s gonna know the provenance and alloy content of your collar pin? Those that I allow to get that close to me are already so rapt in Maxminimus Fuzzy Aplomb that they could give two hoots and a damn regarding the hardware that they are about to relieve me of. Shut up. I mean it. Shut up. The pin at the top is exclusively for shirts that have preset-sewn-in holes. I no longer own any of those shirts so if anyone does, send me an email and I’ll drop this one in the mail to you. You need to buy pins like the second one.

I don’t like the pre-drilled collar holes because their placement demands that you tie your tie a certain size to accommodate the un-editable space created by the pinned collar. Some ties result in smaller knots based on weight and type of material. And if the entire rig isn’t cinched with air-tight z-e-r-o space showing around and below the knot...the result is loose and sloppy-exactly the antithesis of what the pinning-girding effort should yield. The picture above that I nicked from a website illustrates my point. Everything looks nice. The suit, the shirt, the tie…nice choices. But the screw-on collar bar leaves way too much space around the rig.

Now let’s take up the issue of sequelae…collar trauma. Folks, it’s the price of doing business. Yes, the pin-through ritual will take a toll on your shirts. But either accept this and concede it or don’t wear pinned collars. Nothing more to say here. Take comfort in the fact that when laundered, the pin holes generally heal and that only after years and years of use will the collar look too buck-shot and thus require retirement. Here are examples from my closet. Keep in mind that all three of these shirts are at least fifteen years old—the Brethren end-on-end was made in the USA so that tells you something about its age.

End on end probably takes more of an irreparable hit than other fabrics. Keep in mind though, that even after years of wearing this shirt and the resulting scars, I still wear it and once it's pinned again, all of the battle scars seem to fade into the overall assemblage.

A slightly less traumatized Paul Stuart example.

And I stopped pinning this Flusser shirt from fifteen years ago so the damage is minimal. I don't like how small and incorrect these club collars seem post-pinning.

So here’s the ADG interpretation of collar pinning done right. Airtight and snug. Also realize that this is a hybrid collar. It offers the circularity of a club collar but with rounded collar points that remain pronounced amidst its pinned-collar harness.

Of course it wouldn’t be an ADG post without at least one fuzzy iPhone picture. So here you have the balance of the rig that shrouded the impale-ee.

Fuzzy completeness manifests via the Toad of Toad Hall Man of No Consequence Monogram. Opposite the 5^th button. Shut the……

So if you can’t run with the pinned-through dogs, I suggest you keep your clip-on ass on the porch.

Onward. Pinned. Woof-woof.

ADG

Lava Vomit...Wolfe Once More

Author Ray Bradbury wrote, “Tom Wolfe ate the world and vomited lava.”

Yep, I get the metaphor. Bradbury nailed Wolfe but for me the allegory is even more fetching, due to the incongruent visual of elegant white suits becoming spittle-flecked via emesis.

I said that I wouldn’t rehash the Wolfe white suit genesis story but I lied. Full man Wolfe has been orbiting my noggin since oldominion’s Wolfe-Keds spotting. And I think I’m on the cusp of a Wolfe reading jaunt…but the real old stuff…Tangerine...Mau Mauing…Pump House…that far back. I devoured Bonfire and A Man in Full. Charlotte Simmons…the setting wasn’t on strategy for Wolfe…so I struggled through it. Wolfe fares better when he vomits urban. Urban and adults.

Ok, so here’s a loosely paraphrased excerpt from Brian Lamb’s C-Span Books interview with Wolfe where he reveals the white suit genesis.

“…It happened by accident in 1962. I had only two jackets to my name. White suits in Richmond Virginia were not unusual, so I bought one in NYC but it was too heavy to wear that summer. So I wore it in the winter and people went nuts. People would say…“What an interesting man…he wears white suits”…it took the place of a personality for me for a long time.”

Wolfe shared with Lamb that he can generally wear one of his white suits for about six hours before having to change it. He travels to an event with three in tow. Three suits…I travel all week with one sportcoat. Then again, I’m not Tom Wolfe and I don’t wear white jackets. I’d be a mess within an hour. Vomit or not. I like the fact that initially there was no grand dandy-esque scheme regarding Wolfe’s white suit strategy. The young man just didn’t have the dosh to buy something and have it sit in his closet unworn.

And the shoes…Wolfe calls them…Faux Spats.

I’ve come perilously close to meeting Tom Wolfe on a couple of occasions. I missed him by thirty minutes at an Alan Flusser cocktail party in Gotham several years ago and had to decline last November, an invitation to a Richard Merkin tribute where Wolfe spoke.

But I have fingered…nervously…ever so tentatively…one of his white suits.

Most bespoke tailoring operations aren’t geared for nor do they generally seek the browsing public. You need to have some idea of why you intend to cross the transom before doing so and artisan Vincent Nicolosi’s lair is no exception. Nicolosi has been making Wolfe’s clothes for years, along with an occasional rig for Merkin and clothes horse attorney Eddie Hayes. Hayes of course, is the dedicatee of Wolfe’s first novel, Bonfire of the Vanities. So when I decided to drop in on atelier Nicolosi unannounced ten years ago, I was already fully loaded with Nicolosi lore and back stories, courtesy of Merkin et al.

Here’s Nicolosi, Wolfe and Hayes. Eddie Hayes says this about Nicolosi… “He does all the work himself...He's a powerfully built man, and you feel that power in the suits that he makes.”

Having no intention of buying anything…we had a baby on the way…I screwed my courage up a notch or two and headed over to Nicolosi’s. I’d already darkened with measured confidence and humility, the doors of Savile Row’s Huntsman and Henry Poole as well as Anderson and Sheppard and was no worse for wear. And the Flusser minions were already swathing me back then, consistent with what I thought was to be my temporary professional and sartorial strategy … “fake it till you make it.” Unfortunately, that strategy remains mine today. So I was no sartorial rookie but Nicolosi’s den wasn’t even close to possessing the kilim-underfoot, stuffy, patinated, marrow coloured aloofness of Savile Row.

Harsh-ass fluorescent lights greeted me overhead as I opened the Nicolosi door. An infusion of early 1970’s midtown Gotham office building syntheticality. Not the oh so posh newly synthetic early sixties Mad Men ersatz-deco Bakelite-ness. We’re talking nothing short of the tri-colour pasta shag carpet a la Bunch Brady. Formica comes to mind as well. Ambiance wasn't a requirement.

When Anderson and Sheppard was on Savile Row they had tables and tables of cloth bolts for one to gander. A few other baubles were on offer as well…umbrellas, braces and the iconic A&S fleece lined bedroom slipper. In other words, there were plenty of things to dawdle about with until someone could assist you. None of those nerve settling distractions could be found at Lair Nicolosi…the sterile fluorescence alone sent me back to Dr. Monroe’s office. He was my pediatrician and every time my mom took me to his Formica-fied—colour draining office, I got a huge-ass shot of penicillin.

Nicolosi was with a client. Two other folks were riding needle and thread, copiously focused on sleeve-heads and collars. One guy looked up and in broken Pidgin English essentially said “wait on Mr. Nicolosi.” Ok…will do. But what will I do in this little box of a space that had no patina to set me thinking about all who might have darkened the doors. There was nothing to look at save a half dozen sun bleached cloth bolts. No Flusserish candy dish of crazy pocket squares and silly patterned socks to fake interest in. No long rack of finished clothing to thumb through for inspiration or tisk-tisking. I’m getting a bit nervous and my left butt-cheek is tightening because my history in this environment says that penicillin is on the way.

But in a corner I spied cream gabardine. Hanging on a bar alone…the corner space and the chrome rod seemed attenuated by the single duty of holding one suit. The paucity of line and pattern…paucity hell…the absence, accompanied by the monochromatic neutrality of cream gabardine made the suit seem delicate as well.

And on the hanger hook was impaled a scrap of paper…haphazardly thrust-through like you see checks at the diner cash register. “Mr. Wolfe” is all it said. Shit! This is Tom Wolfe’s suit. I love correlating inanimate objects to a greater significance but this was in reverse. I’d usually done so in museums where you gander at uniforms or other kit that was used by someone of historical import for something historically important. But those people were dead and Tom Wolfe was anything but dead. A Man in Full was being touted and was just about to be released. Maybe if I hung around long enough, Wolfe would come in for a fitting.

Sincere but heavily accented English interrupted my tactile ponderings of Wolfe’s suit. I felt like I’d been caught ogling Roxanne Burgess’ underwear in Mrs. Strickland’s fifth grade class. And there was a faint smell of rubbing alcohol…a prep swab for penicillin?

 “ ‘ow may I ‘elp you?” Nicolosi wasn’t necessarily brusque but I wasn’t necessarily Hayes-Merkin-Wolfe either. And it probably showed itself in spades. I remember meeting the Managing Director of Anderson and Sheppard many years ago. I was well dressed and it didn’t hurt that I had my gregarious little wife with me. Guardedly amiable, poised amidst their original Savile Row location that had accommodated Astaire, Beerbohm et al, he was generous with his time and deliberate in his articulation of the A&S house style. Nicolosi was deliberate. Nicolosi was not articulate. But he didn’t need to be articulate for me or anyone else. His expressions are manifest by way of needle and thread.

I felt juvenile as I awkwardly tried to query him about preferences for a sportcoat. My first couple of questions about fabric options met a brow furrowed  Nicolosi. The heck with asking about styling and cut—I’d already been outed as a poseur. I could tell that he’d already pegged me for a non-customer. A poseur in a double breasted Alan Flusser light gray nail head suit and tobacco suede perforated cap-toe shoes. It wasn’t like I’d sauntered in swathed courtesy of Robert Hall.

So I attempted a few more frail pleasantries before I eked out something similar to “Thanks and I’ll think about it.” Nicolosi graciously held the door for me as I exited his flouro-pantheon chez Merkin-Hayes-Wolfe. Nicolosi I’m certain, is a gracious and accommodating tailor and those in the know say that money for a Nicolosi garment is money well spent. I blame Dr. Monroe and the fluorescent lighting for my momentary and thank God transient obtuseness.

It was obvious that the source of Wolfe-white would not on that particular day, be a source for me.

Onward. Amidst the last week of seersucker.

ADG

Tom Wolfe: Sartorial Silliness in Southampton

A reader who shares the same hometown as Tom Wolfe left a great comment the other day in response to my ADG In Book-Land: What are you reading? post. oldominion crossed paths with Jennet Conant one day and Tom Wolfe the night before. A writer and writing teacher in Baltimore, oldominion has recently resurrected his own blog.

Here you go…directly from his email…

oldominion said...

“Was happily making my way through The Irregulars recently on vacation when, looking up, I saw the author herself walking towards me in her tennis whites. The book is wonderful when focusing on Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, Ivar Bryce and Henry Marsh, slows a bit otherwise. Recommended. (Thanks oldominion...I've read it)

The night before seeing her I was browsing in a bookstore in Southampton when a dapper elderly man walked in: tailored very light linen with what appeared to be a half-lining of seersucker with working sleeve buttons, white trou, white Keds and, incongruously, a cummerbund. Of course you know who it was: My fellow Richmonder Tom Wolfe, God bless him.”

God bless him indeed. I’ve long since lost objectivity about Tom Wolfe. His clothes, his writing, his counter bohemianism in-your-face-in-white…intrigues me. I won’t bore you with the stories about how he began wearing white suits. Most people already know that. I won’t rehash the albeit great but over-told tale about how he coined the term “good ole boy” when doing a piece on Junior Johnson many years ago. 

What I will do, after tossing in your face for the zillionth time, the letter Wolfe wrote me, is ramble on a bit about Wolfe-whateverishness.

oldominion‘s sighting of Tom Wolfe in his Hamptons play-clothes reminds me of this little story from a 1980 Wolfe interview. Wolfe talks about the issue of hostility towards sartorial outliers….

“…the hostility for minor changes in style was just marvelous. In fact this summer I was in East Hampton visiting some people who took me to a party. I was wearing a four button seersucker jacket that buttons up really high—I think it’s actually Edwardian—with a little tiny collar and white tie with small, far-apart black stripes, and I had on a collar pin and cuff links, white serge pants and white cap-toes shoes, which are real English banker shoes, only I had them made in white doeskin…pretty soon I noticed that I was the only man in the room who had on both a jacket and a tie. 

Finally a man came over to me; he was a little drunk, but he was also angry. He asked, “What’s the idea of the rig?” I asked “What do you mean?” He said, “The tie, the pin, all this stuff.” So I looked at him and he had on a polo shirt and some kind of go-to-hell pants, and he had this big stain down the front of his polo shirt—right down the middle, right down to his belt line. I asked… “How do you do that bright stripe down your polo shirt?” He looked down in sort of surprise and said, “That’s sweat goddamn it, that’s sweat!” He suddenly was very proud of it.”

Somewhere I had a photo of Wolfe in that little Edwardian Vincent Nicolosi contraption but I can’t seem to find it now. But the shots I've posted here pretty much represent the gist of the rig that seemed to piss off the sweat-striped-polo-GTH pants party guy. I love his ever so elegant in your face dandyism…and he really, really isn’t concerned with what you think of his contrivances.

So here’s to you…man in full with the sartorial right stuff. Keds and cummerbunds…sign me up.

Onward…closing out summer…ADG