The DB Stare - Page 4

Hmmm.

Well, maybe a bunch of the DB suit wearers in NYC died in the past year.

If so, in about a year or two we'll be seeing more StyleForvm members wearing DBs.

Mike, I guess the more important question is: so what?

Unless there is a clear signal that your DBs are negatively impacting your career, wear them and enjoy them. From what I gather, you are inferring what you can from mere looks, which themselves are very easy to imagine.

I think that part of the problem is that Manton is in the streets too much.

I suggest something elevated and enclosed, like a Vasari Corridor.

Yes. I wear them all the time and I don't think I get any more comments with them than with SB suits.
I am wearing one today and going tonight to a political fundraiser for a person and race I care nothing about. I will listen for comments, watch for stares and report back.

I still see quite a few DB suits, but they are usually worn by the big kahunas who bought them back in the day, late 80s, glen plaid or bold stripes, ventless and worn with kilties or tasseled loafers. These are the LA Law suits that everyone here mocks. These guys are old and pretty conservative in that they won't change. They sign the cheques so they can where whatever they want while I can safely mock the juniors in their shrunken suits and cheap brogues. By the time they actually become important, I'll be out of the game. I'll even bet some of these guys will still rock this style twenty years from now, the DB guys still do.

I didn't know that you had a local Polynesian candidate this year.

I've been wearing a DB with cutaway fronts (an experiment with my tailor) the last few weeks and no one has noticed it yet, despite its antiquated appearance; I think people are more oblivious than we tend to think. That being said, unlike you I always wear solids, even to the point of never wearing a tie that isn't the same fabric as my coat, so I probably look even more discreet. Either that or I'm the oblivious one.

Pics. I have no idea what this would look like.

Leaving all this aside, have others noticed how tailors absolutely love making DBs? Nearly every tailor I've met froths at the mouth at the prospect of making a DB. I also remember how Panico in O'Mast said something to the extent that a well-cut DB represented the pinnacle of a tailor's craft.

This is a reason to load up on DBs and formal clothes while the guys who have experience making them are still around.

Chatting to Richard Hudson a few weeks ago, he said H and H's tie sales had gone up a lot in the last year or so and that he saw an increasing tendency (I paraphrase) for those with the option of biz caz or suit to dress more formally than a few years ago.

That's also my impression: even if - sigh - it's just men upgrading biz caz to a suit with no tie.

I suspect it's psychological. A bit of serious times require serious clothes, a bit of contracts and clients being harder to get so why risk giving a casual impression, and a bit of mental armour. If for the first time in your adult life you are genuinely worried about losing your job or paying the school fees, wearing some form of proper business dress may make you feel more secure. "You can't sack me, I belong here."

I also think I detect a parallel ratcheting-down of the ever-popular English loud -checked/bold-striped shirt thing too. A more humble era for Western capitalism is causing a reaction against items seen as swaggering, arrogant., BSD, "Wall Street" (the movie) and so on. Mad Men probably has an influence too.

I wear a DB fairly often and am overdue a new one. I very rarely see others in central London. I think that's in part simply because all the DBs that were so popular in the 80s and early 90s (the boxy flappy low gorge often 1 show 2 things) have either been abandoned by their owners as outmoded or, more likely, have simply worn out and everything in the department store that our typical bloke reluctantly buys his work clothes from is an SB.

I agree. DBs are unforgiving.

I'd like to see a photograph

Yes. People seem to dress better in recent years but better in the sense they ditched chinos for wool and t-shirts for dress shirts. In my world, I don't see many suits or ties.

Mina at NsM is making mine and she was pretty excited about it (it's a cream linen odd jacket). I asked her to do a single button on the cuff, also to her approval. Although perhaps others here will consider it improper.