Can't find Vox's old ultimate town and country suit guide

Hi all,

I recall one of Vox's threads from a while back, a comprehensive guide to the difference between city and country dressing and covering the basics of a well-rounded men's wardrobe, but I can't seem to find it anymore and I've lost it in my bookmarks. Anyone remember the one I mean and have the link?

Cheers!

Practical Thoughts on Coherent Combinations for Beginners. I think he deleted the entire thread; however, it can be found on web.archive. org.

Rob

rob said:

Practical Thoughts on Coherent Combinations for Beginners. I think he deleted the entire thread; however, it can be found on web.archive. org.

Rob

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Here's the webarchive link:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120711...oughts-on-coherent-combinations-for-beginners

Thanks for that. Good thread. I would say great but I enjoy tweaking the lurking Vox.

Rob

I really don't know why he deleted these things. Such an excellent thread - although I disagree with some of the historical understandings on which Vox bases his assertions, it should be read by everyone who ever asks - 'what should I wear?' or 'how should I dress?'

Vox's article was brilliant. It explained why you should match your suit, shirt, and shoes on the city/country spectrum. When we see extreme examples of clashing -- brown shoes with black tie -- the need for greater coherence seems clear. But it's easy to overlook when men want to be "interesting" and avoid being "boring." In academia, one commonly sees olive faux-tweed jackets paired with black pants and shoes (the inversion of black tie with brown shoes). In business settings, the popular incoherent outfit is pinstripe worsted trousers worn casually as odd pants.





Let's introduce more coherence gentlemen:

CrimsonSox said:

Vox's article was brilliant. It explained why you should match your suit, shirt, and shoes on the city/country spectrum. When we see extreme examples of clashing -- brown shoes with black tie -- the need for greater coherence seems clear. But it's easy to overlook when men want to be "interesting" and avoid being "boring." In academia, one commonly sees olive faux-tweed jackets paired with black pants and shoes (the inversion of black tie with brown shoes). In business settings, the popular incoherent outfit is pinstripe worsted trousers worn casually as odd pants.

Let's introduce more coherence gentlemen:

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But perhaps we could do it without continually using a hideous old aristocratic Nazi-sympathizer as our reference point? I live in hope.

I may as well outline my areas of disagreement with Vox while we're at it, since you repeat a couple of contentious things here... and the whole 'town and country' thing is at the root of it. Bear in mind my statement above that Vox's piece should be read by everyone and especially beginners.

1. Colour is one area where Vox is historically and culturally blinkered in his view. Black, blue and grey have not at all times in recent North American and British history consituted the limits of 'urban dress' or 'more formal', and still do not so in every country - for example, in Southern Europe, brown and tan are quite acceptable as colours for business suits and dark brown suiting has a long history of being accepted as office wear in the UK - until relatively recently. Stronger colours other than blue and grey were also for a long time very much a part of the city person's wardrobe - Beau Brummel did not kill off the tradition of colourful men's clothing completely and you don't have to be a dandy (or more historically accurately) a fop, to wear a bit of colour.

2. It is also not 'other colours' that are the key point of distinction between town and country, but a. particular rustic combinations of colours which derive in their origins from the natural dyes used in celtic plaids (which consisted originally of muddy browns and greens, some mustardy yellows and not a lot more) and b. the quality of the fabric: heavier weights, rougher weaves and textures. Essentially, country wear was the (re)appropriation by the urbanized British aristocracy and more importantly the emerging professional classes in the C19th onwards, of older rural working class clothing. It was playing at being a peasant. In other words, not hugely different to the middle class wearing jeans and chambray shirts (the historical clothing of the American working classes) today. And yes, you can have urban tweeds. They exist and they don't go away by saying there is no such thing, because...

3. Things change all the time: trying to dress according to any particular point in the past which is taken as the apex of menswear is going to mean that you are out-of-place in the present. The idea that we dress to fit in by wearing any of the kind of things seen in Vox's article only holds for a tiny percentage of people - it's not just zookeepers (the exteme example he uses), but most professionals who dress far more casually these days.

Your example of academics is a case in point. We're the strange ones, not the majority who wear black trousers, sneakers and cheap jackets. In that sense, the gap between out-and-out dandyism and what Vox is proposing is much smaller looked at from the point of view of the majority. I enjoy being unusual, out-of-place, 'better dressed'. I'm not kidding myself that I dress to fit in with my professional peers or that what I wear constitutes how they 'should' dress. At most, it's an ironic nod to how people imagine that professors used to dress but probably never did...

Thanks very much for the link and for providing some very interesting points of discussion to boot! I agree that such guidelines shouldn't be taken as the be-all and end-all of dressing but it is extremely useful as a solid base to work from.

On your statement that country wear was appropriation of peasant clothing, do you have any references you might suggest as reading on this point?

I would say that color is only one determinant on the city/country spectrum. For instance, grey is a more urban color, but in a soft, textured, flannel fabric, it can move towards the country side. Vox has helpful examples of grey flannel suits paired with brown suede shoes. It's a more harmonious combination than the same shoes paired with a grey smooth finished worsted suit. Texture and material matter alongside color (and I think we'd agree on that point). A worsted suit can be worn with dark brown calfskin oxfords. Calfskin is a more urban material than the suede, and so matches more closely with the city worsted.



unbelragazzo said:

On your statement that country wear was appropriation of peasant clothing, do you have any references you might suggest as reading on this point?

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It seems to be true of tweed at any rate. Here's an excellent article on the subject:

http://www.gentlemansgazette.com/tweed-guide-harris-history-styles-patterns/

On the subject of Vox's article, I believe his overarching point is that garments and ensembles have residual cultural and aesthetic associations that one does well to keep in mind when working with them. This I fully subscribe to, even though some of his finer points are somewhat exaggerated or anglocentric. Brown suits and sports coats, for example, appear to have been city wear in 1950s Sweden. Here's a still from a 1957 movie:



But then, we've always been a nation of farmers.



Ivar said:

It seems to be true of tweed at any rate. Here's an excellent article on the subject:

http://www.gentlemansgazette.com/tweed-guide-harris-history-styles-patterns/

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Other than one unsupported sentence at the beginning about tweed being "a working man's cloth" and then another at the end, if anything this article implies the opposite.

If it's that tweed was used by working people for their garments and then used by gentry to make suits, then I wouldn't really view that as an appropriation in the same way jeans were.

Brummell and his set did the same thing with dark wool. Some people view this as a rebellious class statement, but I think it's a stretch. Brummell was as elitist as anyone, he just thought it should be himself the world should look up to instead of the King.



unbelragazzo said:

Other than one unsupported sentence at the beginning about tweed being "a working man's cloth" and then another at the end, if anything this article implies the opposite.

If it's that tweed was used by working people for their garments and then used by gentry to make suits, then I wouldn't really view that as an appropriation in the same way jeans were.

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That's my take on the article, yes, and there are lots of articles on the internet (all pitifully referenced) that likewise suggest a non-aristocratic origin. Somewhat meatier suggestions to that effect are made in these old essays by Edward Harrison, who was at the time the manager of Johnstons of Elgin:

http://www.tartansauthority.com/res...chives/harrison/our-scottish-district-checks/
http://www.tartansauthority.com/resources/archives/the-archives/harrison/what-is-tweed/

For example:

In the Cheviots - the Borders - it had long been the habit of the shepherds to wear as their outer garment a long plaid or shawl, usually about four yards long and about a yard and a half wide - from which arises the common trade expression "six quarter wide". These plaids were almost always checked black and white - no special number of threads of each, but usually about a quarter of an inch. This pattern travelled North with the sheep and the shepherds, and became well known throughout the Highlands.

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Thanks for the reference, that's helpful. In that case I doubt the aristocracy viewed themselves as playing at being a peasant. But I'm happy to be proven wrong.