'iGent Myths Busted!'

[TheFoo]



+1

I am tired of posting on this and other fora that there are no rules, only time and place-specific conventions.

Item: I and every other middle-class Englishman that I knew grew up believing that a black full-brogue was acceptable conservative business dress footwear in the UK.

Apparently, we were all wrong, as were our fathers and grandfathers, from some of whom we inherited those black full brogues, because some Americans on the internet, reading books written by Americans or a German, said so.

It is not relevant that I have not bought a pair of black full brogues in twenty years.

If you want to be purely empirical about things, then of course, you will find there are no rules. You will always find counter-examples and changes in practice. However, if you are taking a purely empirical approach to interpreting classic men's dress, you are taking the wrong approach. You should be normative, in addition to empirical. Observe what has been done, try to understand why it was done, and then figure out what should be done. That's where rules come from.

 

[Manton]

Do I need to write a lengthy rebuttal to all this nonsense? It would be like a time machine taking us all back to 2005.

 

[Caustic Man]

Do I need to write a lengthy rebuttal to all this nonsense? It would be like a time machine taking us all back to 2005.

Didn't you already write a book?

 

[Caustic Man]

My recollection is that most of his browns spanned the seventies to early eighties and felt like more a result of the times (the seventies, ugh...) than individual sartorial rule bending.

He wasn't necessarily a rule bender in my mind, but he was definitely not just part of the Washington crowd. The picture of him in the tan suit, below, illustrated this, to my mind.

 

[cptjeff]



+1

I am tired of posting on this and other fora that there are no rules, only time and place-specific conventions.

Item: I and every other middle-class Englishman that I knew grew up believing that a black full-brogue was acceptable conservative business dress footwear in the UK.

Apparently, we were all wrong, as were our fathers and grandfathers, from some of whom we inherited those black full brogues, because some Americans on the internet, reading books written by Americans or a German, said so.

It is not relevant that I have not bought a pair of black full brogues in twenty years.

The people telling me that longwings (or open laced shoes in general), medium or light gray suits (and I saw flannel suits included for a WTF moment) aren't conservative business dress appropriate astound me. Rewind to the 50's for a moment. What was the iconic standard attire of the conservative city businessman? Mid gray flannel suit, black longwings, often in a pebble grain or shell. Made by Florsheim, of course.

What was once the beau ideal of conservative attire somehow, through iGent reinterpretation, becomes inappropriate for conservative settings.

 

[Sander]

Sator's observations may be very accurate (I don't know the sources nor have I any inclination to check them); yet I don't think they have any practical effect on a good dresser. A black suit, for example, may be "correct" - but this doesn't give you any more shirt and tie colors that compliment it. Shirt cuff showing may not have the strong tradition some want it to have - yet it just looks more balanced in my eyes.

I have never even heard of the "grey suits preferred"-myth.

 

[Veremund]



Time for a DB notch DJ, in brown. You have nothing to lose but your chains!

À la Noël Coward? Ok, it wasn't notched, but still.

http://asuitablewardrobe.dynend.com/2012/03/it-was-brown.html

 

[bboysdontcryy]

That's brown? It renders as midnight blue on my iPhone.

 

[glenjay]

I like that in example #1 of that article/thread, suggesting that there was nothing unusual or novel about a black lounge suit, that the suit is made of vicuna. I rarely wear a black lounge suit, but if I had one made of vicuna, well that's another story altogether.

I actually doubt that anyone on this forum has a black lounge suit of vicuna. Not the specific point of the article I realize, but relevant to not only changes in fashion, but changes in costs of materials as well.

 

[Big Texas]

Anything that can be tried has been tried at some point, and as such, we could cherrypick historical examples in support of, or in opposition to, just about any "rule." If we really want to go that route, the intellectually honest exercise is to try to do enough research to discern the legitimate trends from the one-offs. (For example: a single Apparel Arts illustration, or a single ancient Brooks ad, is just that: a single datum. It signifies nothing other than that a certain clothing style existed at that point in time; it says nothing about whether the style was commonly accepted.)

At any rate, many of the SF luminaries have been pretty candid about the fact that their "rules" are just as often drawn from personal preferences as from supposed traditions. Nobody's claiming to have received the rules on stone tablets. As with anything, however, a game of telephone gets played out over the years and across the various menswear blogs and forums. And so we end up with a confusing conflation of personal taste and appeals to (ostensible) historical precedent. That's not to say that there are no rules, or that certain traditions can't be legitimately ascertained. I'm just saying that we shouldn't carry on about the rules like armchair constitutional lawyers. (Or, if we insist on doing so, then we should be prepared to dig deeper and analyze more carefully than plucking singular examples from Google image search and citing them as broad examples).

 

[GBR]

This statement sums it all up so neatly:

"On the internet today there are a number of men's clothing fora that have invented numerous Eternal Rules of Permanent Style that have no historical basis to support the claims that strict Rules exist which are very ancient, hallowed, and traditional. Most of these Rules are in fact probably scarcely older than the internet, or represent personal preferences which have been elevated to the Mythological Status of Eternal Rules."

Those who claim to follow the 'Rules' should understand this and reconsider, newcomers should read it and follow.

 

[Makoto Chan]



I don't get what the big deal is with "busting" the "iGent myth". I always thought the "rules", whatever they are, serve as an outline for a coherent means to build a wardrobe full of versatile pieces. So what if, for instance, there's some evidence that men did wear tuxedos with notched lapels? Whether or not that's "correct" isn't the point - the point seems to be that one should understand the difference between what the notched and peak lapels are supposed to convey and then decide for themselves what is most appropriate. But maybe it's more fun to suppose there are many  god-given sets of "rules" and then have the various adherents wage a holy war upon one another. Or maybe I'm missing the point entirely here.

Yeah, this... I have never felt pushed around or belittled by any supposed rules that I learned on the internet.

If you want to be purely empirical about things, then of course, you will find there are no rules. You will always find counter-examples and changes in practice. However, if you are taking a purely empirical approach to interpreting classic men's dress, you are taking the wrong approach. You should be normative, in addition to empirical. Observe what has been done, try to understand why it was done, and then figure out what should be done. That's where rules come from.

This.

Anything that can be tried has been tried at some point, and as such, we could cherrypick historical examples in support of, or in opposition to, just about any "rule." If we really want to go that route, the intellectually honest exercise is to try to do enough research to discern the legitimate trends from the one-offs. (For example: a single Apparel Arts illustration, or a single ancient Brooks ad, is just that: a single datum. It signifies nothing other than that a certain clothing style existed at that point in time; it says nothing about whether the style was commonly accepted.)

At any rate, many of the SF luminaries have been pretty candid about the fact that their "rules" are just as often drawn from personal preferences as from supposed traditions. Nobody's claiming to have received the rules on stone tablets. As with anything, however, a game of telephone gets played out over the years and across the various menswear blogs and forums. And so we end up with a confusing conflation of personal taste and appeals to (ostensible) historical precedent. That's not to say that there are no rules, or that certain traditions can't be legitimately ascertained. I'm just saying that we shouldn't carry on about the rules like armchair constitutional lawyers. (Or, if we insist on doing so, then we should be prepared to dig deeper and analyze more carefully than plucking singular examples from Google image search and citing them as broad examples).

Yes, I did find that clipping some pictures out of the ol' menswear archives was a strange way to prove a point.

I enjoy the lawyerly conversations on this forum about "rules," perhaps because I recognize that it's just a conversation and that all the participants lead actual lives in which they make actual decisions about how to dress well within their communities, and to a certain degree they're all right. The conversation is still good and the rules, even when disputed, are still important.

 

[Blackhood]

I can't be the only one who thinks of "rules" as "rules of thumb" and not "laws"?

 

[RogerP]



The people telling me that longwings (or open laced shoes in general), medium or light gray suits (and I saw flannel suits included for a WTF moment) aren't conservative business dress appropriate astound me. Rewind to the 50's for a moment. What was the iconic standard attire of the conservative city businessman? Mid gray flannel suit, black longwings, often in a pebble grain or shell. Made by Florsheim, of course.

What was once the beau ideal of conservative attire somehow, through iGent reinterpretation, becomes inappropriate for conservative settings.

+1. I've been astounded by a good deal of such groupthink nonsense.

 

[Tirailleur1]

I have to say the last few months of this sf talk has turned me off to the point where I have changed my stance on "rules" and now take what users (including the sacred cows) say with a grai. Of salt. like a few already stated in this thread, most of these doctrines are opinions and personal preferences and if I feel any of their opinions disguised as advice works for me I will use it. If not I keep moving on.