MC General Chat

[Holdfast]

That top tweed is the ducks nuts, H.

HF - that is beautiful fabric. cant wait to see the finished product.

Thx fellas. I must admit, the choice of the green one was partly inspired by seeing Butler's green tweed suit. I didn't think I'd get enough opportunities to wear a 3pc in that style (and this particular cloth wouldn't be ideal for trousers anyway), but a jacket in a green check can definitely be fitted into my wardrobe. Spoo, I was actually umm'ing and ahh'ing between that grey/blue and the charcoal/rust one you can see folded above the green, but in the end the grey/blue one will be more versatile for me. Part of me was also tempted by the aubergine/mustard check you can see in the first pic, lol...

Sherry Tweed really is a great cloth bunch, actually. Lots of beautiful patterns and a reasonable weight for today's climate-controlled environments.

Stitchy, it'll be a while before these will be ready. Apparently business is fairly brisk among London's coatmakers, so it'll probably be a couple of months before even the first fitting. And then I suspect it'll need the usual couple of fittings. So maybe 3 months-ish before they're ready. So I should have at least a couple of months use of them before the climate turns again.

 

[Victor Elfo]

Soon I'll place an order on a corduroy suit and I intend to ask for pleated trousers. But how the pleats will behave?
I've seen some corduroy trousers with pleats and, on every single on of them, it did not pleased me.
Do you have any considerations on that matter?
Thank you, Victor.

 

[Holdfast]

For me, cords should be flat front. Like you, I've yet to see a pair of pleated cords I've liked. I don't know why. Maybe something to do with the thickness of the material, or rather, how it crumples? Whatever, I think flat front cords just look nicer. I'd do the same for moleskin, heavy chinos, etc. I'm not anti-pleats in general, mind you, but in this specific application I wouldn't opt for them. I've opted for normal pockets on the pair of cords I've just ordeered, but if you prefer the more casual horizontal pockets, then no pleats is a must, obviously.

 

[hendrix]

Even the most casual observer of Japanese fashion will usually come to the conclusion that although men ostensibly dress in suits like their European and American brothers, something different is going on. Closer examination is even more intriguing; modern Japanese menswear somehow uses the suit as its emblem and sartorial workhorse, but it does so for almost none of the reasons usually considered part of the orthodoxy of fashion theory and upon which the explanations of the sequence and causality in mens fashion rest.

Japan was unique in its experience of adopting, appropriating, and restyling foreign clothes because it did so without colonization and before extensive industrialization. Furthermore, almost none of the factors traditionally attributed to the refinement of the most common and long-lasting of male dress forms can be applied in the Japanese case. The class arrangements and political revolutions had little equivalence to the French-revolutionary-born sartorial codes based on bourgeois demonstration of wealth without aristocratic ostentation.

Elites’s size and response to modernity were entirely different. European and American religious reforms and their clothing expressions were irrelevant, and gender relations were differently demarcated and thus reformed in wholly different ways...

This is good.

It's teasing me, I'm starting to think about how these internal differences influence the way the suit is worn in Japan, its meaning, its interpretation...


And then this happens:

What then precipitated the Japanese response—to the crisis of masculine clothing in modern times—to produce the same solution as in the West? And what does that say about what is universal and what is culturally specific in the aesthetics of masculine clothing in modernity?

— Toby Slade

What seems like it will be an interesting analysis makes the fatal logical leap to turn into some weird advocacy.

Why does the MC writer constantly feel the need to justify himself?
This attempt to infer some type of universal superiority of a class of clothing over others is not only pathetic, it's also incredibly frustrating.

When it looks good, and when it's natural - which it can be, even if it's completely out of context - noone is going to argue against the beauty of tailored clothing.

Source

EDIT: After googling the writer, it seems he's actually a fashion professor in Tokyo.

I just don't understand why he would make this leap. He's talking critically, he's presenting something, and then he feels this sudden urge to make this implication.

It must be taken out of context.

 

[dieworkwear]

Hm, I'm not sure what you find objectionable. Slade's essay is about how the suit became popular in Japan, which he finds peculiar because of their dissimilar forms of consumption and leisure, lifestyles, and - at the time - rich traditions in male sartorial customs. He ends up linking it to a set of particular political and cultural transformations starting around the early 20th century, which he says is very specific to Japan and not at all linked to the reasons why the suit became popular in the West. It's an exercise of taking "least likely cases" and saying when we see a phenomena happen in that case, what does that say about the universality of something.

The argument isn't that the suit is inherently masculine, but that it's linked to ideas about masculinity and modernity that are partly universal (though that's separate from inherent) and partly particular to Japan.

Really, the story here isn't too different from why the suit has become popular in most of parts of Asia, particularly the parts with no (Western) colonial history. Not just Japan.

 

[hendrix]



Hm, I'm not sure what you find objectionable. Slade's essay is about how the suit became popular in Japan, which he finds peculiar because of their dissimilar forms of consumption and leisure, lifestyles, and - at the time - rich traditions in male sartorial customs. He ends up linking it to a set of particular political and cultural transformations starting around the early 20th century,

Well I don't know where I can find the whole essay, but this snippet seems to deliberately not link it to the Western cultural reasons for the significance of the suit.

And then he doesn't actually describe what the phenomena in the Japanese case is.

From the way I'm reading it, he's saying "we can't attribute its emergence in Japan to this, this, and this, therefore, it must be due to its universal masculine aesthetic"

He avoids saying this in so many words by wording as a question, but the implication is clear.

The argument isn't that the suit is inherently masculine, but that it's linked to ideas about masculinity and modernity that are partly universal (though that's separate from inherent) and partly particular to Japan.

I wouldn't disagree with such an argument (although, as above, the logic is flawed), but it's this part that I find kinda objectionable (perhaps if there were some context it wouldn't read so bad)

What then precipitated the Japanese response—to the crisis of masculine clothing in modern times—to produce the same solution as in the West?

Crisis of masculine clothing in modern times?

The suit as a "solution"?

 

[dieworkwear]

That's just the first paragraph of a multi-page essay. The full version can be found in The Male Fashion Reader, edited by McNeil and Karaminas. Some of the essays in there are reprinted chapters from other books or academic journals, so perhaps you can find it elsewhere, but I know it's in this volume at least.

Actually a decent book to pick up.

 

[Victor Elfo]

It's teasing me, I'm starting to think about how these internal differences influence the way the suit is worn in Japan, its meaning, its interpretation...

This apply to every single country. Different customs will result into different points of view about the same subject (in our case, the suit).

 

[dieworkwear]

If this conversation continues, we could have eight or ten people talking about an essay that only one or two people have read. This will be good, because it'll remind me of graduate school seminars.

[VIDEO][/VIDEO]

 

[black_umbrella]

I find the freshest insight comes from the least prepared grad student.

At least that was my working theory in grad school.


Also, you can get about 30% of that chapter through google books if you want to read a little more.

 

[Holdfast]

That's just the first paragraph of a multi-page essay. The full version can be found in The Male Fashion Reader, edited by McNeil and Karaminas. Some of the essays in there are reprinted chapters from other books or academic journals, so perhaps you can find it elsewhere, but I know it's in this volume at least.

Actually a decent book to pick up.

I have that book as well (IIRC the Japan essay's been discussed on SF somewhere before - in fact that might have prompted me to get the book; can't remember - though I can't dig the thread up with a simple search)

Yes, it's a good read. A few of the essays are slightly fatuous IMO, but there's some very good stuff there too with plenty of interesting angles.

 

[dieworkwear]

Not terribly in-depth, but a recent documentary on Hong Kong tailoring.

[VIDEO][/VIDEO]

 

[bourbonbasted]

Denim sweat pants. The bar... has been lowered.

 

[dieworkwear]



Denim sweat pants. The bar... has been lowered.

[VIDEO][/VIDEO]

 

[in stitches]

made it 90 seconds before i had to stop it. holy bejeezus!