Bradford
Current Events Moderator
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1970s style
We all like to look at those GQ photos of well dressed men from the 1970s. Well, those of us that knows about them. I am referring to the old issues of Esquire magazine and Gentleman's Quarterly from the 1970s and early 1980s which were a bounty of colored illustrations of all the options the well dressed man could possibly dream of for every time, place and manner.
Alan Flusser didn't actually write anything about the 1970's, but if he had he might have called it a tawdry age of manmade fabrics, wide lapels and even wider-legged pants. Of course most people were waiting in gas lines or snorting coke at Studio 54 but at least the lucky ones had an amazing array of choices.
But as much as those clothes look good and as much as they promise us a portal to a more fabulous past, if a modern man were to try to wear most of those clothes he would find them uncomfortable. The shirts would be too tight and the polyester suits would be too hot. The colors themselves would be ever so out of step with the colors of today and where would he find a good pair of platform shoes. If a man were to outfit himself head to toe in 1970s elegance, he would look very stupid.
But why is this true if the look is timeless? Why is what Barry Gibb wrote starting to erode? Why is it if you ape the 1970s you'll look like you're in another remake of Starsky and Hutch?
I think it's because these things were near the end of a time when cocaine and gold medallions were compulsory for men. Excess was in command and men needed to learn a set of rules someone else set down. However, for better or for worse, the almost twenty years of the war on drugs has removed the ability for men to sport excessive chest hair and shirts unbuttoned to their navels. Basically, the horse has left the barn.
That's the sad part. The good part is that men are starting to realize that they don't look good in khakis and golf shirts and now choose to wear leisure suits and bell bottoms again.
However, even though men now elect to wear tailored clothes they are in command and dictate their own needs of comfort and style. Thus the old rules no longer apply. Of course some of the physical rules of tailoring do apply and although being improved and updated; you cannot just eliminate everything. But true talent as a designer is having the ability to edit what is useful with what is useless.
There's a difference between referring to the 1970s and wearing the actual artifacts, colors styles etc... I love the old movies like Can't Stop the Music and Saturday Night Fever but I don't want to wear the actual clothes they wore. That is too literal and unimaginative. The sorts of fantasies Bob Guccione might have had which may be a pleasant daydream but not a look for the serious man to spend money on looking like. Instead, I want to wear my new and modern clothes the WAY they wore theirs, with style, nonchalance, panache and daring. We refer, we salute and we admire the past...but we refresh, always-just like they did.
We are in a period of transition and I think this might be true globally. Milan, Naples, Paris, Tokyo, London and NYC are all using colors and fabrics for men's clothes that would have been thought unacceptable a few years ago. Likewise, old standards are being relegated to the curmudgeon.
I think we're living in a new 1970s where the lucky ones have a lot of elegant choices to mark themselves out as individuals even if most men are still dressing down.
Leaf through those alluring Rolling Stone Magazine photos of gentlemen wearing elegant clothes. Stay up bleary eyed and wonder at those old abstract movies with their superb character actors in their natty, individualistic clothes. Wonder at the cut of their white three-piece suits and the spring in their platform shoes for they will never be reproduced. However, they will always exist to give us guidelines, if not rules, about how it used to be and how it can be better still again.
When you buy clothes, buy the updated ones which let you be comfortable in your modern life and leave the polyester suits to stars for they are the stuff that dreams are made of.
We all like to look at those GQ photos of well dressed men from the 1970s. Well, those of us that knows about them. I am referring to the old issues of Esquire magazine and Gentleman's Quarterly from the 1970s and early 1980s which were a bounty of colored illustrations of all the options the well dressed man could possibly dream of for every time, place and manner.
Alan Flusser didn't actually write anything about the 1970's, but if he had he might have called it a tawdry age of manmade fabrics, wide lapels and even wider-legged pants. Of course most people were waiting in gas lines or snorting coke at Studio 54 but at least the lucky ones had an amazing array of choices.
But as much as those clothes look good and as much as they promise us a portal to a more fabulous past, if a modern man were to try to wear most of those clothes he would find them uncomfortable. The shirts would be too tight and the polyester suits would be too hot. The colors themselves would be ever so out of step with the colors of today and where would he find a good pair of platform shoes. If a man were to outfit himself head to toe in 1970s elegance, he would look very stupid.
But why is this true if the look is timeless? Why is what Barry Gibb wrote starting to erode? Why is it if you ape the 1970s you'll look like you're in another remake of Starsky and Hutch?
I think it's because these things were near the end of a time when cocaine and gold medallions were compulsory for men. Excess was in command and men needed to learn a set of rules someone else set down. However, for better or for worse, the almost twenty years of the war on drugs has removed the ability for men to sport excessive chest hair and shirts unbuttoned to their navels. Basically, the horse has left the barn.
That's the sad part. The good part is that men are starting to realize that they don't look good in khakis and golf shirts and now choose to wear leisure suits and bell bottoms again.
However, even though men now elect to wear tailored clothes they are in command and dictate their own needs of comfort and style. Thus the old rules no longer apply. Of course some of the physical rules of tailoring do apply and although being improved and updated; you cannot just eliminate everything. But true talent as a designer is having the ability to edit what is useful with what is useless.
There's a difference between referring to the 1970s and wearing the actual artifacts, colors styles etc... I love the old movies like Can't Stop the Music and Saturday Night Fever but I don't want to wear the actual clothes they wore. That is too literal and unimaginative. The sorts of fantasies Bob Guccione might have had which may be a pleasant daydream but not a look for the serious man to spend money on looking like. Instead, I want to wear my new and modern clothes the WAY they wore theirs, with style, nonchalance, panache and daring. We refer, we salute and we admire the past...but we refresh, always-just like they did.
We are in a period of transition and I think this might be true globally. Milan, Naples, Paris, Tokyo, London and NYC are all using colors and fabrics for men's clothes that would have been thought unacceptable a few years ago. Likewise, old standards are being relegated to the curmudgeon.
I think we're living in a new 1970s where the lucky ones have a lot of elegant choices to mark themselves out as individuals even if most men are still dressing down.
Leaf through those alluring Rolling Stone Magazine photos of gentlemen wearing elegant clothes. Stay up bleary eyed and wonder at those old abstract movies with their superb character actors in their natty, individualistic clothes. Wonder at the cut of their white three-piece suits and the spring in their platform shoes for they will never be reproduced. However, they will always exist to give us guidelines, if not rules, about how it used to be and how it can be better still again.
When you buy clothes, buy the updated ones which let you be comfortable in your modern life and leave the polyester suits to stars for they are the stuff that dreams are made of.