Drape tutorial?

[grimslade]

Originally Posted by Manton

If I have not made this clear enough, I think he is wrong about the historical origins, and I don't think his references support his point at all.

He started writing a long time ago that my interpretation of drape was all wrong, and that I am fool for being on the one hand Anglophiliac, and on the other a drapophiliac, when drape is not English. I noticed this but ignored it because he was posting it in places I no longer participate.

But when he brought it here and kept banging the drum over and over, I felt like I had a right to respond.

Suppose you were an author who made point X in a published source, and someone kept saying over and over that you were wrong, except according to everything you knew, HE was wrong. Would you feel obligated to stay silent until the end of time?

This is your manichean side coming out. You've had your say. He's had his. As I said, I think this thread has, remarkably enough, largely cleared the air about where the two of you are coming from. He is not calling you an idiot or saying that you are wrong any more--assuming arguendo that he did at some point in the past. He is saying that there is some support for his view of the historical uses of the term, and he has posted evidence to support that. Maybe Whife is an outlier, maybe your evidences are also sufficient. So be it. I don't get the feeling it's personal with Sator, although I don't speak for him and don't claim to know his mind. I can only judge his public posts. He is an avid student of history, and wanted to clarify a point of history. He had enough respect for your study of the subject to seek to clarify it with you, and to show you his sources to see what both of you could learn about it.

It is always a bit difficult to publicly learn something new about something on which you are a published authority, even if ultimately that new thing does not fundamentally call into question what you already know and have written. But you shouldn't conclude from that that he is calling you out, even if it feels like it. It's natural for it to feel like it, but that's OK. I find, myself, that publishing things is a great way to learn new things. People come to you and say, "that was really interesting, but did you know this..." and it leads to future discovers and a more complete understanding.

 

[Cordovan]

All hail the peacekeeper

 

[dopey]

Originally Posted by grimslade

This is your manichean side coming out. You've had your say. He's had his. As I said, I think this thread has, remarkably enough, largely cleared the air about where the two of you are coming from. He is not calling you an idiot or saying that you are wrong any more--assuming arguendo that he did at some point in the past. He is saying that there is some support for his view of the historical uses of the term, and he has posted evidence to support that. Maybe Whife is an outlier, maybe your evidences are also sufficient. So be it. I don't get the feeling it's personal with Sator, although I don't speak for him and don't claim to know his mind. I can only judge his public posts. He is an avid student of history, and wanted to clarify a point of history. He had enough respect for your study of the subject to seek to clarify it with you, and to show you his sources to see what both of you could learn about it.

It is always a bit difficult to publicly learn something new about something on which you are a published authority, even if ultimately that new thing does not fundamentally call into question what you already know and have written. But you shouldn't conclude from that that he is calling you out, even if it feels like it. It's natural for it to feel like it, but that's OK. I find, myself, that publishing things is a great way to learn new things. People come to you and say, "that was really interesting, but did you know this..." and it leads to future discovers and a more complete understanding.

Shouldn't this be in dumb threads?

 

[Manton]

Originally Posted by grimslade

This is your manichean side coming out. You've had your say. He's had his. As I said, I think this thread has, remarkably enough, largely cleared the air about where the two of you are coming from. He is not calling you an idiot or saying that you are wrong any more--assuming arguendo that he did at some point in the past. He is saying that there is some support for his view of the historical uses of the term, and he has posted evidence to support that. Maybe Whife is an outlier, maybe your evidences are also sufficient. So be it. I don't get the feeling it's personal with Sator, although I don't speak for him and don't claim to know his mind. I can only judge his public posts. He is an avid student of history, and wanted to clarify a point of history. He had enough respect for your study of the subject to seek to clarify it with you, and to show you his sources to see what both of you could learn about it.

It is always a bit difficult to publicly learn something new about something on which you are a published authority, even if ultimately that new thing does not fundamentally call into question what you already know and have written. But you shouldn't conclude from that that he is calling you out, even if it feels like it. It's natural for it to feel like it, but that's OK. I find, myself, that publishing things is a great way to learn new things. People come to you and say, "that was really interesting, but did you know this..." and it leads to future discovers and a more complete understanding.

Perhaps all those posts that I did not respond to stuck in my craw. They certainly were not written in the spirit you describe.

I still think that I was tolerably clear about what I think drape is in my book. When asked by others to define it recently, I did so again. Sator stepped in to define it otherwise, over and over. To cite one small, but telling, point, he likes to say that drape = long. But as practiced by Scholte, A&S, Rubinacci and others, drape is short. Just look at Windsor and Astaire.

Once again, I can see why someone would not like genuine drape: the folds in the chest look sloppy, from a certain point of view. But call it what it is. Don't redefine into something it isn't.

I have also been very clear that I really hate the BB/American sack. I took a lot of flack at AA back in the day for my attacks on the sack. So to read Sator say that drape coats are identical is a bit galling.

 

[jcriswel]

Originally Posted by Manton

What I like is a hip that is narrower than the chest. On really big, egg-shaped dude, this is impossible. But on a lot of guys it is possible, and looks great. I don't like the double-legged martini glass -- V-shaped chest, H-shaped abdomen -- so rather than that, I would prefer to see the skirt expand from the waist, so long as it cups back in again at the bottom.

manton,

Please don't flagellate me for my ignorance, but this has nothing to do with drape, right? If one has broad shoulders, flat belly, narrow waist, skinny legs etc, they can wear clothing as you describe. Most men don't have that type of physique, particularly those over forty. What do you advise for those who cannot provide the frame for the look you prefer?

jcriswel

 

[T4phage]

Originally Posted by jefferyd

Coat's done.

Meh.

Very nicely done!
It flatters your body much better than the PoW coat.

I agree with Dopey and Manton that the button position seems off and the lower quarters could be less angular, but it is a really nice looking coat.

 

[AndrewRogers]

Drape wins!

 

[milosh]

That jacket is unbelievable!

 

[merkur]

..

 

[voxsartoria]

Originally Posted by Manton

I still think that I was tolerably clear about what I think drape is in my book. When asked by others to define it recently, I did so again. Sator stepped in to define it otherwise, over and over. To cite one small, but telling, point, he likes to say that drape = long. But as practiced by Scholte, A&S, Rubinacci and others, drape is short. Just look at Windsor and Astaire.

Once again, I can see why someone would not like genuine drape: the folds in the chest look sloppy, from a certain point of view. But call it what it is. Don't redefine into something it isn't.

Tutee added a reasoned conjecture earlier in this thread that I find plausible, which is that the standard cutting texts to which Sator is referring are obviously aimed a wider and more generalized tailoring reader. The guys at A&S were not reading Whife's book: they were learning as apprentices to cut by eye. Tutee theorizes that many of Whife's readers might have been using Whife's cutting formulas to prepare ready to wear interpretations of Scholte's cut and the London Cut of his protÃ

gÃ

s. And maybe other readers were bespoke tailors far from Savile Row who were trying to keep up with what they saw as fashion.

In contrast today, no RTW maker today seems to produce this look on purpose and all the Interwebz examples are from bespoke makers for bespoke clients. The aesthetic inclinations of both tailor and client come into play...and since both are living, their tastes naturally reflect the passing of time since the first third of the 20th century.

Using Jeffery's jacket as an example: he hewed closely to the options Whife's cutting instructions offered because that was a premise of his experiment. All the responses to his jacket that I've read have been positive, but then a whole range of tweaks were suggested by many. And thus, the process of deviation from a standard cutting formula of the 1930s begins...a process that can go by the term "modernization" as much as any other term.

The point that you have made is that many of the anti-drape arrows are shot at history. You ask, if I may paraphrase, "Other than ancient geneology, what does this have to do with what men wear today? It is a false criticism." In turn, I have also pointed out that other anti-drape arrows are shot...and I think rightly...at some of the more notorious Interwebz examples of poorly executed A&S product that have achieved a life of their own in photographs online. Both things are valid topics in and of themselves, but you are right that they also obscure an evaluation of the intrinsic qualities of the soft style as practiced today.

If I had the last hundred years from which to pick, believe me, the choices of odd looking and poorly executed tailored clothing that was neither soft nor draped would be far vaster, more fecund, than the examples of soft, draped clothing that are ritualistically pilloried by some of those who prefer more mainstream tailoring. History offers a sea of ugliness when it comes to structured clothing that crests and falls in big waves on the shore of the present. This ugliness is so common that we do not even think to offer examples...they are all around us.

It is like the old days of the printed telephone book: you can close your eyes, flip through pages randomly, point at an entry, and nearly be assured your finger has landed on an ugly or poorly made structured coat.

But, this does not prove that structure by itself is ugly. Obviously, when it is executed by the right tailor on the right client, it can be extraordinarily handsome. So, too, with soft tailoring...or at least, that is what you, many others, and I think. What perplexes me sometimes is that I cannot understand why I can see the possibilities for excellence across the tailoring range, but some...not all...of the Anti-Drapites categorically think if it has drape, it is ruination.

Originally Posted by Manton

I have also been very clear that I really hate the BB/American sack. I took a lot of flack at AA back in the day for my attacks on the sack. So to read Sator say that drape coats are identical is a bit galling.

Booooo! That's the Cali in you.


- B

 

[Film Noir Buff]

Originally Posted by dopey

Shouldn't this be in dumb threads?
Saving face is common when you back the wrong clothes horse

 

[Manton]

Originally Posted by Film Noir Buff

Saving face is common when you back the wrong clothes horse

If you have me and grim on ignore, how could you have followed the discussion in this thread?

 

[dopey]

Originally Posted by Film Noir Buff

Saving face is common when you back the wrong clothes horse

What do you think of the cut of Jeffrey's sportcoat?

 

[grimslade]

Originally Posted by Manton

If you have me and grim on ignore, how could you have followed the discussion in this thread?

You should put him on ignore. It clears the air marvelously around here.

He was presumably reacting to dopey's quote of me, but I don't know what he could have taken away from it without the context that preceded it.

 

[Manton]

Originally Posted by dopey

What do you think of the cut of Jeffrey's sportcoat?

Does jeffrey post on his site? If so, he likes it, but it is not drape. If not, then it is drape, and he doesn't like it.