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Obama's Visit to the UK - fit critique!

tmcevoy213

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Edited bc the intended all-caps was overridden by styleforum's autoformatting. The shrewd reader will recognize the similarity in purpose.
 

Testudo_Aubreii

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Originally Posted by james_timothy
This last is silly.

stars_79.jpg


Great photo of the Queen. Do you have details of the others? Is this the young Queen meets Hollywood or British film stars?
 

Testudo_Aubreii

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Originally Posted by PaoloM
Ah Style Forum, a place where law students critique how custom suits fit via pictures on the internet. I don't get why we have these threads discussing people's "fits" that have no connection to the forum. It's completely pointless and only puts ideas and terms into people that don't know much about clothes' heads' that make them question salesmen and tailors and look like idiots.

I'll take my share of the blame for derailing the thread into matters political. The reasoning in this post seems strange, though. By this logic, we should design our system of educating people on dress so that the only people allowed to do anything in ordering and evaluating clothes are either ignoramuses guided in everything by professional experts (in this case, tailors) or acknowledged experts like manton, Will, Flusser, Boyer, etc. In general, we don't think that education about x should be organized like that. We're happy to have lots of half-educated people getting involved in x, being stubborn in their opinions about x, etc. There are some exceptions (education about the proper care of nuclear waste, maybe) but I don't see why dress is one of them. Shouldn't we prefer having a bunch of half-educated clotheshounds pushing back against the hordes over having only a handful of true experts who are slowly dying out? A few of those half-educated pains-in-the-ass just might become true experts. I know I shan't be one of them, but I hope some of my cohort will be.
 

Testudo_Aubreii

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Originally Posted by cptjeff
Two button and flap pockets are more of an offense. Notch lapels have always been an option on the tuxedo, the prohibition against them these days results from the association with cheap and ugly jackets made from suit patterns to save money. Which, even though I'm sure it's made by a quality maker (presuming the same HSM one he's had and wore to inaugural balls and nobel ceremony), is what Obama's jacket seems to be modeled after.

Notice Phillip's, which is notch as well, but gets all the details right that Obama gets wrong.

Oh, and the trousers.
baldy[1].gif


Michelle's dress, on the other hand, looks great.


+1 to all that. I do think that NL DJ is wrong for a state dinner at the White House, though. Peak is the only appropriate lapel for those. Notch would be good for a dinner with 10 Congresspersons and their spouses. Shawl would be good for an evening concert at the WH, like Jackie Kennedy used to host. B. Obama would look great in a 4x1 DB shawl.

BTW, just noticed that he's wearing a pocket square in this and the white tie pic!
 

james_timothy

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Originally Posted by Testudo_Aubreii
Great photo of the Queen. Do you have details of the others? Is this the young Queen meets Hollywood or British film stars?
I don't know the others, but that is Marilyn Monroe curtsying. BhanrÃon Eilis a do was perhaps 30 in that picture. Unusually for the lady on the right, the lady on the left outshines her. There is a larger version of this photo linked off this "rare photos of famous people" page, including a great one of Alfred Hitchcock and his grandchildren.
 

Diavolo

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Originally Posted by csoukoulis
I was being sarcastic. I really couldn't care less if we torture terrorists. None of that is as bad as jumping 100 floors to your death from a burning building. Plus with them in our custody, is bet there was at least 1 woman saved a storing death for being raped.

Yeah! Way to go.

Let's hunt down all those damn *******s Billy Bob. Why bother with a trial - everyone knows they're all guilty.

Anyway, world's better off without them, so who cares? String 'em all up.

Hey Bobby Lee, you got that cross ready yet - what you do'n boy, we ain't got all night.

Praise the Lord and God save the United States of America.
 

csoukoulis

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Originally Posted by Diavolo
Yeah! Way to go.

Let's hunt down all those damn *******s Billy Bob. Why bother with a trial - everyone knows they're all guilty.

Anyway, world's better off without them, so who cares? String 'em all up.

Hey Bobby Lee, you got that cross ready yet - what you do'n boy, we ain't got all night.

Praise the Lord and God save the United States of America.


I'm from the San Francisco bay area originally (birth to age 22, I'm 26 now), so your geographically based assumption about me isn't accurate. Have you ever even been to Dallas? Ive seen more rednecks in the central valley of California than I've seen here. Your post is about as ignorant as you're implying mine was.
 

JamesX

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Originally Posted by csoukoulis
I'm from the San Francisco bay area originally (birth to age 22, I'm 26 now), so your geographically based assumption about me isn't accurate. Have you ever even been to Dallas? Ive seen more rednecks in the central valley of California than I've seen here. Your post is about as ignorant as you're implying mine was.
Pretty sure he is working off a social sterotype and not a geographical one.
 

Diavolo

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Originally Posted by csoukoulis
I'm from the San Francisco bay area originally (birth to age 22, I'm 26 now), so your geographically based assumption about me isn't accurate. Have you ever even been to Dallas? Ive seen more rednecks in the central valley of California than I've seen here. Your post is about as ignorant as you're implying mine was.

I'n not American but I was married in Napa. I've been to a number of US cities several times.

The post was not aimed at you specifically, just this inherent ignorance about anything or anyone outside your borders that pervades your country - sort of thing that saw people in the US beating up Indians and Pakistanis because they assumed they were muslim terrorists.

Apart from your annoying flag-waving chauvinism (that means aggressive patriotism BTW) it's frustrating that you make such easy assumptions about the guilt or innocence of others.

Just torture anyone you can get your hands on, guilty or innocent - and you maintain that's reasonable.

The average muslim hates extremists as much as you do, but that complicated concept goes over the head of most Americans as you continue to take pride in being the most insular, parochial and unsophisticated nation on earth.

Understand now ?
 

Anthony Jordan

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Going back to clothes matters for a moment, those who love sartorial precedents (and who doesn't) may find some interesting food for thought here:

scan0001-1.jpg

scan0002.jpg


I can't swear, even after checking the picture over with a magnifying glass, that these gentry are wearing full evening dress, but that is my suspicion. A few things stand out apart from the variety of collars, including the strip of broguing on the toe cap of the shoes on the gentleman in the middle, the scoop neck waistcoats, the variety of styles of lapel facing, and the apparent total absence of stripes on the trousers.
 

Testudo_Aubreii

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Fascinating monarchy-related photos, Anthony. Thanks. Is that a shawl-collared dress coat on the gent with the spectacles, turn-down collar, and under-the-collar bow tie (I forget what that's called)? The coat of the goateed gent with the wide-scoop U-neck waistcoat seems to have the half-facings usually seen on frock coats. The cut-in of his coat, if a dress coat, seems to have a curve. Could it actually be a frock coat, with the lower left front pulled up?
 

Anthony Jordan

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Originally Posted by Testudo_Aubreii
Fascinating monarchy-related photos, Anthony. Thanks. Is that a shawl-collared dress coat on the gent with the spectacles, turn-down collar, and under-the-collar bow tie (I forget what that's called)? The coat of the goateed gent with the wide-scoop U-neck waistcoat seems to have the half-facings usually seen on frock coats. The cut-in of his coat, if a dress coat, seems to have a curve. Could it actually be a frock coat, with the lower left front pulled up?

You're very welcome. As to the possible shawl collar, unfortunately even under quite careful scrutiny I can't make out what shape it might be, although I am sure recourse to the original would help. Regarding the gentleman with the half-faced lapels, I think that I see the straightish, but angling upwards, cutaway of the left side of his coat just about level with the bottom of his waistcoat, which makes me think that he is indeed in an evening tailcoat, the lapels nothwithstanding.

More generally, I also note at least one pair of gauntlet cuffs, and also that many of the buttons on display appear to be of the flat headed variety faced with satin, presumably to agree with the lapels of the coat.
 

Ivar

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Originally Posted by Testudo_Aubreii
The coat of the goateed gent with the wide-scoop U-neck waistcoat seems to have the half-facings usually seen on frock coats. The cut-in of his coat, if a dress coat, seems to have a curve. Could it actually be a frock coat, with the lower left front pulled up?

I'm pretty sure it's not a frock coat as -- if I remember correctly -- it was considered incorrect to wear them with bow ties.
 

Testudo_Aubreii

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Originally Posted by Anthony Jordan
You're very welcome. As to the possible shawl collar, unfortunately even under quite careful scrutiny I can't make out what shape it might be, although I am sure recourse to the original would help. Regarding the gentleman with the half-faced lapels, I think that I see the straightish, but angling upwards, cutaway of the left side of his coat just about level with the bottom of his waistcoat, which makes me think that he is indeed in an evening tailcoat, the lapels nothwithstanding.

More generally, I also note at least one pair of gauntlet cuffs, and also that many of the buttons on display appear to be of the flat headed variety faced with satin, presumably to agree with the lapels of the coat.


Thank you for that comprehensive reply. My monitor is aging.

I'd missed the gauntlet cuffs. The photo raises a fascinating possibility for an ensemble. A dress suit in midnight blue with a shawl collar and facings in black grosgrain, worn with a turndown-collar shirt and midnight blue SB waistcoat. A sort of casual white tie ensemble! It would be an elegant way of resisting the fossilization of white tie. Perfect for opera galas, balls, and the like.
 

Leather man

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Originally Posted by wmb
Kate looks great, wow

Way too thin in my opinion - she lost loads of weight in the six months before her wedding - she looked so hot before!
 

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