The General Lookbook Appreciation Thread

[sipang]

(Leather canoe pack > Balenciaga Ikea)



Always wanted one of those to haul things around

https://www.duluthpack.com/other/canoe-gear/canoe-packs/paul-bunyan.html

(continuing...)

SS2017

 

[sipang]

Here we go


FW1990

 

[sipang]

 

[penanceroyaltea]

Do you have any garments from that era @sipang ? They look like they will suit your build perfectly.

 

[happyriverz]

Was wearing 90s YYPH suit jacket + 90s CDGH+ pants combo yesterday, and after seeing these Armani looks, can't help but see how remarkably similar the proportions are. Wondering if there's some kind of influence, in either direction, going on.

 

[sipang]

Iirc there was some inconclusive talk about a possible influence/cross pollination way back in the YY thread. I want to say it's probably more a case of them both drawing from 1930-40s fashion to some extent (proportions, drape, shoulders) though GA remained within the narrower confines of classic tailoring (padded shoulder and drapey then padded dropped shoulder and drapey then no pads and drapey...) whereas Yohji also explored new horizons. But my YY knowledge is rusty and my classic menswear knowledge shaky at best so I might be wrong on all counts.


@penanceroyaltea I half-assedly looked around for things a while ago and gave up pretty quickly. Between the massive amount of GA stuff out there and the lack of knowledge base it's an absolute crapshoot. I think you can do a fairly close approximation of the look with stuff available today (unless you're dead set on a nipples level low gorge or something) though jackets tend to remain shorter. But yeah, (long) soft jackets and high waisted trousers are what I live for.

 

[gettoasty]

I got some FW Lemaire suits and coats that give the same vibe. That Armani collection is pretty cool.

 

[sipang]

Yeah Lemaire and Damir Dommage (rip) have lots of love for Armani

 

[dieworkwear]

George, who used to post on this board, opened a shop in Beijing a couple of years ago. For his store, he started a project with a Hong Kong bespoke tailoring shop called WW Chan (realize this is kind of rudimentary info for SF, but maybe some SWD guys are unfamiliar).

Anyway, WW Chan does nice work, but the styles tend to be a bit more middle of the road. George got them to develop a house style for his store, which IMO looks a lot more interesting.

George says I'm wrong, but when I saw the jacket on him in person last Christmas, it felt kind of Armani-esque to me (very subtle, but IMO there).

Some photos:

For me, the things that cinch it: a soft extended shoulder line, soft chest, and little structure below the waist (there's only a linen canvas there to stablize the jacket, but otherwise no haircloth, which is a slightly stiffer material tailors sometimes use to lend shape). Also, the front of the jacket drops down (compared to the back). It's almost like the chest is falling away from the body. The gorge is lower, the front balance lower, and the buttoning point lower.

One of the interesting things, when you drop the buttoning piont like this and fasten the jacket, it forces the jacket to pull (if the waist is cinched a little more). But instead of pulling the jacket around the waist, as you'd normally see, it creates a diagonal line going from the armhole to the buttoning point, creating a the look of a curved chest. I hate to use the word masculine, but it does give a masculine effect.

Which was the original intent of that old drape cut. The idea there was drawn from great coats, where Frederick Scholte found you could create a masculine looking chest by cutting it fuller and then cinching the waist so that the fullness gets pushed up.

Years ago, when I commissioned a suit from Napolisumisura, I asked the tailor to lower the buttoning point a bit. This was at a basted fitting. Anyway, he lowered it like a fraction of a fraction of an inch, but it ended up throwing the balance off. I didn't like it for years, but looking back, I kind of dig it. You need to do other things to the suit to make that kind of effect work -- you can't just ask Huntsman or whatever to drop the buttoning point -- but when combined with other details, it has a very cool, slouchy, Italian vibe.

 

[sipang]

I can sorta see it in the POW jacket, switch the trousers for some massive up to your navel pleated thing and it's getting there.

edit: eh !


1993

 

[dieworkwear]

Yea, the Chan is much tamer. And probably more wearable for CM purposes. But it has that extended shoulder line and dropped front that, for me, define the Armani look.

 

[sipang]

I'm partial to the even droopier almost cardigan-like jackets around the same time. I could've sworn at that point they had totally natural shoulders but looking at it now there still appear to be some light padding going on (on the first one at least). That's a pretty low 3 button stance.






Time capsule..

April 9, 1989
MEN'S STYLE
MEN'S STYLE; Sacking Out
By RUTH LA FERLA
Richard Press is piqued. Fashion professionals have trumpeted Milan's rendition of the Yankee sack suit - broad-shouldered, wide-chested, loose-fitting - as the last word in high style. But Press isn't having any of it. ''I find it amusing that Milanese designers are telling hairdressers that the sack suit is now appropriate wear,'' says the vice president of J. Press, the venerable East Coast merchant, ''when members of our business and political establishment never thought it was anything but.'' Press, whose shops in New York, Cambridge, Mass., New Haven and Washington, helped make the sack suit synonymous with Ivy League style, claims that most of his customers have never abandoned the natural-shouldered, straight-hanging coat that is granddaddy to most current incarnations.

At its debut in the early 1900's, the sack suit, with it's all-of-a-piece cut, was a departure. By the 1950's, it had evolved into the classic ''gray flannel suit'' sold by Press, Brooks Brothers and other establishment merchants. Its tubular silhouette and scaled-down shoulders expressed America's then prevailing penchant for dressing down.

The coat's air of patrician understatement isn't lost on Ralph Lauren. This designer, who helped relegate the boxy look to fashion's scrap heap in the early 1970's, when he introduced a brasher, more streamlined silhouette, saw fit to resurrect the sack a little over a year ago. As he recently told a reporter, his interpretation was ''nonfashion fashion, something young guys picked up because it didn't look like current fashion.''

Lauren's sack suit, a cross between the three-button coat favored by politicians in the late 1950's, and the racier two-button model later popularized by John F. Kennedy, hardly created a ripple when it first appeared. Earlier, youthfully irreverent variations by fashion mavericks like Japan's Mitsuhiro Matsuda and France's Jean-Paul Gaultier also failed to cause a stir. And though stylish New Yorkers discovered their sack suits in thrift shops some time ago, it wasn't until influential designers like Giorgio Armani and Romeo Gigli revived the look on Italian runways that the fashion world took note.

It took the Milanese to transform this one-time symbol of upper-crust dressing into a badge of radical chic - a development Americans view with a certain amount of skepticism. But some, like the designer Garrick Anderson, cite precedents. In the 1930's, Anderson points out, the sack suit was worn by college kids as a reaction to the aggressively padded and shaped coats their fathers liked to wear. ''These kids did funny stuff, like taking the shape out of a garment,'' Anderson says. ''When they grew up, their style became Brooks Brothers. In my opinion, it still belongs in school.''

Some fashion makers, determined to offer adult translations of the sack suit, show it in several varieties, including a three-button coat with a lapel that rolls to the center button. Other darted versions, with padded shoulders and draped chests, are sack suits in name only.

Still, a handful of experts look to the straight-lined, slightly overscaled Italian model as a youthful, spirited alternative to wedge-shaped ''power'' suits of the late 1980's. Harold Koda, curator of the costume collection at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, points to the updated sack suit as the first significant shift in men's fashion in a half-dozen years. ''If it takes,'' Koda predicts, ''it will make existing styles look unstylish. Once fashion goes baggy, it's hard to stay sleek without looking uptight.''

March 18, 1990
SHAPING A TRADITION
By Ruth LaFerla
Men's fashion moves forward not by leaps but by small steps, and changes are often imperceptible. All the more reason to welcome the spring of 1990 as a season of real - and sometimes radical - shifts in style. Conventional tailoring hasn't been scrapped so much as re-examined, with the emphasis on comfort, mobility and self-expression. It is Giorgio Armani who has made the first move to alter the shape of the 1990's. In a surprising about-face, the Milanese inventor of the angular, big-shouldered and much-imitated power suit has turned away from his own tradition. The new Armani jacket - patterned on the English model, with its natural shoulders and nipped waist - is long, lean and liberating. Its loose fit and non-aggressive spirit have left their mark on men's fashions this year. Also changed is the way clothes are worn. Combinations that seemed jarring a decade ago suddenly make sense. It's a rare man these days who hasn't tossed a foul-weather parka over a business suit or dressed down a blazer with a rugged denim shirt. As men shrug off a standard uniform, style will be defined by the way clothes are mixed.

HERE TO STAY

They once were fashion's vanguard, but now it seems they're here to stay. Mock-turtleneck T-shirts, sport coats with the feel of sweaters and bottle-shaped neckties in crisp checkered weaves - these are just a few of the items that set the pace in the 1980's and that will emerge as classics in the 1990's.

It is also likely that conventional wardrobes will be spiced with offbeat but utilitarian touches: a tapestry vest with an insulating lining; a simple, rugged aviator's watch, an oilcloth slicker that sheds water like a tent. And unorthodox colors, from swamp green to brick, may give gray flannel a run for its money.

But what confers on these items the status of a classic is not so much their fit, color or shape, as their disarming spirit. If, in sartorial terms, the 80's were aggressive - the decade of broad shoulders, flared lapels and big chests - the 90's, by contrast, will be laid-back. Shoulders once extended to gridiron proportions are now taking on a natural, even slouchy appearance. The wedge-shaped ''power'' silhouette, meant to make the most of torsos molded on a Nautilus machine, is giving way to a longer, looser look. And show-off patterns, from scaled-up plaids to gangster stripes - the standard plumage of Wall Street peacocks - are being replaced with more muted designs.

Outside the board room, the most functional items have the most promising future. Durable variations on American work and country clothes are turning up in unexpected contexts. Chambray work shirts now mix with blazers; hooded sweatshirts slip under suit coats, and, more audaciously, dinner jackets top off indigo jeans.

Versatility and a touch of familiarity are, in fact, foundations of the low-key 90's style. What could be more comfortably reassuring than a baseball jacket, a windbreaker or a pair of crepe-soled shoes? And if old favorites like these happen to be made of luxurious materials, such as suede, silk or cashmere, so much the better, as long as their appearance is subtle. After all, the word these days is that one dresses to relax - or at least to look that way.

 

[FrankCowperwood]

I find it interesting that the reference point is JPress. JPress suit jackets I've had weren't ever going to look like those two latest photos. But I suppose it's really a matter of being at a similar point on a continuum.

I think I'd be pretty happy if I could wear a JPress jacket like this.

 

[Lorcan7]

Those last couple of droopier jackets are amazing.

I betting Patrick Grant loves some old GA -

E Tautz S/S18

A/W17

 

[dieworkwear]

Never forget tha gawd when it comes to droopy Armani-styled jackets with low gorges