Navy Hopsack Suit?

apropos · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by Film Noir Buff

What I find alarming, and sadly I may be the only one, is how violently many react to ideas and words. Almost like you're so afraid of them, you need to derail the subject immediately lest it get hashed out. After that's accomplished, you can of course all pretend that you were willing to discuss it all along, even if it was all absurd.

It must be horrible to live in such fear.
Yes FNB, you are the Way, the Truth, and The Light.

What a heavy weight you bear. Such a noble sacrifice.

Film Noir Buff · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by George

Oh come now FNB, sometimes you have to inject a little humour into things, I'd have thought that you more than most would appriciate that. It's a good topic, but, it's a difficult topic for some to discuss.
If you want to inject some humor into this thread, lets get some of these people to show us swatches or this hopsack or completed suits in it.

Film Noir Buff · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by apropos

Yes FNB, you are the Way, the Truth, and The Light. What a heavy weight you bear. Such a noble sacrifice.
You wanna go?

apropos · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by Film Noir Buff

You wanna go?
Oh. For a moment there I thought you might be Sartorial iJesus. Check out that drape!

Film Noir Buff · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by apropos

Oh. For a moment there I thought you might be Sartorial iJesus. Check out that drape!
Sometimes i do feel a bit persecuted

apropos · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by Film Noir Buff

Sometimes i do feel a bit persecuted
Chin up. Wipe your tears. Don't you go all Antongiavanni on me.

LaoHu · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by apropos

What's up with those sleeves? Torquing?

Wes Bourne · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

Someday, I hope that we will learn what accounts for your sense of comical class inferiority. It is hard for me to even think that you are an American...it is like one of those bad English comedies sometimes with you.

So, take a turn at being constructive: if you do not like a hopsack, what do you recommend for a man who does the noble work of the republic by teaching eighth graders in a public school? What blue fabric is right for the context of what he does?

Please do not say something striped. The guy has to handle chalk and pre-teen backtalk. Give him a recommendation. His tailor has recommended an English hopsack. If you can do better, do it.

You will have to decide what position you take tonight: do tailors know what they are doing or don't they?

- B

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

That is straight from the so-called iGent phrasebook.

Well done.

Is there something sub-class with teaching 8th grade in a public school? Or being a sanitation worker? I cannot imagine anyone who is socially secure reaching so constantly for such trite, transparent, and uninventively pejorative references to the honest labor and profession of others. You seem successful in some ways, at least enough to be a steady consumer of expensive clothing. Why the insecurity? I have only seen something like this rarely, and only among those who feel that they have been snubbed. If I saw such a thing at a party, I would make it my job to try to make that person comfortable and at ease so that they might loosen their grip on their feelings of being done wrong.

I wouldn't say this except that it is ever present in what you write and it obscures sharing the knowledge that you have bought over the years that is interesting to hear. Few men can afford what you buy, and those that post online are in the single digits. You can be a better resourse that you choose to be.

I know that this will have little or no effect on you, but I respect the store of perspective in that brain of yours enough to give it shot. I have seen some recent improvement in some of your posts here, especially as Manton has become less active (which, in turn, reduces the frequency of re-inflamation of your feud), and I would enjoy seeing more of that.

As I would if Mantoni posted more.

Okay, so what should NYR get instead?

- B

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

I have been getting PMs asking me why I am bothering with this. I'm not sure that I have a good answer, but I will tilt at the windmill one last time.

You are probably right in one sense...you would have to go back two generations in my family (and approximately in American culture...might be different in your neck of the woods) to get to men who were unselfconsciously classists, racists, and misogynists. I am hopeful that by the time things have rolled around to me, at least some of that is untrue.

But, there is really no reason to be so generalized. We are talking about something very specific here: hopsack fabric. If you have your cup of morning coffee or tea, and ask yourself, "Would an American public schoolteacher who wore a solid, dark navy bespoke suit telegraph that he is a 'sanitation worker wearing his Sunday best' to his colleagues, wards, and family from the simple fact that it is hopsack?" What would your answer be? The suit is navy. The pattern is solid. It is bespoke. Navy hopsack jackets are widely accepted. And this is America, where the suit is dying a lingering death...I am sure that it is pretty much dead in a New York public school. NYR is not wearing this suit, I imagine, into a blue chip board meeting or cocktails at the Links.

And so, we are left with the dire issue of the trousers being hopsack.

Would you not admit here the possibility that FNB's "class" claim is daft? And that the manner in which the claim was expressed, with its reference to dressing like a sanitation worker, trite yet a bit ugly? I can't really call it biting because it is just so weak and lacking in content. He's simply tarting up a personal bias about a type of cloth as some sort of social commentary, and setting up any disagreement with him on the qualities of the cloth as class blindness. It's unimpressive. It obscures potentially interesting information about merits and problems inherent to different types of suitings.

I'll be direct: Neither I nor my friends with the same background would view a guy in a dark blue bespoke suit caustically as a sanitation worker unless he introduced himself as one. And if a man did so introduce himself, he would probably be the hit of the party.

What makes the whole thing more funny to me is that I would guess that NYR is relatively comfortable with who he is and what he does...I am not sure that his objective is to convince people via sartorial camoflage that he has Mayflower ancestors, lockjaw accent, and was expelled from Brown with no ill effect.

I will let you in on a dirty little American secret: you could wear the best that Corvato makes, but if you don't have a lineage just so, didn't go to particular schools, don't belong to particular clubs, do not associate with and marry particular people, don't have a particular amount of money, possessed in a particular way, do not give a particular amount of money away, the fabric of your suit does not in any way add or subtract your chances of being accepted as upper class.

Is not the same true where you are?

So, why should anyone worry about it and select fabric from within the range of classic suitings for anything other than what one likes or dislikes?

- B

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

It is a function of many things, including that.

Your assertion, nevertheless, that an American man in the year 2009 wearing a dark blue, bespoke suit "signals" that he is a "sanitation worker" merely because it is in a hopsack rather than another worsted wool is absurd.

You are projecting a simple personal bias and opinion about fabrics (which might or might not be educated...in this case, I do not agree with you on the technical merits of hopsack) onto a larger culture and a class within it that does not have your compulsive fascination with the minutiae of differences among classic suiting fabrics. They really do not care about one solid dark blue worsted wool English fabric versus another. The low, the middle, or the high: none care at such diminutive levels of distinction. Really.

Why indignify yourself by embellishing a simple topic...fabrics...with ineffective attempts to aggrandize your opinion as some sort of keen social observation? If only they were keen in reality, maybe it would be tolerable, but your statements on clothes and culture come off with little intellectual content...and often, like in this thread, none.

I apologize for being a bit harsh. But there you have it.

I guess I am quixotically maintaining the hope that we could hear your thoughts on clothes without freshman year sociology and the thinly veiled Manton snipes. I suppose you would want to lose both, which I rather doubt to my disappointment.

- B

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

This is exactly one of the two points that I am making.

The other is that class divination by hopsack is ludicrous.

- B

Nice. Just get rid of that Chewbacca coat.

Originally Posted by LaoHu

I think you're on to something here, but we should do the same for footwear:

Salvaged Russian reindeer = Global plutocrat
Shell cordovan = Nouveau riche, arriviste
Calf = Upper middle class professional
Corrected grain = Everyman with pretensions or Stealth wealth
Canvas = Everyman
Flipflops = The great unwashed

I wear flip-flops during summer. Outside the house. Nowhere near the beach.

voxsartoria · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by Wes Bourne

Nice.

Thank you for demonstrating how much time I wasted.

Originally Posted by Wes Bourne

Just get rid of that Chewbacca coat.

You will have to be more specific.

- B

Film Noir Buff · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by apropos

Chin up. Wipe your tears. Don't you go all Antongiavanni on me.
Relax, I dont hear any voices...yet.

LaoHu · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by Wes Bourne

I wear flip-flops during summer. Outside the house. Nowhere near the beach.

Me too.

Wes Bourne · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

Thank you for demonstrating how much time I wasted.

Thank you for being articulate.

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

You will have to be more specific.

- B

You mean you have more than 1 coat that fits that description?!?! Saw you linked some pics, but I can never see them from my office pc...

Wes Bourne · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by LaoHu

Me too.

Bro hugs yo!

itsstillmatt · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by voxsartoria

I don't see how you can disagree with me when I was making the exact same general point.

I am saying two things.

First, the notion that "class" is so nuanced in contemporary American culture that a man wearing a bespoke navy suit would be pegged solely because that suit is made from hopsack is absurd. Moreover, a person who would make such a claim does so idiotically. I assume that you agree with that since you are not an idiot.

Second, my point about ye olde crusty remnants was not that they represent the apex of some American social pyramid, but that time and circumstances have passed them by. Like any niche social group in retreat, the lack of vigor creates anxiety and a bunker mentality. If a person has a fantasy of upward mobility in which this class is the objective, my point was that you will never dress your way into it. So, being consumed with picking a particular navy blue cloth over another for more successful social mimicry shows a profound lack of real familiarity with this group of people. Not to mention it is puzzling why anyone would even desire such a thing as a goal when getting dressed in the morning. I guess you can disagree with this part, but if so, I am curious what your alternative viewpoint is.

- B

I don't disagree with this. I was disagreeing with what I thought you had said, which is that class in the US is somehow defined by this old, crusty group to this day. I agree with you about hopsack being an absurd measure for class, though I don't think that even needs to be said.

Film Noir Buff · Nov 23, 2009

Originally Posted by JPHardy

How about a Rubinacci hopsack suit? Would you look like a misplaced Napoli, garbage collector lost in NY?
These are the images that come to mind:

Navy Hopsack Suit?

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