Can you be interested in style and still be a gentleman?

Her: You don' t have to hold the door open for me because I'm a woman.

Him: I'm not. I'm holding the door open for you because I'm a gentleman.

K-man, this is really the wrong forum for your inquiry. The more appropriate place for anguished considerations of who is, and is not, a gentleman is here:

http://askandyaboutclothes.com/forum...splay.php?f=31

Trust me, they eat that $hit up over there.

To answer your question, no, if you harbor nasty thoughts about other people based solely on what they wear, you are not a gentleman; you are a snob. Take heart, however, as snobs can still wear conservative business dress! In fact, they may be said to have invented it. It's what's on the outside that counts!

It's not what you wear that matters. It's what you wear that matters.

The cultivated snob is an underappreciated archetype.

These days, we only have the social snobs.

Originally Posted by LabelKing

Click to expand...

The cultivated snob is an underappreciated archetype.

These days, we only have the social snobs.

No matter what you do or how you behave someone, at some level will regard you as a snob either through their own insecurities or through malice and perhaps even as a control element.

Nothing wrong with being a snob if you merit it, it's considering the source that can make it farcical. The so-called reverse snobbery of the modrn day Robbespierre or clerk that seeks to drag down the talented by mobilizing the mob against it with the real purpose being a desire to fill that very void they pretend to damn.

Beware of those with high ambitions, large appetites but sparse talents.

I regret that I used the word gentleman as I didn't know this term was so controversial to some or defined so differently by others. I now wish I phrased the question this way instead: Can you be interested in style and still treat others with respect and understanding?

Originally Posted by Con Biz Dresser

Click to expand...

Can you be interested in style and still treat others with respect and understanding?
In theory, yes. But in practice, it never seems to work out. Those interested in clothes are invariably either shallow, vain, arrogant, insecure, humorless, envious, bombastic, loquacious, petty, vindictive, paranoid, mendacious, or boorish. In rare instances, all these traits are all combined in one and the same person!

Better to stick with Jos A Bank and cultivate your higher qualities. As an added benefit, your shoulders won't be rumpled but rather as smooth as a supermodel's @$$.

Originally Posted by Manton

Click to expand...

In theory, yes. But in practice, it never seems to work out. Those interested in clothes are invariably either shallow, vain, insecure, envious, bombastic, locquacious, petty, vindictive, paranoid, mendacious, or boorish. In rare instances, all these traits are all combined in one and the same person! Better to stick with Jos A Bank and culitivate your higher qaulities. As an added benifit, your shoulders won't be rumpled but rather as smooth as a supermodel's @$$.
Truman Capote--or really the entire New York intellectual elite of the '40s, '50s and '60s.

Originally Posted by LabelKing

Click to expand...

Truman Capote--or really the entire New York intellectual elite of the '40s, '50s and '60s.

I always thought Lillian Hellman was incredibly selfless and high-minded. Don't disillusion me, please.

Originally Posted by Manton

Click to expand...

I always thought Lillian Hellman was incredibly selfless and high-minded. Don't disillusion me, please.
What she had was probably all negated by Clement Greenberg's self-created intrigue.

Originally Posted by Con Biz Dresser

Click to expand...

I regret that I used the word gentleman as I didn't know this term was so controversial to some or defined so differently by others. I now wish I phrased the question this way instead: Can you be interested in style and still treat others with respect and understanding?

The word "gentleman" is much politicized. After a thousand or more years of discussion about it in western history there appears to still be no universally accepted set of behaviors for it, especially in a classless society. The nearest I can tell is that as a quality it isn't much valued but it's absence is much lamented and is appreciated when experienced even if it is unable to be reciprocated.

It does seem that it has become a sort of popularity contest and that people bequeath the term onto people they like irrespective of the actor's behavior.

I think that as originally conceived, you were part of a group with its own code and you were expected to operate within it mostly to others of your own group which made it a badge of exclusivity and values, only your peers could judge whether you'd fallen short. Maybe that explains why suddenly everyone can decide all day long if you are a gentleman or not, your peers are every other breathing person on the planet. Further, this may explain why it's a bad idea to keep a hierarchically feudal concept alive in a modern age and why we might all need websites where you can vote on a man's gentlemanliness all day, every day; sort of like Sanjaya's popularity.


But to answer your question. Yes.

Originally Posted by Manton

Click to expand...

as smooth as a supermodel's @$$.

Originally Posted by Manton

Click to expand...

Better to stick with Jos A Bank and culitivate your higher qaulities. As an added benifit, your shoulders won't be rumpled but rather as smooth as a supermodel's @$$.



Manton, I cannot help but to feel like you are making a snide comment about the fact that like and wear what Jos. A. Bank has to offer. If you haven't already figured it out I partially started this thread because of some of the abrasive and disrespectful comments I read in the two lessons you posted, not only because of your language but also because I started to make my own personal judgments about you when I saw the photos of your suits and wasn't necessarily proud with my own private conduct or thought process even if I was being polite about it on the forum. You may say what you want about Jos. A. Bank even if you haven't even stepped in their store but I do feel that I am more comfortable, and look more professional in their suits than those that you posted and I probably spent less too but that doesn't mean I should look down on you and I hope that I don't continue to in the future.

Here is another way to look at it.


Take Fred Astaire. One of the few icons I have seen accepted by most on style/clothing forums to be genuinely stylish or well dressed.

First, let's examine his profession. He was a dancer *** actor. Is that a gentlemanly profession? Additionally, he was a dedicated athlete and danced, what, 16 hours a day? Basically a human muscle.

He was plain looking and had little presence and yet he stood up to every fogey, heavy weight or man of means in his movies which appealed very much to the underdog of the depression era and to the populist image of the American spirit. But it was a populist vision, not an exclusive one.

Now the fact that he was an entertainer and often on screen meant it was his job to be fitted and refitted until his clothes were perfect and moved in step with him. Does this mesh with the aspiration of the average American professional? Maybe this is the same sort of cruelty women who see unobtainable images in beauty magazines suffer?

Maybe the question isn't so much can you be interested in style and treat other people well as it is can you be interested in style and not torture yourself to madness.

Originally Posted by Manton

Click to expand...

In theory, yes. But in practice, it never seems to work out. Those interested in clothes are invariably either shallow, vain, arrogant, insecure, envious, bombastic, locquacious, petty, vindictive, paranoid, mendacious, or boorish. In rare instances, all these traits are all combined in one and the same person!

I wonder if the relationship is causative or correlative? I feel I really need to turn to working on locquacious.