How I Beat the Sweltering Heat
I’ve seen the question asked in every summer in magazines, on blogs and in my own inbox: how do you keep cool in a suit in the sweltering heat?
Less But Better: A Design for Living
This past weekend, I was visiting friends (a couple) who live in a good-sized one-bedroom apartment here in Manhattan. Their apartment features a nicely-sized bedroom, a perfectly efficient bathroom with amazing custom shower doors, a great living room, a full…
Overdressed. I Can Live with That.
Over the weekend, I was invited to a friend's apartment for the first time here in Manhattan for an intimate gathering to hear him play some Schubert and Rachmaninov selections on the piano. It was one of those situations where…
Shorts in the City
It’s finally starting to feel like spring. After one of the bitchiest winters in recent memory, signs suggest that summer is actually coming. With temperatures flirting with 70°, men in the city are already starting to show some leg.
I don’t wear shorts in the city. In the midst of our culture’s relentless quest to recapture the ultra casual comforts of a onesie or a softball practice outfit in adulthood, I won’t do it. The inner child seems to be flourishing. It’s the inner adult I’m worried about.
The Skin Game
Every five minutes, it seems there’s another men’s skin product that professes to be better than the one that came out five minutes before, promising to solve a problem that has already been solved by several products that came before it (but with way cooler packaging, of course). And every twenty minutes, I get an email from a PR person wanting me to write about one of these revolutionary new products that’s going to change shaving and skincare as we know it. It’s a saturated market that can be confusing to even the most educated consumer.
Wrinkles Happen
A reader asks…
One struggle I have (and an extreme annoyance) is wrinkles I get in my trousers from sitting at my desk or in my car for a period of time. Is there anything that can be done to help this, whether with tailoring or type of wool? Thanks. Tim.
A Eulogy for the Shrunken Suit
For a long time, I had a theory that the shrunken suit thing was a joke—that Thom Browne had started a movement the same way that L. Ron Hubbard allegedly started Scientology: on a bet to see how many followers he could collect. History tells us that really radical ideas have the power to stick. Coming out of the 1990s, suits had such excess shoulder padding, wide lapels, and excess room in the leg that one could almost cut two Thom Browne suits with all that fabric. The shrunken suit was such a radically different statement that it was almost a hyper-rebellious “fuck you” to suiting as we knew it in the decade prior.
American Gigolo (1980)
There is a scene in American Gigolo in which Julian (Richard Gere) takes a little taste of cocaine from his nightstand and turns to his closet and dresser drawers to pick out his clothes. With “The Love I Saw in You Is Just a Mirage” by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles playing on his stereo, he lays out jackets, shirts and ties in various combinations as he carefully considers the evening’s ensemble. It’s immediately obvious that he performs this ritual every time he gets ready to go out. It’s glorious.
American Gigolo is the first movie I can remember that depicted a masculine and reasonably sophisticated male character actively taking care and pride in choosing and wearing his clothes. Maybe the only movie. Written and directed by Paul Schrader and also starring Lauren Hutton, this 1980 noir-ish crime drama is about a successful Los Angeles male escort to older women (Gere) who gets pinned as the prime suspect in the murder of a wealthy client in Palm Springs. His liaisons have entangled him at the crossroads of the dark underworld and those who wield political and financial power, and he gets in over his head. In a role originally offered to (and turned down by) John Travolta, Gere turned his performance as Julian into a defining career move.
How I Like a Jacket To Fit
With a jacket, my goal is an honest fit that conforms to my form, but doesn't hug and squeeze it. To me, it should be slightly constricting, designed to keep me upright, held together and walking tall.
The “No-Iron” and “Easy-Iron” Dress Shirt Problem
There is an epidemic spreading around the men's wear world, specifically in the dress shirt department. Actually, it might be more accurate to describe the problem as an "imposter" situation rather than a virus. Every year, it appears that more…