Corduroy Fall Style

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The Armour of The Cultured Man

“In the morning, the day we were to leave, I had been dressed as finely as if I were to be photographed, I had been given a new hat and a velvet jacket,” writes Marcel Proust in In Search of Lost Time from the early 1900s.

In his work, velvet or corduroy becomes a noble textile.

Oscar Wilde, his contemporary, also had a weakness for the textile. Wilde wore fancy velvet in protest against the dominant dark garments, he declared.

Later, many other artists, intellectuals, and indeed those with aspirations to be something in the world of culture, were to be attracted to the textile.

Woody Allen uses the symbolic power of corduroy, when he dresses a leading man (and himself) in corduroy. Wes Anderson, who is an auteur like Woody Allen, is also a real velvet man. The textile, whether ribbed or with a plush finish, has become a stylistic signature for him.

As for the photo, I’m wearing slack jacket and trousers from heavy corduroy. On my feet a pair of bespoke Vienna shoes.

A Corduroy Suit can Bring Down Presidents

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“Smart yet informal, outdoorsy yet intellectual: this was the cool image I desired in the winter of 1976. I wanted the clothing (and associated charisma) of Robert Redford as the Watergate reporter Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men. And here was David Jones’ menswear department offering me my dream: a three-piece, corduroy suit. Mustard-coloured. Clearly, a corduroy suit not only helped a young reporter win scoops and the hearts of attractive female researchers, it had the ability to bring down presidents. In a casually businesslike way, hair attractively tousled, someone like me could look impressive wearing it while sitting on a chair backwards. (Spinning an office chair around and sitting on it backwards was what impulsively intelligent young men did in movies. Though in my experience, strangely, seldom in real life.) Unbuttoned and matched with a loosened tie, a telephone, a takeaway coffee and an attractive researcher, a corduroy jacket impressed with its significant message: You corrupt bigshots trifle with Corduroy Man at your peril. Meanwhile, a corduroy jacket could be carelessly slung anywhere: over a bar stool, the editor’s desk, the couch in the attractive researcher’s apartment. Where it lay was then undeniably your territory.”

Novelist Robert Drew weighs in passionately for a corduroy suit in his book Swimming to the Moon (2014).

Like denim, corduroy was a fabric for workwear. Perhaps you can say that while the Americans brought denim to the masses in the 19th Century, the Englishmen popularized cord.

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Nils Kreuger by Richard Bergh (1883). Source: SMK

The oldest photo I know of a corduroy lounge suit I found in the halls of The National Gallery of Denmark. It is a portrait from 1883 of Swedish painter Nils Kreuger by Swedish painter Richard Bergh.

The artist’s affiliation to corduroy today you see in the director Wes Anderson, who regularly show up on the web in a fancy corduroy suit.

Contrasts and Similarities in a Sports Jacket Dress

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Sports-jacket-similarities-constrast-The-Journal-of-Style

Nothing wrong with a distinct contrast between top and bottom, if you are in sports jacket. A contrast combination can be too hard though. Top and bottom may end up in completely separate camps.

To avoid that I like to create similarities between top and bottom as well. It may be the colour’s hue, which could be at about the same level – as in the relationship between jacket and trousers shown above. And, it may be the socks that refers to the tie (and shirt) instead of the trouser’s colour, also demonstrated above. A brownish handkerchief in the breast pocket would have completed the logic.

Both Harris Tweed and cord trousers are bespoke from​​ an Italian tailor. The brogue monk shoes are from an old shoemaker in Warsaw. The shirt is from Camiceria Carmen. And, Antonio Muro has made the unlined navy wool tie.

Source: The Journal of Style

The Hacking Jacket

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Well done, I thought immediately when I saw Mads Peter Christensen’s use of tweed, corduroy and accessories. Energy and boldness are present, and the dress is still a whole.

And check out the hacking jacket. Copenhagen bespoke tailor Peter Undén made it, clearly one of the best sports jackets I’ve seen from him.

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“The vent overlaps, and top and bottom pieces are cut slightly sloping in opposite directions. This is a detail that I have copied from the vent on my old sports jacket from Huntsman, like in the case of swelled lapels,” Mads Peter Christensen tells.

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He also says that “the sleeves have a bit more width than the median, so to speak. The roping is also a bit more marked at my request.”

“The back shot shows a back that might look a little more loose than my feeling of it with the jacket on, but it’s made with room for knit. Pictures are like that ;-)” Mads Peter Christensen ends.

Source: The Journal of Style on the street in Copenhagen

Brisk evening walk

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Summer in Denmark has been cold and wet, and we do not long for fall, which will bring even more rain. On the other hand, we do, well, some of us do, because we can dress in tweeds and cords again.

Tweeds and cords are for the thinking man, not for the man of action. It looks odd, when a razor sharp businessman sports tweed, and even worse, when a thinking man dresses in a solid navy blue worsted suit and black shoes. True, some contain both creatures, the thinking man and the man of action, and they may wear tweeds or worsteds.  But, it will often be so that we feel naturally attracted to either a vita contemplativa and tweeds or a vita activa and worsteds.

On the photo me, a thinking man mostly, taking a brisk evening walk at Skovshoved north of Copenhagen. In the backdrop, Øresund, the channel separating Denmark and Sweden. I am wearing cords from Danish tailor Jakob Bay and a bespoke jacket made up in Italy from a sturdy diamond tweed.

Source: The Journal of Style

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