Manolo for the Men

For the fashionable human cannonball.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s suit is no doubt bespoke, but Izzy still objects to the cut and construction. Exaggerated shoulders are fine for matadors, but so much padding in a suit makes it look like the hanger is still inside. Also, while the stiffness of a jacket’s front is a matter of taste, and granting that the suit is a kind of armor in the modern world, there’s no need for it to look and feel like a steel breastplate.

If women love a man in uniform, they must surely lurv a man in half of one, at least when he has the hard-earned, eminently practical figure of a firefighter.

In the most recent issue of The New Yorker, Michael Chabon, the superpowered novelist behind The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, has an excellent, thoughtful essay on superhero attire:

like the being who wears it, the superhero costume is, by definition, an impossible object. It cannot exist.

One may easily find suggestive evidence for this assertion at any large comic-book convention by studying the spectacle of the brave and bold convention attendees, those members of the general comics-fan public who show up in costume and go shpatziring around the ballrooms and exhibition halls dressed as Wolverine, say, or the Joker’s main squeeze, Harley Quinn. Without exception, even the most splendid of these getups is at best a disappointment. Every seam, every cobweb strand of duct-tape gum, every laddered fish-net stocking or visible ridge of underpants elastic—every stray mark, pulled thread, speck of dust—acts to spoil what is instantly revealed to have been, all along, an illusion.

This gentleman in Milan is doing so many things right, it’s hard to know where to begin.  There are his narrow, short trousers which show off the sensational antiqued shoes (Berluti?).  And it’s not every day one sees a pocket square in an overcoat.  But the gloves, cradling a cigar, are really what set the outfit apart.  If there’s one accessory any dandy must absolutely possess, it is a pair of canary yellow gloves.

The top’s all business, while the bottom’s all set for the ski slopes—circa 1985. Could DSquared² be targeting the undervalued Swiss newscaster demographic?

Incidentally, shouldn’t DSquared² be pronounced “DSquared squared”? Just sayin’…