Recently, The Wall Street Journal published a (to Izzy) depressing story on the state of the world of accessories:

After 60 years, the Men’s Dress Furnishings Association, the trade group that represents American tie makers, is expected to shut down Thursday.

Association members now number just 25, down from 120 during the 1980s power-tie era. U.S. tie companies have been consolidating. Others have closed because of overseas competition as the U.S. market share for American-made ties has fallen to about 40%, from 75% in 1995.

Members have lost interest. But the biggest reason for the group’s demise: Men aren’t wearing ties.

According to a recent Gallup Poll, the number of men who wore ties every day to work last year dropped to a record low of 6%, down from 10% in 2002. U.S. sales have plummeted to $677.7 million in the 12 months ending March 31, from their peak of $1.3 billion in 1995, according to market researcher NPD Group. Although sales are expected to get a bump around Father’s Day, June 15, the future of neckties is very much in doubt.

But perhaps the saddest part the article was its mention of makers, and even popularizers, of neckties not wearing them themselves:

Scott Sternberg, 33, who founded the Band of Outsiders tie label in 2004, has quickly developed a following of young hipsters who buy his skinny ties, sold at stores including Jeffrey, Barneys New York and Ron Herman.

He says younger men find wearing ties more interesting today when they are “outside of obligation.” While he himself wears a tie on “whims and special occasions,” Mr. Sternberg admits that he doesn’t wear one to the office on a regular basis. “Ties get in the way,” he says.

To Izzy, this sartorial hypocrisy is good evidence that for Sternberg and his ilk wearing a tie is merely a matter of fleeting fashion, not enduring style.

Although the article doesn’t mention them as possible explanations for the demise of the tie, Izzy suspects that two major factors are the unfortunate decline of formality in all aspects of social life (whether in manners, rhetoric, etc.) as well as the widespread opposition to anything that smack of inhibition or self-restraint.

Andre Leon Talley, the eccentric editor-at-large (no pun intended) of Vogue, arrived at a fashion show wearing an alligator (?) coat that looks suspiciously, and embarrassingly, familiar.  Izzy never forgets a hide.

These cufflinks from Fender, one of the most famous makers of electric guitars, should pluck the heartstrings of any would-be rock star.

GQ described New York-based haberdasher Duncan Quinn as “rock ‘n roll meets Savile Row,” which well captures its combination of traditional tailoring with flashy colors and patterns.  Izzy is particularly taken with this fleur de lis necktie, a bold take on a classical shape.  Alas, at $255 only French monarchs are likely to afford it.

In his recently published memoir, The Place to Be, television newsman Roger Mudd writes about a time he was late to Air Force One as President John F.  Kennedy was about to leave for a trip. The reporter was forced to take a different staircase than was usual: “To get to my seat in the rear I had to pass through the presidential quarters. There stood the president of the United States himself, with [press secretary Pierre] Salinger grinning and hovering, ready to pounce if I dared ask a question. I dared not. The president stepped aside to let me pass….As I slipped by, I noticed that there were shelves in the space usually used for coats—shelf after shelf of shirts, stacks of freshly laundered presidential shirts. There must have been four dozen of them. Only later did I learn that Kennedy put on a fresh shirt each and every time he deplaned from Air Force One for a public appearance.”

According to a recent scientific paper, artificially enhancing the appearance of male barn swallows, thereby making them more attractive to females, upped their testosterone and even trimmed their weight.

“Other females might be looking at them as being a little more sexy, and the birds might be feeling better about themselves in response to that,” said study co-author Kevin McGraw, an evolutionary biology professor at Arizona State University.

[...]

“It’s the ‘clothes make the man’” idea, [lead author Rebecca] Safran said. “It’s like you walk down the street and you’re driving a Rolls Royce and people notice. And your physiology accommodates this.”

Obviously, one shouldn’t be too quick to draw conclusions about humans from a study of birds, but the underlying mechanism shouldn’t be ignored: How a gentleman dresses affects how others treat him, which in turns affects his mood and even his personality.  Izzy, for instance, has noticed that when he is well-turned out in a jacket and tie, strangers treat him better, which makes him more chipper and gracious than he would be otherwise.  While it’s an old idea that clothes make the man, this study helps to explain how that can occur even if the man is unaware of what he is actually wearing.

Just in time for Father’s Day, Bill Cosby is auctioning off some of the hideous vibrant sweaters he wore as Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the Cosby Show.  The bidding, which starts at $5,000, commences on eBay on June 2nd, and the proceeds will go to the educational foundation he created in his son’s honor.

This would appear to be the perfect opportunity to support a charity while giving your dad an expensive gift that you can guilt-trip him to wear for many Christmases to come.  If he’s particulary unlucky, he might even be featured on the blog of Bad Sweater Guy.

Once the heroic face of Spartacus and Colonel Dax, Kirk Douglas, sad to say, looks a bit pathetic in cartoonish primary-colored playclothes.  While he is has been supporting a noble cause, the renovation of playgrounds around Los Angeles, is it too much to ask the living legend to maintain his dignity?

Like the directions of a compass rose, Roman Polanski’s hair and open wing collar point in all directions—which, fittingly for a director, makes his face the focal point.

It may seem like just a minor thing, but Izzy can’t stand that unusually high top button (or is it a stud?) on George Clooney’s shirt.  By being so close to the bow tie, it ruins the simplicity appropriate to formal wear.  And by the way, given the gap between the lapel and his shirt collar, Brad Pitt’s jacket appears to be too small around the chest.

Speaking of the negative portrayal of slick-haired men in Hollywood movies, even worse is the treatment of blond men. (And worst off of all are slick-haired blonds.) With the exception of the broken-nosed Owen Wilson, called by some the butterscotch stallion, tow-heads are nearly always cast as bad guys, never as romantic leads.  (Admittedly, Luke Skywalker was also an anomaly.) Is it because one part of “tall, dark, and handsome” will always elude them?

Having already discussed the greased hair of movie villains such as Gordon Gekko, Izzy was amused to see a satirical news story in The Onion titled “Nation’s Slicked-Back-Hair Men Rally Against Negative Hollywood Portrayal.” It begins:

Thousands of members of the slicked-back-hair community gathered in Hollywood Monday to protest the film industry’s longtime trend of depicting men with slicked-back hair as untrustworthy, unlikeable antagonists.

“There have been 4,192 films in the past 10 years in which male characters with sleek or slicked-back hairstyles have been portrayed in a negative light,” said Ray Swartz, chairman of the National Organization of Men with Slicked-Back Hair. “Even though men with this hairstyle comprise just 3 percent of the U.S. populace, they make up nearly 80 percent of all film and TV villains, bad guys, and just plain assholes. As a result, thousands of men who enjoy wetting their hair and then combing it straight back face a silent but pervasive form of discrimination every single day.”

Izzy wonders whether Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a card-carrying member of NOMSBH.