Manolo for the Men

These blue velvet oxfords from Paul Smith are as much of a head trip as, well, Blue Velvet.   And they’re just the thing for the love child of Oscar Wilde and Elvis.

Presidents Bush and Putin recently met in Russia for some tense, and ultimately failed, talks on security issues including NATO expansion and Iran’s nuclear weapons program.  Unlike in former, happier times, the two came suited for battle, if subtly.  Bush wore a Texas-style Don’t-Tread-on-Me belt and a dress shirt with two front flapped pockets (just like Soviet-slayer Charlie Wilson), while Putin chose to wear an outright military jacket, complete with ammo pockets, epaulets, and belting.  Looking at the two’s cheerful faces, the cynic in Izzy recalls a line from Will Rogers: “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”

Izzy missed it at the time, but not too long ago Speedo unveiled the LZR Racer, its new, super hi-tech swimsuits that will be worn by the American team at the Beijing Olympics.   Gold medalist Michael Phelps showed the suit off while posed like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vetruvian Man.  In traditional Speedo fashion, the Saran-wrap like suit leaves little to the imagination.

Now here’s a t-shirt message Izzy can subscribe to: a gentleman in a tweed suit, high collar,  and spats demonstrating civilization to an attentive boy, dressed with restraint.  And the slogan is both perfect and true.  The artist is Edward Gorey, who was famed for his vaguely ominous illustrations of Victorian and Edwardian subjects.  But there’s nothing discomfiting here, except maybe the boy’s stiff collar.

While reading the obituary for publisher Simon Michael Bessie—who edited writers including Daniel J. Boorstin, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Kenneth Tynan, and Elie Wiesel—Izzy came across this passage about Bessie’s attempt to track down John Cheever, the novelist and chronicler of a vanishing WASP world:

As Susan Cheever recounts it in a memoir of her father, “Home Before Dark” (1984), Mr. Cheever had offered the novel to Random House in 1954, but the publisher turned it down. In despair, he rented a house that summer on Nantucket Island, took his family there and continued working on the novel. One day, as Cheever was staring out the window, a sailing yacht appeared in the harbor and dropped anchor. A man in white flannels and a double-breasted blazer was rowed ashore in a dinghy and announced in the voice of a literate aristocrat to the small crowd that had gathered to greet him, “I’m looking for John Cheever.”

“It was Simon Michael Bessie,” Ms. Cheever writes, “a senior editor at Harper & Row, and he had come to buy ‘The Wapshot Chronicle.’ ”

It’s worth noting that although Bessie was not himself a WASP, he clearly knew how to dress the part.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Polo Ralph Lauren will be outfitting the U.S. Team at the upcoming Beijing Olympics:

“Norman Bellingham, chief operating officer of the [U.S. Olympic Committee] and a former Olympic kayaker, says that he wanted the athletes to be attired in a ‘classic and more formal manner.’”

[...]

“At a meeting at Polo’s headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York, Mr. Bellingham told Mr. Lauren that his inspiration was ‘Chariots of Fire,’ the 1981 movie about British athletes competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. Upon hearing that, [Ralph] Lauren smiled, Mr. Bellingham recalls. ‘He knew precisely what we were going for.’”

[...]

“At the Olympic Village and at the Closing Ceremonies, athletes’ wardrobes will include V-neck tennis sweaters and ties, classic Polo mesh shirts with ‘Beijing’ written in big Chinese characters across the front and cargo pants — all in a patriotic palette of red, white and blue. The Olympic logo featured on the new uniforms may include a replica of a crest with stars and stripes used by the 1932 U.S. Olympic team at the Los Angeles Games. Polo ponies of varying sizes will also make an appearance on the garments.”

Izzy thinks that the sketch offers some great white hope.

Chink. Chink. Chink. These otherwise normal Hugo Boss dress shoes should make quite the aural statement. Izzy, however, doesn’t recommend trying to get through airport security with them.

Wisconsin cheeseheads be damned, there is nothing more American than wearing a hot dog cap at a baseball game.   That is, until someone invents an apple pie hat.

Testifying in front of Congress about the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts, Robert Redford costumed himself as an old-fashioned school teacher, complete with a tweed jacket with a narrow lapel and throat latch, as well as appropriately mussed hair.  Izzy would have believed anything the man said.

Whichever of Barack Obama’s campaign staffers found those sleek black-and-white bowling shoes, the least objectionable pair possible, ought to get a raise, even the promise of a cabinet post.  (Izzy notices that Obama is a lefty who wears his watch on his left arm, the political connotations of which are…?)

If you’re the world’s tallest man and lack the world’s largest wallet, no one expects your suits to fit well. But why, of all people, should your sleeves be too long?! And don’t say you’ll grow into it.

Next week, National Football League team owners will vote on a proposal to ban players from having hair flow from their helmets below their names on the back of their jerseys. Izzy can imagine why some players want their hair to show—it helps individualize them in a sport where helmets make identities hard to discern—but long flowing locks jar with the smooth, clean uniforms found in football.  By contrast, crazy, exploding hair works just fine with the kilts on caber tossers.