Manolo for the Men

If, while recently visiting the troops in Kuwait and Afghanistan, Barack Obama strove to look like the ordinary man, he succeeded all too well.  With his shapeless black polo shirt, ill-fitting pleated khakis (note the bunching in the crotch and the pooling at the ankles), and prominently-displayed Blackberry and wireless microphone, he is dressed for dorky casual Friday (a/k/a golfwear at the office).  The only exception to that sorry look are his brown suede boots, which clash with his black shirt and belt.  Making matters worse, his unbuttoned collar emphasizes the scrawniness of his neck.

Izzy’s biggest objection, however, is the visibility of Obama’s electronic gear.  If it’s true that you should never let them see you sweat, it’s all the more the case that you should never let them see your Blackberry.  Visibly wearing such equipment makes a man look like a slave to the office, a terrible thing for any would-be chief executive.   Obama should either have worn a jacket to conceal such necessities or, better yet, have had his assistants carry them.

Having bemoaned the plague of less-than-masculine male models, Izzy is not quite willing to praise this rare example of the opposite extreme: a hairy, meaty chav with teeth that only an orthodontist could love—all courtesy of punk fashionist Vivienne Westwood.  Izzy hasn’t seen this much bling since Hans Holbein the Younger.

It’s “shirts” like this that explain why male models have no chest hair.  And maybe Izzy should have put “male” in quotation marks, too.

A shy-looking Christopher Bailey, the creative force behind Burberry Prorsum, demonstrates a major design flaw in all jeans:  They make it impossible to put your hands in your pockets.

Where some people see Missoni hexagons, Izzy sees a place of refuge.  If only this survival kit came with

- One forty-five caliber automatic
- Two boxes of ammunition
- Four days’ concentrated emergency rations
- One drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills
- One miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible
- One hundred dollars in rubles
- One hundred dollars in gold
- Nine packs of chewing gum
- One issue of prophylactics
- Three lipsticks
- Three pair of nylon stockings.

Remember, what happens in Vegas…

Rafael Nadal may have bested Roger Federer at Wimbledon, but the defeated, in classic tennis apparel, outclassed the victor, who went slumming in a sleeveless, collarless muscle shirt.  Ready for a body slam, not a Grand Slam, all that Nadal was lacked was some visible tattoos.

The visual contrast of these two players reminded Izzy of an excellent, if little known, book on the history of tennis: Sporting Gentlemen: Men’s Tennis from the Age of Honor to the Cult of the Superstar.  Written by E. Digby Baltzell, the sociologist who both coined the term “WASP” and taxonomized that species, the book discusses the decline of tennis from a game of amateur sportsmen upholding an aristocratic code of honor (e.g., the unwritten rule that close calls go to your opponent) into a mercenary high-stakes sport in which players throw temper tantrums on the court.  In the modern era, Arthur Ashe epitomized the old ideal, while John McEnroe represented all that was rotten.  Sartorially at least, Nadal rejects the gentlemanly tradition.

Federer’s white polo shirt, interestingly, traces back to the French tennis player René Lacoste himself.  According to Wikipedia:

While winning the 1927 U.S. Open championship, René Lacoste of France wore something that he himself had created: a white, short-sleeve shirt made exclusively of a light knitted fabric called “jersey petit piqué” that served to wick away moisture due to heat, the very first version of performance clothing in sports. The shirt was a radical departure from tennis fashion of the day, which called for stiff, woven, long-sleeve oxfords. In 1923 during the Davis Cup, the American press nicknamed Lacoste “the Alligator” because of a bet made about an alligator-skin suitcase. With no cognate in his native tongue, the nickname was changed to le crocodile in French. The nickname stuck due to his tenacious behavior on the courts, never giving up his prey. Lacoste’s friend, Robert George, drew him a crocodile which Lacoste then embroidered on the blazer he wore on the courts.

Once he retired from the sport, Lacoste went into the shirt business, savvily putting a crocodile logo on the shirt’s breast—the first time a trademark was placed on the exterior of clothing.   If that wasn’t the Mark of the Beast, Izzy doesn’t know what is.

There is perhaps no more casually elegant shirt collar than the camp collar.  Constructed without a collar band (the strip of fabric that fastens around the neck), the soft collar is part of the same piece of fabric as the body of the shirt, giving it a truly seamless look.  Generally worn unbuttoned, they have a tendency to spread wide.  As Dean Martin proved, they can help separate a gentleman from the pack.

If Izzy may be permitted a little immodesty, he was pleased as spiked punch to discover that the Guardian has praised his humble blog.  In the immortal words of that British newspaper, what you are reading is “a splendid American fashion blog that appears to be written by Niles off Frasier.”  As for the comparison to the fictional Dr. Niles Crane, a neurotic Jungian psychiatrist (is that redundant?), Izzy will accept it insofar as Niles was both over-educated and fastidious in his taste in art, culture, and clothes, even if he occasionally fell for 1990s fads seen above: shirts with narrow collars and widely-spaced stripes, impressionistic ties, and double-breasted suits with fat lapels rolled to the bottom button. Happily, in the show’s later seasons, Niles rarely needed sartorial therapy.

After recently walking miles and miles on hard city sidewalks, Izzy learned the hard way that even the best-made dress shoes are not made for long-distance travel.  Wanting  a shoe that felt and performed like a sneaker but looked somewhat dressy, he was please to discover these comfortable brown suede loafers from Tommy Bahama.  The rubber sole is generously thick, without looking so, and more important, the shoe has only a small heel.

While attending the premier of his latest movie, Will Smith boldly wore an unusual three-piece, peak-lapel suit with a shepherd’s check and black detailing around the button holes.  Unfortunately, the gape in the in shirt collar and the billowing fabric in his vest make it look like his outfit was a cheap formal-wear rental, unlike the custom job it presumably was.

Not being a habitué of Gstaad, Izzy had never heard of French/Swiss financier Arpad Busson prior to the announcment of his engagement to Uma Thurman, but the self-made ladykiller definitely has the rich-playboy style down pat.  Note his high shirt collar, decolletage, unbuttoned (or are they uncuffed?) mitred cuffs, and funky bracelets.

In the past, with a different beauty on his arm, he has even been able to add color to a tuxedo without looking gauche.  But Izzy is even more impressed with Busson’s ultra-slim-fitting peak-lapel dinner jacket. (Are those bracelets his trademark?)

Perfect for any biohazard emergency, Prada recently unsheathed what appears to be a jacket and trenchcoat made of latex rubber.  A big downside of the “fabric” is that it will make you sweat like a wrestler cutting weight, but Izzy also worried that these raincoats are bit too reminiscent of the full-body condoms in the love scene in The Naked Gun.