Polo chinos, $14.99, Land's End tennis shirt, $15, gap ribbon belt, $0.99. Admittedly a bit pricey by my own standards, but such is the price one must pay to be the original owner of things.
Admittedly, this pink and green ensemble may be a bit ostentatious outside of the yacht club or golf course. But with only a scant month left till Rule Changing Day (Labor Day) I've got to get as much wear as I can out of this crazy stuff before grey and brown become the order of the day for the next 3/4 of the year.
Those green pants were downright electric when I bought them. Two summers and a million washes later, and I think they're fading quite nicely. Another ten years and they'll be dead perfect.
p.s. matches perfectly with Old Lady Soda.
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7 comments:
I'm an ardent reader of your blog.
I do have to question the 'Rule Changing Day' theory though - I think that that notion is a tad antiquated. I'll wear J. Crew classic cut white chinos with a Ralph Lauren brown tweed coat over a white button down oxford and a navy bow tie in the winter, which doesn't fit with the Labor Day theorem.
I think in this day and age, when you have a major designer like Marc Jacobs who sets the pulse for fashion and consistently changes our ideas of what is appropriate and inappropriate, then nothing is off limits. There is a definite lean at least in menswear today to be a stickler for rules, which I agree is necessary for most to combat "Eternal Teen-Ager Syndrome."
I subscribe to the Rugby aesthetic of twisted classics (perhaps due to being a student myself) or the way Italian men coyly play with clothing (Sartorialist is a great reference for this). Perhaps then, once you have the rules down, it's okay to make your own? Or, perchance, breaking the rules is what makes a trendsetter (a la Kate Moss). Or maybe it's a matter of saying to each his own.
Thought provoking post.
Dale,
Great comments, thank you.
I'm inclined to agree with you. I also like to push and pull the rules of mens dress. And I do believe its important to know what those rules are so that when you do break them, you do it artfully. I plan to wear white baucks with tweed well inot the fall this year...you get the idea.
But certain things, like green pants and patch madras, are the sole property of Summer.
Cheers.
Simon at Permanent Style has permalinks to entries he calls "The Rules and How to Break Them," including, of course, No white after Labor Day. (Here's another example.)
Dale, as a student, can and should experiment with rules and how to bend and break them. Once he joins the ranks of the working adults, he may have less freedom to do so, but will probably understand the rules and how to play with them better than his cohorts who have not experimented.
However, the newcomer to proper, traditional men's dress, or someone starting a new professional job, will certainly want to stick with the rules. (Giusesppe certainly did so for his interview!) Later, as he gets more comfortable, he can try different things.
Just my $0.02.
I am confused also. The "rule" was no white shoes. Then it became all white. Now people are making it green pants? I suppose I can see limiting pastels to Summer, but on the golf course or another activity, I see nothing wrong with that outfit after Labor Day. Just my 2 cents.
Enjoying the blog, scanned through the entire thing last night. Good work all around!
Best,
EVT
Anonymous, the rule (not "rule") was no white after Labor Day or before Memorial Day (before Easter in the South, where it gets hot earlier in the year). The reason is simply that white is a bright, summery color, and that it is only appropriate for bright, summery days. By extension, other bright, summery colors are only appropriate in the summer as well. (Simon Cropmton, in the links I provided above, talks about how to break that rule properly.)
Now that the leftists have won the culture wars instituted by the Cultural Revolution started in the 1960s, there are no rules anymore. Anyone can wear any damn thing he wants, whenever he wants, and no one knows the difference, because they don't even know there were rules to begin with, much less that they are being violated.
What Giuseppe and a number of other style bloggers are all about is resurrecting those rules. Let's face it: everyone looked a lot better when they followed the sartorial rules common in the mid-20th century than they do now.
I hope and pray that the pendulum has already reached its extreme and is on its way back to some semblance of normality, and that once we are rid of the hippies responsible for destroying sartorial rules (and the culture that provided them), we can return to sanity, decency, and well-dressed men and women.
Strong Rig....100%...every piece of it...all the way 'round!
ADG
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