It’s menswear market week here in New York, and yesterday I met with several brands at a small trade show held at the Park Lane Hotel. Among the regular attendees are two friends and colleagues of Ivy Style, Crittenden and R. Hanauer (otherwise known as bowties.com).
Both are from the South — Hanauer hails from South Carolina and “Critt” from Kentucky — and both brands exhibited a combination of Southern trad and classic English style.
Randall Hanauer Jr. — age 30 or so — was more formal than usual in double-breasted navy suit and horizontal striped shirt. But this was juxtaposed to his usual casual accessories: a bright bow tie and a Timex on a striped band.
And of course the Hanauer collection was full of classic club and rep motifs in a bright range of colors.
This fellow is Zach, who works for Crittenden (apologies for the bad photo). You see the same basic approach: grey flannels, English-style tweed jacket with ticket pocket, plus fun socks and bit loafers.
And here are a couple of Crittenden’s mannequins:
As for the patriarch Critt, who’s well into his seventies and whose career includes leadership roles at Ralph Lauren and Norman Hilton, he was wearing grey flannels, sporty socks, and, well, you can see. — CC
I believe alligator leans more Southern than Anglo.
LOVE those loafers. Saw a similar pair at Paul Stuart decades ago, and still think about the day I will have the funds to procure a pair.
Watching re-runs of Downton Abbey has this southerner yearning to replace the long lost brown tweed jacket with a new one. I’ll be sure to look for a ticket pocket. Glad to be back to style and not politics, CC.
Please relay to them that their “shop” button currently leads to a blank page.
As a native New Englander, I am really impressed with all the classic Anglo style coming from south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Love the cashmere socks and crocodile loafers in the last pic. Dressed like a true southern gentleman.
Can one tell, just from looking at the hide, whether a shoe is made from allidile or crocogator?
Great clothes all around, but I love the colorful bar-striped ties, the tweeds and the gray flannels in particular. That wool tartan tie is very nice as well. Makes an old Southern boy proud.
No 3/2 roll?
Alligator loafers have to be the epitome of GTH attire. Or maybe more accurately, the epitome of “F— you!” attire.
Or even more accurately, the epitome of P.I.M.P.
That Zach looks great. In England it could look affected. He looks just… good.
We’re too shy to wear new clothes. So we rarely look relaxed like that unless we’re scruffy.
By the way – I’m not sending multiple short messages to annoy anyone, I promise. My touchscreen keyboard keeps glitching and freezing while typing. I will write drafts in notepad from now on and cut-and-paste to stop it happening.
Downton Abbey? Haha, over here you’d never publicly admit to watching that. And yet I’m a proud fan of Gossip Girl, so it’s not snobbery – just reflexive Anglo-cringe.
Costume dramas are for the export market. In fact; they pretty much ARE our export market. That and professional sneerers on reality shows.
Here we all watch Madmen and Boardwalk Empire for our warm soak in a tub of nostalgia. I think the past is better in a foreign country; they do things differently there.
And you’ll notice most English classics – the films that we think define us – are set overseas. The Italian Job… Bridge on the River Kwai…
I suppose it’s the old Graham Greene thing. We don’t like each other much. And England is easier to love from a distance.
Anyway, we’re good at being distant. They train us from a young age.
But I watched an episode of Downton once. Horrible hammy acting and the accents and idioms were painfully anachronistic – but the costumes were faultless to my inexpert eye. The materials, the dyes, the cuts, the lived-in laundered look… they just missed one detail from the time that, for me, killed it.
The empty haunted eyes.
Look at any picture of the time and you’ll see what I mean. Or read any of the literature, for that matter, as I’m sure you have. The actors in Dowton had modern eyes. Back then – English eyes stared into the abyss.
Shame they didn’t have Laurence Olivier to show them how.
I suppose that’s why, to cynical English eyes, new clothes in the old style can look like playing dress-up games and make us cringe. It doesn’t take much, admittedly. And there will always be that awkward line at the neck – where suddenly a head of the 21st century pokes out across the ages. Like one of those painted scenes at the seaside, with a hole to stick your head through so you can take a picture. And nowadays, post online.
Because you can still buy the shirts and the shoes. But they don’t do those eyes any more, do they? The ones only the English and maybe a few old Boston sorts on your side had, handed down in the family.
Eliot – wasn’t he a Bostonite?
He wrote well about all that. Before he went silly in the head and got nasty about jews.
“In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.”
That was a good look, that.
Really nice looking sport coats. The gray with the blue window pane is a killer.
Eliot – wasn’t he a Bostonite?
He wrote well about all that. Before he went silly in the head and got nasty about jews.
“In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.”
Nice try. The proper term is “Bostonian” and Eliot was not from Boston.
He was from St.Louis, over a thousand miles southwest and in a
former Slave State, though it didn’t secede.
Great story. However it would help if the website were more functional.
As for the clothes, only two jackets shown. Do all the jackets come with
either patch pockets or ticket pockets? Neither of which I like.
“Eliot – Wasn’t he a Bostonite?”
“Nice try. The proper term is “Bostonian” and Eliot was not from Boston.
He was from St.Louis, over a thousand miles southwest and in a
former Slave State, though it didn’t secede.”
Ah, thank you for answering my rhetorical question.
But actually I asked what Eliot was, not where he was born. They’re different.
And as you know, the Eliots were Boston Unitarian, and returned every Summer. And built a very large and beautiful summer house at Eastern Point. And Eliot’s education was Ivy-style; Harvard, naturally. Where he wrote The Triumph of Bullshit before leaving America permanently.
Missouri was where his family made money, which embarassed Eliot. And he said he never belonged in Missouri. But he did say it inspired The Wasteland.
But anyway, who are we to argue? Eliot himself was clear: he was a proud immigrant, an Englishman.
“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?”
Now that’s Ivy style.
To think conservatives once talked like that.
He died in London and, according to his own instructions, his ashes were interred in the church of St. Michael’s in East Coker, the village that Eliot’s ancestor Andrew Eliot had departed from for America in the seventeenth century. A commemorative plaque on the church wall bears his chosen epitaph–lines chosen from Four Quartets: “In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.”
Lately the comments on here are not much better than Trump and the media arguing over who had the largest crowd, wreaking of insecurity.
Also, the jacket and trousers are too short. Looks like he borrowed something from someone smaller than him. There are not many crocodile loafers in the south. Most consider them too ostentatious. Some ladies wear them, but women are supposed to be a little more flamboyant. The first mannequin looks like something a used car dealer would wear when trying to dress up enough to get into Studio 54. If one is describing socks as “fun” then they need to take a break.
I live just across the river from Ft Mill, SC where Randy’s shop is located and wear his ties almost exclusively. I purchase them through Richard Hill “the Haberdasher” (RDK Clothiers). I was travelling in Boston recently and stopped into North River Outfitter on Charles St. I made my way over to the ties, grabbed the first one that caught my eye and was pleasantly surprised to see Randy’s label on the back. It was wonderful to see that and it is wonderful to see one of my “locals” on my favorite blog. Thank you for the post.
@Nath, I’m not looking for Downton Abbey to be a substitute for actual knowledge of history. It is escapism and entertainment, with a passing nod to history. That nobody “over there” would admit to watching, well… my understanding is that the ratings were very high in the UK, and that the Scots (I think) were downright ornery when their local ITL did not carry the series for the first few episodes/season. Que sera sera. The point was that it reminded me that I missed the brown tweed.
Crocodile and alligator shoes are rare everywhere simply because they’re so damned expensive. However, these skins — along with some other reptile varieties — are commonly used for cowboy boots in Texas.
Oh absolutely. I wasn’t sneering. I thought I said so?
The ratings were phenomenal – and on ITV, which hasn’t had a hit in years. I think it beat the Queen’s speech on Christmas day – and I believe the Queen herself was a fan. She pointed out a faux pas with some medals or some-such.
I gave the wrong impression. What I meant was people don’t admit to popular taste here. And it’s especially naff to watch homegrown stuff. Trash has to be American – so we can have our Krispy Kreme and eat it.
If you believed what we say, we only slob out to Swedish crime dramas or read Checkhov in the Russian.
Which I do, as it happens. But only the stories, never the plays – too broad.
Ooh MDixon. What a lovely barn door. Allow me…
I think your weejun prose needs a little syntactical duck tape.
This is what you wrote:
Since a short while ago, the remarks made here are not much better, when you compare them with Trump having an argument with the media over whose crowd had been larger – his crowd or the media’s.
Furthermore, the jacket is too short. So are the trousers. It appears to me that the man borrowed one item of clothing that wasn’t long enough.
There are not many slip-on shoes made of crocodile leather in the South. Most shoes like this think Southerners are too attention-seeking. Some ladies wear Southerners as clothing – but women wouldn’t. Women are expected to be more attention-seeking than that. The first of those shop dummies looks like an item of clothing, the kind worn by people who sell used cars as they put on fancier clothes outside fashionable nightspots in 1970s New York, in the hope that this would gain them entrance if they were sufficiently fancy. The shop dummies need to stop working whenever anyone is saying socks are enjoyable.
…Are you google translating from a slavic language? Apologies if so.
Oh my mistake. I missed the compacted, complex analogy that linked arguing over large crowds to wearing small clothes: “wreaking of insecurity”.
That is, if I understand correctly, “the widespread devastation of doubt”.
Beautiful. Echoes of the old Bostonite Eliot.
MDixon, the comments are not up to snuff because most of them are from one person. Also, because I’m not commenting 😉