Hollywood’s status as an epicenter of impeccable sartorial taste is long gone, but there was at least one guest at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards who gave a nod to the well tailored days of yore.
That man was talent agent Ben Press, son of former J. Press president and Ivy Style columnist Richard Press. Company founder Jacobi was Ben’s great-grandfather.
Ben accompanied client and longtime friend Elle Macpherson and was dressed in a dinner jacket made for his grandfather Paul (Richard’s father, if you’re having trouble following the family tree) in 1968.
The tradly duds got Ben named one of the evening’s best dressed, according to the London Daily Mail’s Alex Shekarchman. — CC
Richard – He looks outstanding! Truly dashing. You must be so proud.
If I had Elle Macpherson as my date and a custom J Press dinner jacket on, I’d have a smirk like Mr Press does too.
Great post. It is nice to see J.Press clothing represented at event such as this.
Does look sharp!
Every Jewish boy’s dream.
Correction: Every boy’s dream.
I’d consider a wing collar if my date looked like that, but a wing collar with black tie is unfortunate nonetheless.
Pierre,
It may surprise you to know that since black tie is a derivative of white tie, wing collars were once the norm with tuxedos. It wasn’t until the 1930s, when the Prince of Wales/Edward VIII/the Duke of Windsor took to wearing a turndown collar with black tie, that turndown collars became acceptable.
Of course, there is a significant difference between wearing a detachable wing collar with a fixed-length bow tie and wearing an attached wing collar shirt with an adjustable bow tie. I find the latter unacceptable. The former, however, still looks elegant, though it is harder to get all the ingredients now than it once was.
My only quibbles with the picture above is that the young Mr. Press seems to be lacking a cummerbund, and that his jacket is open. But that’s OK; I didn’t even notice him until you brought up the wing collar issue. I guess my attention was elsewhere….
It doesn’t show in the blog picture, but the formal trousers accompanying the dinner jacket Mr. Press is wearing were self-stitched attached “Daks” style waistband that mimics a cummerbund. J. Press sold attached wing collar shirts in the 1930s for black tie events.
The temperature of the red carpet and the beauty on it requires proper ventilation.
Squeeze,
The problem (as I see it) with this particular Daks waistband is that it exposes too much shirt. I can count five buttons (which raises another issue: shirts worn with tuxedos are normally closed with studs–four of them, usually), and even were he to button his jacket, there is a risk of white peeking out from beneath the button, thereby disrupting what should be an uninterrupted field of black.
Dressing well and dressing comfortably are not necessarily overlapping categories. I still maintain that while he looks good, he’d look better with his jacket buttoned.
I cannot argue with his choice of arm candy, though 🙂
I had a visit with Ben yesterday. Saw a custom, legacy J Press gray flannel suit in the flesh (maybe I should say “on” the flesh). Right off the “rack” almost perfect fit. Lot’s of chat about the old days and how we completely took for granted the clothes we wore – we were laughing about stuff like wresting around in a BB madras – the bleeding kind – sport coat, blowing out the elbow and being like, “Meh, no biggie”; how “cool” we thought we were tie-dyeing BB OCBD’s, or cutting the collars off Paul Stewart shirts… Ahh, the good ol’ days. (I am now envisioning people out there shrieking like Bluto when they dropped a case of JD in front of Delta House after Dean Wormer revoked their charter.)
As I have a gig down in LA for the next few months, I’ll see him again soon. Perhaps I will get to see more of “The Collection”…