Archive for November, 2007
Fashion house Lacoste has just unveiled its latest collection - designed by Michael Young. This is the second of the ‘LACOSTE Holiday’ Collector’s Series, which is a process that the brand uses to get a designer from outside the fashion world to reinterpret its iconic polo shirt (and, not entirely incidentally, to present challenges its production methods).
Michael Young has been amongst the most successful and influential designers of his generation. You’ve never heard of him? Well his furniture collection, designed for a Tokyo store was purchased the Design Museum London and was said to have created ‘a new formal language’ in design.
So what has he done for Lacoste – well it’s a polo shirt with a crocodile skin pattern (no surprises there) that travels up the front and around the back of the shirt, but instead of a silk-screen printing process, the heat-activated ink has been applied directly to the cotton and then ‘baked’ causing it to blister and become thick, plastic fake croc skin itself. Lovely. There is also a limited edition called the PLASTIC POLO +, where the croc skin print has been covered with a metallic leaf film and pressed with a hot iron, giving a distressed, vintage look and feel. The collection is packaged in a re-sealable metallic black plastic tray that can be re-used as a serving platter!
And if that isn’t to your taste, the hot colours for polos in the Christmas run up are said to be dark grey, lime green and pink!
Lacoste fashion show photograph by ksquare, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
November 29th, 2007
If you have to wear a shirt to work, then there are mysteries to be solved: one of them is the nature of the collar. To begin with, a fused collar has an interlining fabric, buckram, plastic etc, which gives shape to the collar itself. This means you don’t have to starch the shirt and it looks better for longer whether or not you wear a tie, as it doesn’t start to crumple around the neck. Beyond the fused or unfused collar there are then styles of collar, for example:
Button down collars – which are considered the least formal and date back to the 1900s, they were supposedly invented by professional pool players in the USA who wanted to get rid of stiff collars that cut their necks as they played shots
Point collars – reasonably self explanatory, but basically they should have a spread between the collar points of around two and three quarter inchesTab collars - where the collar points are joined by a button or snapSpread collars – where the collar points are spread more than three and a half inches – these are the most formal and are usually found on dress shirts – they allow you to wear a cravat or bow tie with ease Club collars – (a very American style this) which have rounded collar pointsPoint collars are the most commonly worn and will suit most offices – some institutions frown on the button down colour and many lawyers (again particularly in the USA) wear the tab collar joined by a gold or platinum bar.
Shirt photograph by makeshiftlove, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
November 26th, 2007
It may not surprise you to know that cabbies in Wales are complaining about an attempt to make them smarten up their appearance.
Blaenau Gwent Council wants to impose a dress code that insists cab drivers wear shirts or polo-shirts with only one button undone (the top one presumably, although I suppose they could undo any button – what a thought!) or T-shirts which cover the shoulders, so no vests or tank tops. Football shirts and tracksuit tops would be banned but shorts would be allowed as long as they have a fly and can be worn with a belt. The rules for women are similar, but they are allowed to wear skirts or dresses.
Like most people, I don’t care what my cab driver wears, as long as he or she doesn’t smell and can navigate the route with speed and efficiency. We’ve all got used to being welcomed into vehicles whose driver is wearing what appears to be a string vest under a manky old track top - it’s become one of the perks of the job, a cabbie being able to wear what they like, but I mentioned this to an older colleague and he said that when he was a boy, cab drivers wore a tie and had their shoes inspected every morning before they were allowed to take their cars out of the garage. How times have changed!
November 22nd, 2007
In the USA this year, one of the coolest trick or treat costumes making the rounds of LA and its surrounding towns was … the vintage McDonald.
Yes really. Although the McDonald’s uniform and the ubiquitous golden arches have been a bit of a joke for decades, they are heading for a new era of retro-fashion, it seems.
But it does have to be retro - the style that’s topping the ebay listings is the 1980s red polo shirt and black trousers with the curving M on the back pocket - nothing else will do. And if you have one of these vintage garments hanging in the wardrobe, what can you expect to make? Well a couple of weeks ago it was $50 (£25) for the complete ensemble, but a Boston listing for the polo shirt and trouser pairing sold only yesterday for $125 (£63) so ride the popularity curve all the way to the top and perhaps you could find your old fry-scooping gear actually earns you enough to buy a new Armani shirt!
McDonalds photograph by aka Kath, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
November 19th, 2007
It is that time of year again. The bin men (whom I should probably call domestic waste removal engineers or something) coming down the street at six in the morning are wearing them. The people sweeping the road with one of those little electric brushes on wheels machines are wearing them. Even the guy who checks my ticket at the station has one on, although his, oddly, is under his railway cap.
What am I talking about? The ubiquitous beanie, of course. What I didn’t know, until I began to research the subject is that beanie is the name for two different types of hat and once again, it’s a case of two nations divided by a common language.
One kind, the beanie cap is made of felt, and was popular amongst schoolboys - it was either brimless with a visor or, more commonly, no visor at all. This became a cap made of panels of several colours which was madly popular with American college fraternities because they could incorporate their school colours into it. And that, in its turn, became the geek cap, which is essentially the same panelled, coloured, beanie, with the addition of (wait for it!) a propeller. No, nobody knows why, but if you ever attend a linux conference, believe me, you will see enough propellers to run a wind farm.
Recently, and partly through the efforts of stars like Eminem, the other form of beanie has been more popular. It’s usually made of fleece, or special synthetic material that wicks moisture away, which earns it one of its other names - the fleece hat. Woven or knitted versions are popular in winter sports. The design is incredibly simple but the hats don’t only protect the head and ears from the cold and wet, they are increasingly worn as a fashion item, often heavily branded or with logos or slogans. This is also called a Bronx cap in the UK, but not in the USA - weird but true.
The name beanie is used mainly in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. In the United States, this kind of headgear is variously known as a knit hat, stocking cap or skull cap. In India it is usually called a monkey cap.
These knitted versions are also called bobble hats if they are topped with a pompon, which is common, and the bobble hat, as worn by Cartman in South Park, has become a fashion item of choice in the USA snowboarding world.
Who would have ever believed that the thing your gran used to knit for you, that made everybody laugh their heads off when you waited for the school bus, could become a Nike best-seller? Life is strange.
Beanie photograph by Dianaoftripoli, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
November 15th, 2007
If you can’t tell your Oxford from your Tattersall and are never sure whether you’ve got a pinpoint or not, here’s a demystification of some of the fabrics used in shirt manufacture. An ‘Oxford’ shirt is made from an Oxford weave fabric. This means fabric is woven in a basket weave fashion, of cotton or a cotton blend. It has a thin, coloured warp (lengthwise) and a thick, white filling weft (vertical). This produces a shirt with a fine durable finish. It is a fairly coarse weave, combining dyed and undyed threads and therefore always looks less formal than shirts made from batiste or poplin.
Royal Oxford is a refined version of Oxford weave, simply because yhe yarns used are much finer.
Pinpoint is a combination of cotton poplin and Oxford. It is woven of long-staple cotton, and as in Oxford, only the warp yarn is dyed. Brushed cotton is used for soft leisure shirts. It is produced in plain colours, various checks and Scottish tartans. Another frequently seen classic is Viyella, a mixed weave that combines the warmth of wool with comfort of cotton. It is used mainly for the production of Tattersall check shirts; casual garments which are often called ‘lumberjack shirts’ too.
Shirt cuff photograph by Tanakwho, used under a creative commons attribution licence.
