Posts filed under 'famous clothing'
Origins
Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz in 1939. Despite being best known as the quintessential American fashion designer he studied business and did a stint in the army before establishing his own clothing business. In 1967 he set up the Polo label – but it didn’t sell polo-shirts at that point, rather, he was instantly successful with ties! His fashion radar told him that the narrow ties and conventional styles of the time were not appealing to the younger generation and created wide, handmade ties using flamboyant colours, very much in the vein of the hippy movement, but paired with opulent materials rather than the cheap fabrics that the hippies wore. Because he was trying to promote a lifestyle rather than following a trend, he chose a name for the tie line that he felt embodied discreet elegance and classic style: Polo.
Signature style
After the ties came general menswear, which is when the polo-shirt first appeared, and, in 1971, a women’s label. The signature style of Ralph Lauren is actually a combination – on the one hand its a chic look, which is supported by good fabric and a lot of classic styling, and on the other hand it’s preppy – aimed at the younger generation who want to look fashionable without looking cheap. The look extends into sportswear, casualwear and home furnishings and is very American. The Lauren empire was floated on the US stockmarket in 1997, and includes Polo Ralph Lauren, Polo Sport and the Ralph Lauren Collection.
Why we love him
Ralph Lauren can always tap perfectly into the current media obsession – for example in 1999, he had a walk-on part on TV sitcom Friends and developed this into a deal with NBC to sell the Ralph Lauren lifestyle on the Internet and TV. He said at the time that ‘We don’t only sell clothes. We are selling a dream and a vision’. The wraparound styling of clothing, accessories and home items means that the Ralph Lauren ‘look’ extends seamlessly into the whole of life, and if you enjoy that look, you can base your whole life around it.
Dissenting views
This year’s Olympic costumes caused a small furore – Ralph Lauren was accused of making the American team look like ‘rich snobs’ and of promoting his brand too prominently on the black jackets which all bore his white polo horse logo.
September 4th, 2008
A button-down decision
As if Hurricane Gustav wasn’t enough - teenagers in Lafayette Parish School System in New Orleans have to contend with a sudden clampdown on school uniform policy. The problem has arisen for female students whose uniform is a polo-shirt which should, according to the schools, have a maximum of four buttons. The problem has arisen because the families of the students have bought polo-shirts with eight buttons. Of course it does sound a little over the top as a reaction, but the point is that if a teenage girl unbuttons eight, rather than four, buttons on a polo-shirt, it can be a real distraction from learning for her male classmates!
Counterfeit China goes full circle
Knockoff polo-shirts go full circle from Beijing to Beijing. In a hilarious development, con artists who have been scamming top level polo-shirt retailers have discovered that the polo-shirts they bought in Beijing have gone back there, as top class mementos.
The way it worked was that young men from Britain would go to the huge street stalls of Hong Kong, Shanghai or Beijing where counterfeit Fred Perry, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger polo-shirts are sold. They would buy bagfuls of knockoff jeans, polo-shirts and trainers and take them home, where they would go into upmarket retail boutiques in major towns and buy identical items to the counterfeits they’d picked up in China and then – a day or so later - return to the shop with the real receipt but the fake clothing.
Because they had a perfectly genuine receipt, they would get their money back and have earned a top of the line polo-shirt for the price of a street stall counterfeit. But here’s the funny bit. Those returned clothes would be sent to catalogue shops and outlet stores which sell off seconds and returns for the big brands at tiny fractions of the original price. And who ends up buying them? Well – very often the purchasers are Chinese tourists on holiday in the UK – desperate to stock up on Western brands, so they go home, quite often, with a counterfeit polo-shirt that was probably made only a couple of miles away from their own home and that they could have purchased there for a tenth of the price they paid in the UK.
Label courtesy of sonictk
September 1st, 2008
Bernard (sometimes spelt Bernhard) Gant arrived in New York in 1914, as an immigrant from the Ukraine. His first job, as with so many immigrant men, was working in the garment industry as a collar-sewing specialist in a Manhattan factory. Within a couple of years he’d met the woman who was to become his wife: she was a button and buttonhole specialist who worked for the same company.
As he progressed from factory hand to entrepreneur Bernard Gant sold ‘fine’ shirts to private labels in America, including Manhattan Shirts, J. Press and Brooks Brothers and his sons came into the business in the 1940s to help. While they consistently sold to other companies, their shirts always bore a small red ‘G’ embroidered in an unobtrusive spot.
Their ‘preppy’ shirts became fashion must haves on university campuses across the USA in the late fifties and early sixties – worn with the collar undone and no tie, and even with the top button undone unless formal events were being attended. The Gant style included a shirt-front that buttoned down a double-truck hem, and the distinctive Gant loop at the top of the back pleat which was used for hanging up the shirt when changing for athletic events – this was the key feature that made the shirt a success – as sportsmen and their adoring fans found the loop useful, it became a fashion icon. At one point in the 1960s, Gant was the second-largest shirt maker in the world but the family sold the business in 1967 and it has changed hands several times since then – to day it is owned Pyramid Sportswear of Sweden.
Gant has avoided some of the negative connotations that have struck other brands that appeal to young men, such as Fred Perry’s right-wing fan club of skinheads, but has been associated with homosexuals who are attracted to sportsmen in the lyrics of some rock songs.
The Gant style is roomy, often even blousey, and the collars whether hard or soft, have a ‘roll’ – formal shirts have a back pleat and both formal and polo-shirts have the signature hanging loop. Gant polo-shirt collars are often a little wider and flatter lying than other brands; being noticeably more difficult to ‘pop’ or stand up than most.
Gant shirt courtesy of Gant
August 21st, 2008
Origins
The company was established by David Abercrombie in 1892 and New York lawyer Ezra Fitch was one of his regular customers – buying outdoor clothing for shooting and hunting. At the turn of the century Fitch bought a major share of the company, thus becoming co-founder and in 1904, Fitch’s surname was incorporated and Abercrombie & Fitch came into being. It was a stormy relationship - Fitch saw value in taking the company in the direction of general apparel, while Abercrombie wanted to continue selling professional clothing and accessories to professional outdoorsmen. Finally, after many arguments, Abercrombie sold his share in the company to Fitch in 1907 and returned to manufacturing outdoor goods.
Signature style
The A&F brand is defined as using ‘the finest cashmere, pima cottons, and highest quality leather to create the ultimate in casual, body conscious clothing’. Along with ‘implementing and/or incorporating time honoured machinery and techniques in order to produce the most exclusive denim ever created’, these two statements define how Abercrombie & Fitch sees its place in the market.
Why we love them
There is something quintessentially American about the brand. See a ‘Crombie from half a street away and you know the style immediately. It’s not just in the distressing, although that often makes the clothes look like comfortable things you’ve had for months, even straight from the shelf, it’s in the detailing: the flat turned seams and the dropped shoulders, and the careful attention to decreasing/increasing American teen sizes that allows everybody from the skinny chick to the fat kid to find a polo-shirt that feels just right.
They even have their own slang:
- An Abercrombie zombie is a man or wom an, boy or girl who only ever wears their clothing
- An Abercrombie & Fitch witch is a woman (often a bit older than the average buying age for their lines) who wears t he brand all the time because she’s scared she’ll lose her looks and popularity if she doesn’t.
Dissenting views
They have often been criticised for sexualising young people and children, for the levels of music in their stores (it’s supposed to be 80 decibels, tests in the USA in 2006 found thirty stores playing it at 90+ decibels, which causes permanent damage to the ears) and their All-American styling which has led to discrimination cases being brought against the company by non-white, non-American people who believe they have been refused employment or promotion because they didn’t fit the brand ‘style’. So far, all cases have been settled out of court.
Abercrombie & Fitch billboard courtesy of daniel spils
August 15th, 2008
Miguel Caballero comes from a country where clothing can save your life, and he trains new employees by shooting them! Colombian-born Caballero tests his garments by firing at his staff as they model the clothing – the ultimate test of both the wearer and the clothing.
In 1992 he was studying at university during his country’s vicious civil war, and many of his fellow students in Bogota were the children of politicians and business leaders – and wore bullet-proof vests around the campus.
His clothing combines style with utility and is worn Steven Seagal, King Abdullah of Jordan and Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez. Caballero clothing is lighter than military style vests: a bullet-proof leather jacket weighs only 1.2 kilos. Perhaps somebody should have told Harriet Harman and then we’d never have seen her wandering around Peckham in that cumbersome stab-proof vest, because his collection includes shirts, formal blazers, raincoats, and even bullet-proof ties.
But there is one drawback - a polo-shirt that will absorb the bullets from a mini-machine gun is rather expensive … starting at £5,000 and washing instructions are extremely complex!
Mauricio Chazaro, director of Miguel Caballero Ltd, arranges the bulletproof leather jacket for display
August 11th, 2008
As Britain’s beleaguered Prime Minister faces more criticism, more Treasury money being pumped into Northern Rock and more manoeuvring from his cabinet colleagues, Hadley Freeman, deputy fashion editor at The Guardian has some advice for him. She says ‘For heaven’s sake, Gordon, take off your jacket! … buy some shirts in colours other than “starchy white”, maybe even a loose polo-shirt for your off-duty moments, ruffle your hair up a bit and don’t be afraid of showing a wrist or two. Perhaps even consider switching your facial expression from “bitter glower” to “friendly smile”.’
Would it work? It’s a certain fact that recent political stars on the world of the Western stage: Barack Obama, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton – all have the ability to dress down in their more relaxed moments without looking like a complete prat. But each has had their own moment of sartorial disaster too: the anti-Obama campaign chose to use a photograph of him in West African dress at a ceremony to suggest he wasn’t really ‘American’ while we can all remember Tony Blair’s sweaty armpits on the conference platform in that light blue shirt, can’t we? As for Clinton and clothing, well … the least said about his ability to deal with his trousers, the better! There are dozens of examples of wardrobe failure in politics – for example, William Haig wore a baseball cap to a festival and lost public confidence immediately.
But there is something important about being able to dress down without looking daft. We see our politicians much more these days, and much more often when they are off duty and supposedly relaxed, but they don’t have the right that we all have to schlep around the place in old trackies and flip-flops: they have a duty to give the impression of power even while at rest. So I echo Hadley’s call, and will go a step further: by all means sport a polo-shirt, but why not also show yourself in a hoody and reveal your inner class victim, or take to the streets in an organic sweatshirt and show that what’s closest to your heart is a bit of fair-trade and social equality in purest cotton!
Gordon Brown courtesy of fotologic
August 5th, 2008
It’s an important thing to do if you’re a Mormon! A practicing Mormon who created a calendar with pictures of shirtless (male) Mormon missionaries has been excommunicated after a disciplinary meeting with his local church leaders in Las Vegas.
The man with a calendar mission - Chad Hardy - bears no ill will towards the council of elders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s an entrepreneur and he says ‘I spoke my truth …they still felt the calendar is inappropriate and not the image that the church wants to have.’ The calendar, called Men on a Mission had already sold over 10,000 copies and has now sold out as a result of the publicity, although Chad says there won’t be any more printed to meet the new demand. The dozen missionaries are all wearing their uniform of black trousers but lacked the Mormon trademark white shirts. In smaller supplementary pictures they were shown in their full missionary wear and talking about their religious beliefs.
It isn’t yet clear if action will be taken against the 12 modelling Mormons by their church elders.
