A blog dedicated to the interesting, scandalous, useful and cutting edge in the world of men’s style, fashion and grooming.
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Rabbit, Run: Surreal photography continues to scare the crap out of us. [NotCot]
Winter Sports: A friendly face introduces us to the terrifying world of snow polo. [Luxist]
Going Minimal: Does good design flourish during a depression? It depends how you feel about the barrel-top. [Unbeige]
Going Gray: The enduring appeal of the gray flannel suit. [A Suitable Wardrobe]
As we mentioned before, we’re on the cusp of an epochal trip to Las Vegas’ own Consumer Electronics Show, with the help of our trusty sponsor Energi to Go. But since the show is roughly the size of Nevada, we thought we’d appeal to our beneficent readership for a few pointers on what you’d like to see.
Anyone yearning for news on the latest Blackberry? Want to see how flat the flatscreens get these days? If so, drop us a line.
You’re looking at the Splinter, the brainchild of a team of NC State students. The goal was to make a sports car made almost entirely of wood, including the suspension and wheel wells, and by the looks of things, they’re pretty close to having a supercar on their hands.
We aren’t sure how it drives, but it’s a lot lighter, cheaper, and generally cooler looking than what Detroit’s turning out these days. The creator, Joe Harmon, says he has no interest in selling the cars, but we’re sure he could be persuaded if enough loudmouth bloggers got together.
In the meantime, someone get this man a bucket of VC money.
For the past 70 years, one of the crown jewels of Rockefeller Plaza has been the Rainbow Room, a dance hall and society space on the 65th floor of the GE Building, but 2009 is giving it its first black eye. As of next Monday, the in-house restaurant is shutting down, citing hard times.
The bar and revolving dance floor will keep going, but it’s a reminder that Manhattan’s art deco past is not immune to modern troubles. The Rainbow Room is a relic of a time when wealth was confined to families not corporations, but it has to play by the same rules as everybody else. The restaurant was owned by the Cipriani family, who have troubles of their own, but the credit crunch couldn’t have helped. It’s a reminder of how tenuous the upper crust is lately.
It’s been kicking around since the 60s, but despite being a legitimate cultural icon, nobody’s given it the respect it deserves. But it looks like the afro pick’s time has finally come.
These gold- and silver-plated models from Social Creatures are made from cutlery grade aluminum and buffed to a high polish to help them negotiate the tighter curls. The handles are ornately embossed in the style of European trinkets, but don’t be fooled: this is entirely new. The silver model will set you back 275 UKP—they’re too bashful to give a price for the gold—but we never said cultural progress would be cheap.
Count on the Brits to bring us up to date.
Street art has been one of New York’s highlights since the old Keith Haring days, but we haven’t been as good keeping up with the Paris scene. But these days, there’s always someone keeping an eye on things.
The fine folks at Wooster Collective just put us onto a colorful new tagger called FKDL who’s been leaving his mark everywhere from Turing to Queens. He mostly deals with silhouettes over neon-colored backgrounds, with a little bit of newsprint collage for texture and a lot of attention to the human figure…which we’ve always been a fan of.
Here’s hoping he doesn’t start his own a t-shirt shop for a while.
The Magazine Reader: Kate Winslet takes a break from playing Nazis and willful housewives to pose for Elle UK. [FashionIndie]
The Cheap Seats: The economic collapse should mean cheap tickets for sports fans…but the halftime show will be two hobos wrestling for food. [DailyIntel]
Retail Hell: The indoor mall may be going the way of the automat. But where will we keep our food courts? [Luxist]
Old Vegas: Some Sinatra memories from Wayne Newton, of all people. How anyone confused him with a mobster is beyond us. [Esquire]
If you were wondering about the legacy of those Tom Ford ads…we might have something.
The German exotica shop Condomi must have decided their old bags weren’t eye-catching enough, so they designed totes depicting thong-clad crotches, with a particularly well-placed handle. It’s a good way to spread word of mouth, but we can’t help but wonder how many of their more timid customers are turning down bags at the register.
And if this is what they do with a bag, we’d hate to think what they do with a billboard…
We ran across this Ronson-esque Swedish fellow on Lookbook and we have to saw, he’s raised our opinion of the entire country. Maybe it’s the suit, but we’re suddenly warming to the idea of suspenders too.
Take notes, gentlemen.
Being men of the world, we tend not to look to Dear Abby for sartorial advice. And this week, we were reminded why.
In Wednesday’s paper (via The Cut), she took up the question of a Pennsylvania man who, as he delicately puts it, “wears skirts for comfort.” Her advice? “As long as you have the testicular fortitude and shapely enough legs to wear skirts, then you have my blessing.” Oh dear…
Precision has always been a popular look among the design crowd, so it was only a matter of time before scientific glassware caught on…
This beaker-style tumbler is from the ruckl’s Engineering Collection (via acquire), and the numbers etched on the side aren’t just for show. Those are the exact measurements and specs of the item itself, which should come in handy when you get around to making that bespoke coaster.
At the very least, your mixology will get a lot more precise.
Network television is a fickle mistress, and no network knows it better than NBC. The last ten years have seen them plummet from being the network of Seinfeld, Friends and Law & Order to a withered husk of remakes and reality shows. While the new golden age of television marches forward on basic cable channels like AMC, FX and the Sci-Fi Channel, the peacock looks like it’s sitting this one out.
The Washington Post ran a column this week cataloging the network’s woes and, while the column never names him, most of the blame clearly falls at the feet of Ben Silverman, the wunderkind co-chairman who shepherded through most of the network’s recently-axed new programs.
The Big Picture: The best photographs of the year turn out to be kind of depressing. [NY Times]
Fond Farewells: We’ll miss you, New Year’s glasses with zeroes as eyes…[Gawker]
The Small Screen: The clever list-makers at A.V. Club count down the top TV episodes of the year. Sadly, Mad Men has to settle for #4. [A.V. Club]
The Cat Came Back: Just because it’s a holiday, here’s what really happened to James Franco’s cat. [Funny or Die]
Kempt wishes you a happy, tastefully bestubbled 2009.
Oregon’s really on a roll lately. Winn Perry—previously known as the northwestern source for Sovereign Beck ties—just reminded us that they’re also the northwestern source for Alden shoes, one of the best cobblers still producing shoes in America.
Naturally, the best work comes from the custom shop, but anyone passing through Oregon should stop by if they want to see what modern American leatherworking looks like. Of course, if you’re closer to New York, we know a place there too.
Doping has been a known staple of Soviet sports since the famous Drago-Balboa fight, but lately even chess has come under suspicion.
Der Spiegel (via Neatorama) is seizing on Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk’s refusal to take a drug test at the recent Chess Olympiad as reason to suspect the chess world of being driven by something more sinister than just caffeine and neurosis. They even have a picture of him suspiciously fingering his nose!
We haven’t been keeping up with Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy much lately—to be honest, once they got married, we lost the spark—but a lucky documentarian is about to catch us up.
Tomorrow in Paris, the spectacularly fortunate Scottish filmmaker George Scott is premiering an 80-minute documentary on the couple that follows the French power couple from their first meeting through their eventual marriage, with apparently unrestricted access.
Naturally, it’s already tabloid fodder (via The Cut), but the surprising thing is how much access he seems to have gotten. Early reports have him filming the couple nuzzling and taking a tour of the Elysee palace. Anyone hitting the Parisian film festival circuit should feel free to drop us a line, but otherwise we’ll have to wait until it crosses the Atlantic.
Indomitable: These Dom Perignon ads make us forgive Karl Lagerfeld for basically everything. [NotCot]
The Blueprint: Jay-Z’s hotelier ambitions are quashed by the economic downturn. We’re hoping this means the next album gets a Robert Rubin diss track. [Luxist]
Type Slowly: Is the fashion industry moving in slower cycles? Maybe it’s just the klonopin. [PSFK]
Out in the Streets: Counting down the 21 best-looking people in New York. [Racked]
Desert boots may have run out of novelty, but there still a few remnants kicking around.
For instance, Southern Gentleman Billy Reid’s shoe-boot hybrid. The bottom is all oxford, but we detect a notable Clarks influence around the sloping laces.
As for the non-sandproof soles, we doubt he’s trudging through many dunes in Tennessee.
(Hat tip to the Choosy Beggar for the find.)
This month’s GQ has a primer on presidential style, and while we knew about LBJ’s glasses and Kennedy’s trim suits, we were surprised to hear about Harry S Truman’s penchant for skinny tartan ties.
Not too shabby by today’s standards, which got us thinking. It took a while, but maybe the man from Missouri’s time as a style icon has finally come.
Now that we see it popping up on royalty, we realize there’s a type of beard we didn’t see in Portland: the self-consciously Arthurian muzzle.
Granted, it’s a pretty specific case, but if you’re an English prince out to establish your maturity, it’s really the only way to go.
Anyone who’s passed through a multiplex has a good understanding of the rules of superheroism, but it’s usually confined to on-camera antics. And they’re usually somewhere a bit more glamorous than rural Arizona.
The most recent Rolling Stone has a quasi-exposé about the phenomenon of “reals,” grown men who don self-designed costumes to fight the forces of evil…which usually means local purse-snatchers and the occasional drug dealer.
We’re not going to fault them for doing a little amateur police work in their spare time, and a secret identity can come in handy for lots of reasons, but did they really need the costumes? Nobody questions the occasional good Samaritan, but when you start strapping on shin-guards and ordering a SUPRHRO vanity plate, you’ve gone too far. As the Dark Knight so memorably put it, “I’m not wearing hockey pants.”
Utility still looks better than anything else, so this jumbo keyring from Rivy Ng got our attention as one of the best solutions to a problem that most style guides don’t touch: having lots and lots of keys. Loop it through the handle of a duffel bag and you’ll be able to keep things secure while still having enough mobility to use it, should you come across a door that needs unlocking.
With a little finesse, you can even keep from jingling when you walk.
Speaking of workwear, we ran across this snap of a West Virginia family circa 1908 that should give you an idea of what it looked like the first time around. For a long time, this was the uniform for hard times.
