Always be Closing

There is a frenzy to every functioning marketplace, trade fairs especially. The days are concentrated; everything is always about to go away. Everyone is hungry for something.

I’ll catch a few more things before it all closes, and tell more tomorrow when I’m on the road.

In the meantime, check these pix of the Yoko Devereaux and Buckler runway shows on Monday night at Pier 92.

Don't mean to sound ungrateful

The Cumming 'all over' body lotion smells very nice.

Contents of swag bag from Yoko Devereaux runway show, Blue, Pier 92, Monday Jan 21 6PM

Yoko Devereau heavy fleece hoody with handwarmer pockets, raglan sleeves, rib jersey underam detailing. In white [YD samples are in my size, one reason to care about sample sales. But white is not my color…oh well.]

11.1 oz round bottle of OGO brand oxygen water. “35% more oxygen than regular water.” From Holland. [ Doesn’t water has oxygen in it already. Plus, since I am not amphibious, I get my oxygen from the air.]

10 fl oz bottle of Redken for men Mint Clean shampoo. [I have no hair, but the label says it is good for the scalp as well.]

10 fl oz bottle of Redken for men Cool Finish conditioner. [Now that I have a scalp conditioner, can I consider myself groomed?]

2 fl oz Cumming ‘all over’ body lotion

2 fl oz Cumming ‘off buff’body scrub

2 fl oz Cumming ‘clean’ body cleanser

‘Deluxe sample size Cumming ‘in a bar’ soap. [Sat in the front row across from me. Looked wizened but still elfin, chipper, engagingly perverse in the way we remember from his Tom Cruise-ing scene in EYES WIDE SHUT.]

Plaidfully yours

Market Week, when all menswear buyers descend on NY for a frenzied half week of trade fair and showroom visits, consists of five shows plus one – the plus one is The Haberdashery Group, which puts itself first in the calendar out of genteel disdain for competition and the wary realization that if it did compete with the other, giant shows for buyers’ attention, it could get clobbered.

Haberdashery is smaller and tweedier. Unlike the others, it’s in a hotel (The Warwick) where a rep can see buyers in his own suite. So in addition to the people who have tables in the various meeting rooms, the merch is scattered throughout the hotel.

This is the place to find the smaller, ‘men’s shop’ kinds of brands that were once stocked by one store in proximity to every university. Not the giant brands like Hickey Freeman, but the smaller ones, like Alan Paine, whose managing director who tried to explain to me what had happened to the brand since the glory days of the 60s and 70s. In the 90s it went through a series of private owners, but now it is his and he loves it.

These men love their clothing, but they show their love in different ways. When the US rep for John Smedley, Peter Scott and Inis Mean knitwear mentioned the town of “Hoick,” I had to say, what? A look of contempt passed across his face. The town, of course, has Hawick. The town I knew. Its name I had often read. I’d just never had a chance to speak it before (insert plaintive music here).

These were in the meeting rooms downstairs. Upstairs, on the third floor, in the suites where Nick Hilton, whose long lineage in the clothing business (he comes from Norman Hilton, and before that, Browning Fifth Avenue) is reflected in his yet unpublished memoir, which he would like me to read. Sure! Crit Rawlings, the man who, when head of Oxxford, outfitted George Bush for his first inauguration, now has a line of Chinese-made hand tailored suits that his reps said have gotten through the gate into Paul Stuart. I knocked on his door and stepped in to find him deep in conference with buyers. He has an archetypal Southern graciousness, but I still retreated as fast as I could.

Down the hall, there was a door marked Nardelli. I stepped in and faced a gauntlet of five hopeful Italian men. Nardelli is yet another tailoring concern founded in that great postwar wave (1951, in their case) and specializing in outerwear, but now broadening into sportcoats in neutral hues. These are as light as possible, unlined and lightly constructed with thin, but full, canvas. Nardelli is Neapolitan. I asked the design director if he himself was wearing the brand, but he said some of his luggage had gone missing; he, like his associates was wearing a coat made for him by a local tailor. I asked if I could try one on. One of the other guys offered his. Before he took it off I checked his look: a blue blazer, light blue shirt, gray trousers and black boots, but it’s all in the details: the snug flat front trousers with the no break and a thick cuff, the dark blue monogram dotting the bottom left rib like a sexy mole, and the coat, which I further appreciated when I wore it in the mirror. The canvas was soft and light, the front a three-roll-two, the shoulder softer than many American ‘natural’ shoulders, and the coat longer in front than in back. The finishing Neapolitan touch was the ‘spalla camicia’, which is a shoulder seam sewn like a shirt seam. It’s irregular and slightly rumpled looking. To the untrained eye, it looks like the tailor did not know what he was doing when in fact, he knows *everything*.

THIS was a piece of clothing. (The name of the tailor was Natale.) I was so happy. It didn’t even fit!

Down in the bar, of course, was the Lily Pulitzer show, with corduroy and flannel blazer linings so bright that they did not need any lights shining on them. In one corner at a banquette was a stack of books and a man signing them. I asked how much they were and the Pulitzer rep said they were free and there was co-author Jeffery Banks and would I like to have one signed?

Uh…why not?

Plaidfully yours, Jeffrey Banks. I’ve never met him before (though I’ve seen his picture on the Sartorialist, he is, after all, a famous menswear designer), so this inscription must be the default setting.

Now the giant book “Romancing the Plaid,” is on my tiny coffee table, which is barely larger. Sort of like the Queen Mary docking at the old Domino Sugar works here in south Williamsburg.

But it is still very nice. Thanks, Jeffrey!

What have I done [part III]

Journalism supports the playwriting. Recent projects include a stage version of Raymond Queneau’s novel The Flight of Icarus, which we last staged in a workshop version here. Perhaps we should not have opened it to review, but we did. Since then, I've revised the script completely and we are now hope to do it in the coming season. More recently, my holiday playlet “The Revellers” was at the Brick last December, and reviewed here.

The only performance online is “The Homosexualist,” who at the the close of the presidential election season for years ago, got to know the candidates the old fashioned way -- by hooking up with them. Minute for minute, it was the happiest thing I have ever done. For a quarter hour of mildly pornographic political satire, just click here.

What have I done [part II]

I’ve also written a great deal on theater, most frequently lately for American Theatre magazine. I got a grant to write for them in the late 90s, but the relationship was reborn in 2003 when at the end of a four month stay in Mexico City, I found several shows that were coming soon to New York City for the Mexico Now festival. AT hadn’t covered Mexico in many years, so they took the bait. You can read my article here. Since then, many articles have been in the Spanish language or Latino area, including pieces on Pregones theater in the Bronx, Luis Valdez, and TeatroStageFest impresaria Susana Tubert and the Buenos Aires in Translation shows produced by Shoshana Polanco at PS122 late last year. Outside of this area, I’ve interviewed Jeff Daniels on his Purple Rose theater in Michigan, and legendary lesbian novelist Ann Bannon on the stage version of her Beebo Brinker novels – a production now transferring to Off-Broadway.

What have I done?

The New York Sun has been a great place to write about clothing for general readers. I'm truly grateful to them for the chance to write as much as I have. In the fall, I wrote about Thom Browne's Black Fleece line, new things at traditional men's stores like Paul Stuart, J. Press, Herzfeld, Jay Kos and Polo (if any), and the rich world of online fashion forums like styleforum and Ask Andy. There's another store story in the works. I'm also a regular contributor to the blog at men.style.com, and always seeking potential items. I'm on quota! I gotta put out.

UTR closes this evening

UTR is Under the Radar, although less so than formerly. This performance festival, curated by Mark Russell and hosted by Oskar Eustis at the Public, is important for several reasons: The Eustis vision of the Public’s big tent is unfolding ever more, and Russell’s profile as a performance curator independent of his 25 year berth at PS122 is further solidified because, first and foremost, a lot of the shoes are very good. I wrote about it in Time Out earlier this month, where I could note that the circuit of work that UTR showcases exists independently of both Broadway and the regional theater network that is supposed to be our national theater.

I’m going back this evening to revisit Jay Scheib’s This Place is a Desert, because his shows change so much from opening to closing.

Sample Sale pleasures

On Thursday I went to the sample sale at Oak, on 28 Bond St.

I was on assignment. A forthcoming story on multibrand men's stores needed a news hook, and Brooklyn-based Oak's immanent opening in the city was it. I interviewed some shoppers.

The store is long and narrow, like the building. It seemed dark, but this may have been because the big front windows were still covered with pages of the Oakazine. The official opening is February 1st, during Fashion Week.

I like writing about Oak because they like selling clothes. Yes, it's a business, but it should be fun also, and for them it is. The mix of high and low price points, and of obscure and very mainstream brands, shows intelligent taste at play. Other stores like 10 Corso Como or Collette do this in Europe, but there is no reason why NY can't do it as well.

Some of the sample sale staff was designers who Oak sells but will also present in the showroom beneath the store, for instance, Harmon's Andrew Harmon. He had me try on a double breasted blazer in a bold black and white African print. He has these made in the Martin Greenfield factory in Williamsburg, that also makes the Golden Fleece line for Brooks Brothers, so this is a well tailored coat which is conservative in every detail but the fabric. Even the pattern matching of the hip and ticket pockets is quite careful. He said it drove them crazy, but he got it. They retail for $1200 but were at the sale for $350. It did fit well, but the challenge is imagining the life I would have to have to wear it. Harmon noted that Louis Terline wears his in a rumpled and casual way, but bearded Louis looks like Mad Max' friendly younger brother and I do not. Plus as a clothing store owner and designer he has to wear nice clothes every day. I don't -- I am a writer. If you could see what I am wearing now, you would be very sad.

Still thinking about the coat, though.

Breaking the code

Why do I wear this stuff? This is the question that has always bothered me.

When I had a column in my high school paper, my first effort was about facing the meaning of the clothes I put on in the morning. I went to a private school and the preppy wave was hitting full force. Some other people at my school looked a particular way. The look was effortless, or so it appeared.

I knew I didn't look like these people, and I knew that I would not marry any of them, or marry at all for that matter. But I could dress like them, or try to. My ambivalence about this aspiration was good for a column then.

My look has evolved with my sense of my self, but the deep interest in men's clothing remains. Lately, I've been writing more about it for places like the New York Sun and the blog at men.style.com. I continue to seek more outlets (yes, I am for sale) but Schloff Show is a place where I can write for myself, and for you.