Schloff Show

How the sausage is made

2008-04-13T10:27:00.004-04:00

I'd rather see suits made than sausages. The workrooms are much cleaner, at least since the Triangle days. My fellow clothing blog A Continuous Lean has visited the Ciccarrelli factory in Long Island City Queens. Although not as well known as the Greenfield factory in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn that produces for Brooks Brothers Golden Fleece, Harmon, and others, the Ciccarelli factory is the starting point for superbly made lines like the RTW at SEW and also Thom Browne, whose coats you can see here. Look for the red, white and blue lining of the coat cuff placket. ACL posted even more photos here.

Tentacles extending

2008-04-03T10:18:00.005-04:00

I am now blogging at mensflair.com as well as here, where my f irst post amplifies the store story for the Sun below.

Mensflair is exciting because it's my most international outlet yet. The Sun is mostly for the local, while men.style.com is national. Like all New Yorkers, I believe my city is the navel of the world, but I want to learn to write for others who may disagree (the fools).

Am I still available to write for you? Of course I am.

NY Sun store story, with one left behind

2008-03-26T09:51:00.004-04:00

The New York Sun today is newly redesigned! Yay!

This comes one day after my most recent story, tracking the best stuff I found this season in half a dozen well edited men’s stores. (To see the difference a redesign makes, check yesterday’s layout here, and today’s, still with a few kinks, here.)

In the Sun, however, you will find only five, alas. In print, one only gets a few column inches, while online I have terabytes.

The five stores in the store story are Davide Cenci and Peter Elliot on the UES, Oak and Hollander & Lexer (seen above) in Brooklyn, and Atelier downtown.

Left behind is the wonderful Odin, described below:

Men who are not, perhaps, ardent fashion devotees may find more to choose from at Odin, where, as co-owner Paul Birardi told this reporter, “We buy things we would wear.” Mr. Birardi, who was casually dressed in a hoody when we met in the larger, Lafayette Street store, insisted that he, not his partner, Ed Chai, is the formal one. Between them, Messrs. Birardi and Chai fill Odin with looks that range from the military severity of ex-Cloak designer Robert Geller’s gray-black cotton flannel coat ($669) to the sunny preppiness of shirts by Shipley&Halmos ($169) and Duckie Brown ($305) and more somber retro stylings of Bureau. Collars are 80s small, and lapels often shawl-style. Next door to the original Odin at 11th Street is Den, a spinoff shop devoted alternately to an emerging designer—this season, Geller.

(Odin, 328 E.11 St. at Second Avenue, 212-475-0666 and 199 Lafayette Street, 212- 966-0026; Den, 330 E. 11th St., between First and Second avenues, 212-475-0079, http://www.odinnewyork.com/)

Contemporary custom in LA and NY

2008-02-13T11:20:00.004-04:00

When I set off to interview Jasmin Shokrian on assignment from my men.style.com editor, I was skeptical. Shokrian, a womenswear designer, was branching into menswear, and not with one size fits all accessories like scarves, ties, or jewelry, but with the ultimate one-size-fits-one item in a man’s wardrobe – a custom suit. She’s never made menswear in her life, I thought (as it turned out, falsely). What can she know? Sure she’s offering it through South Willard, one of Los Angeles’ most interesting men’s stores, where it has to compete with labels like APC, Raf Simons and Veronique Branquinho, but it still sounded like a very fashionable flash in the pan.

I met Shokrian in gleaming white floor-though apartment on Prince Street that she rents for showings during Fashion Week. Actually, first I met the suit, a slim notch lapel one button model in midnight blue featherweight woven cashmere. It was nowhere near my size, but I tried it on anyway. The canvas chest piece was beautifully light. It was the first suit she has made for her first and so far only client, painter Christopher Vasell (pictured).

When Shokrian appeared we talked about it. The evolution toward menswear seems easy for her. From art school, she moved first into fabric sculptures and then into simple, sculptural womenswear in menswear fabrics. Naturally men were asking her to make things for them, in particular shawls. She showed me pictures of them that looked good. Shawls are hard for men to get away with, but if you’re like JoJo at Atelier, you can, and the effect is smashing.

Shokrian recognizes that without a men’s tailoring background, it would be hard for her to make a good suit herself, so instead she found an LA based custom tailor that she named but kept off the record, since what she’s selling is her eye and stylistic intelligence, rather than his skill with a needle. The details that were distinctively hers were a cotton backed silk lining and silk-cotton voile pocketing, both of which felt very luxurious even if, in the latter case, a bit delicate. The suit itself was unlike the tailor’s usual efforts, she said. I don’t know the tailor, so all I could see was clean modernity – no dandyism here. The coat was not fashionably short – hooray! The lapel was slightly rounded with a downward sloping notch, a signature nowadays of Oxxford, which makes the best-tailored suit in the country but with mostly boxy, stodgy silhouettes. Hers is not. The pants are, or rather the client is, so slim that the thighs gather in with tiny pin tuck pleats on the otherwise flat front. They tapered neatly, with no cuff.

The model showing it also worked as a fit model for Marc Jacobs, in other words, skinny. Vassell had a fit model physique. I noted that one tailor’s New York Times ad showed his men measuring NBA players and sumo wrestlers. She didn’t think they would come up in her client list. Shokrian said her clients are more likely to have fit-model physiques because of their limited size range – problem solved!

The cost is $3-4,000, depending on the fabric, which for a USA made true custom suit with several fittings is not exorbitant, so I wish her luck.

The novelty here is a contemporary multibrand men’s store offering contemporary custom. In New York downtown, one can get custom or at least Made to Measure clothing at several single-brand stores like Duncan Quinn, Seize sur Vingt or Freemans, and other custom-oriented stores like SEW have some ready-to-wear as well, but otherwise one has to go uptown to the larger emporiums. The biggest reason to go downtown, or to hire Shokrian in LA, is to get a tailor or stylist who is young enough, in mind at least, to understand the attitude you want to project and make a suit to match it. I’m not thinking of flashy details but rather of the slim cut and lighter construction that younger men want. A tailor may tell you that he can do anything, but each has his sweet spot, and the sweet spot of today is shifting. The old guard, like designer Alan Flusser in this DNR article about the downtown tailoring scene may look upon the new scene with contempt (some borne of ignorance), but that won’t stop the change from happening.

"Modern Menswear" and New York City

2008-02-07T14:16:00.000-04:00

Last week I interviewed Hywel Davies for an item on his book Modern Menswear, which has now appeared on men.style.com. The book profiles 36 established and early-career menswear designers that he found all over the world, although, in true fashion world reality, his book budget barely got him from his London base through the Chunnel to Paris.

I asked him about New York. As the menswear spotlight shifts bi-annually from Milan to Paris to us, what and where are we, in his eyes? I know that like many other primitive tribes, we consider our home as the navel of the world, but his book introduction suggested otherwise. “Milan and Paris are regarded as the key capitals in menswear fashion design….Milan promotes huge luxury brands that sell globally….Paris is a podium for innovation.” OK, and New York? “New York offers important support to designers with a commercial sensibility as their driving force….However it is Antwerp in Belgium and London that are paramount in informing the new contemporaries in menswear.”

Yes, I know we are market-minded, but isn’t it still a bit depressing? (This dispassionate reality-check can be seen, among other places in Suzy Menkes' review of Thom Browne, which she finished by noting, that it’s “difficult - especially in conventional New York - to be both a visionary and an exhibitionist”) Davies tried to mollify me by noting that in the two years since he began his research, New York is looking up. "People do look to America in terms of selling power, clothes that understand the market place…but it’s having a resurgence, of being cool….younger, edgier, creative….it’s challenging the designers that are in Paris which is great."

I’ll try to feel better. He himself should be feeling fine, as Paul Smith is throwing him a party today in his Floral Street London flagship store. For the book itself, pre-order here.

My Thom Browne coverage in the Sun

2008-02-06T10:16:00.000-04:00

is online here:

The phrase ‘masculine bonnet’ was my editor’s contribution. A bonnet is a hat that ties under the chin, as these do certainly, but still.

The Browne show confronts me in several ways, first in the relation between the runway and the racks. The most wearable bits were the six pocket coats and the formal coats with piping, as I reported. Also important for Browne fans is widening of available fabrics to include stripes, argyles and plaids. The other stuff is mostly for show, as in many couture runway shows. The webbing and feathers, Siamese trousers, straitjacket ribbons and stiltwalkers move a lot of tight gray worsted suits, just as a Calvin Klein or Dior runway show moves a lot of perfume and underwear. It maintains the erotic power and general associations of the brand.

The erotic associations of Thom Browne are confounding because while they bind, constrict and hobble men, they do not feminize. This precise noplace has been tagged by many ringmasters before Browne: recall the menacing androgyny of the MC in Cabaret, or Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork Orange.

Browne’s circus imagery – the striped tent and welcome to the ‘craziest show on earth’ -- sends a mixed message. The circus ring is generally reserved for feats of skill and daring, like his stiltwalker, while the sideshow is for freaks of nature, like his Siamese twin-suit or his tied-up crazies. Browne’s skill is evident in the details of the tailoring, something unfortunately best seen from the back and not seen in most full frontal runway coverage (menswear usually lacks the detail shots that womenswear enjoys), but what he is daring to do mystifies me as it does many others like New York Magazine’s Amy Larocca. I don’t understand how it frees or liberates, and neither do I understand how it makes enslavement exciting.

On the other hand, bare ankles for fall and winter are out, and socks are in. Be glad for that.

Being there (Thom Browne)

2008-02-06T00:56:00.001-04:00

Monday’s Thom Browne presentation was in the cavernous Exit Art Gallery on 36^th and 10^th. Standing outside the striped circus tent, and sipping champagne old-style flat glasses served by Browne-sweatered young men, I spotted one guy I remembered from the Oak Bond St party on Friday.(Oak is a Williamsburg idea now exported to Manhattan, and as a Williamsburger, I’m rooting for it.). The man was unmistakable because he had been wearing the Harmon mudcloth D/B coat (see below) and pants. As a suit, they pull one back to places I have never been, like just outside the frame of a Grace Jones cover shoot for one of her Dunbar/Shakespeare albums. Back in the present, I was asking the Harmon Mudcloth Suit Man, what is the point of being here? Isn’t it all online?

He was a stylist – no wonder he had looked so happy in that suit. Why were we here? He repeated, looking at the champagne (Henriot) and rolling his eyes. OK, beyond that? You can see how the clothing drapes, flows and moves. But video creep is unstoppable; now anyone can see not only stills of the looks but also their continuous motion. So what’s left? Details, which of course do count for a lot in a Thom Browne show – more on this later. But HD video will eliminate this advantage as well. So what is left is really theater, the sensation of rolling with or against the audience of which you are a part. But if you are a critic or a buyer, does this sharpen your appreciation, or dull it?

But then the curtains opened and we hurried to our seats. The Monday Browne crowd and the Sunday Y-3 crowd were wildly different. From Y-3’s day-after press release: “Guests included: Ellen Pompeo, Helena Christensen, Lupe Fiasco, Ioan Gruffuld, Vincent Gallo, The Misshapes, Damon Dash, Justin Theroux, Mark Gonzales, Stella Schnabel, Genevieve Jones, Tom Sachs, Terence Koh, Arden Wohl, Tallulah Harlech, Cho Kang Hee, Drena DeNiro, Aaron Young, Max Vadukul and Craig McDean.” Browne’s crowd was smaller and had a stronger mix of serious clothing people – Andre Leon Talley, Simon Doonan, Robert Bryan– with just a few boldface names like David Furnish, who sat in front of me. Flashbulbs were minimal. In his row were Stefano Tonch of the Times and Tim Blanks, who covers every show for men.style.com.

About the show itself, I’ll say nothing until my bit appears in the Sun tomorrow.

About being there, there are practical advantages. Although catalogue shoots now show clothing from several angles, very few runway videos show more than one. At Y-3, for instance, the photo bank was at one end of the long ice wall, so all images could be full frontal. The audience saw them in profile, revealing that the Y-3 man’s pant silhouette, baggy through the thigh and tapering sharply to the ankle, looks good on almost no one. Also since the wall was so long, and most of the models had shoulder bags, rucksacks, or wheeled luggage, they did look more like chic exporers pre-expedition in some first class Polar travel lounge. At Browne, many of his looks capitalized on male helplessness, and buttoned or tied behind the back. To achieve this, even the most yoga-flexible Browneian would require the services of a servant, or a Master. In the photos online, this cannot be seen.

My Y-3 coverage in the Sun

2008-02-05T13:33:00.000-04:00

can be found here.

Being there (Y-3)

2008-02-04T10:08:00.000-04:00

Last season, one of my editors asked me at the last minute to cover one of the Bryant Park shows. “Sure!” I said, eager for the chance. The show was the next day. Despite all my advanced pleading skills I failed to get an invitation….but wait! Aren’t all the shows online now, stills and video? Sure! I wrote my item. They loved it, but at the last minute my editor asked if I had been there. No, I confessed. This broke their rule, and the item never ran. (Since then, I’ve written for them many times, so honesty does pay, at least once.) But still: in this panoptic age what does one gain from being physically present at a show? Does all the theater and the distractions of being in a crowd of living beings who react or don’t react in unison a benefit or a cost? If you are there, is your appreciation more pure, or more polluted? In the art world, it’s a commonplace that no one goes to an opening to see art, but people really do go to shows to see the clothes, and just as in the golden age of 20^th century theater, the fashion critics come on opening night (the only night) and write their reviews immediately.

So how much of the ‘there’ do you get from being there? At Y-3, there was first the pleasure of going to Pier 40, on West St at Houston, and going first down a driveway that opened onto…a soccer field, with teams in play. This was not an effect, just a regular match. But this is an addidas brand, and a playfield hidden on a pier was very Y-3 architecture, so it sharpened the mood. Turning to the right and skirting the field, we were directed through the door or a long dark garage, with green pin lights on the left lit by small spots on the right, since the green landing strip was totally insufficient to get us 100 feet to the end of the dank room and the tables at the end.

Inside, on five banks of bleachers, we faced a wall of ice in foot thick bricks that were melting, but very slowly. To survive this, Y-3 issued each of us cheap fleecy blankets that molted and made everyone look like they just got off shift in the chicken factory, and chemical hand warming pads. Then we could sit and watch the ice melt, or watch as flashbulbs surrounded various celebs. Through a dark crowd, in the front row, there’s that golden face from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I haven’t spent enough time watching a man being photographed by so many at once. The bursts are so bright and fast that even the golden face looks like it is being executed. A final smile for the cameras?

Up by the ice, another photo subject smiles and bobs. Pose, smile, pose. Natalie Portman. She knows what she is supposed to do and she does it. As if jerked by an invisible string. In this moment, she only exists for still cameras. Watching her do it feels indecent. I still look.

Of course, there are some clothes later, but the Sun paid for this part so I’m giving it to them first.

Always be Closing

2008-01-23T14:43:00.000-04:00

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

2008-01-23T13:28:00.000-04:00

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

2008-01-22T11:58:00.000-04:00

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

2008-01-21T15:37:00.001-04:00

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]

2008-01-21T13:34:00.000-04:00

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]

2008-01-21T13:27:00.000-04:00

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?

2008-01-21T11:06:00.000-04:00

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

2008-01-20T14:05:00.000-04:00

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

2008-01-19T15:16:00.000-04:00

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

2008-01-19T14:46:00.000-04:00

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.