Don't shun... embrace the corduroy suit.

[Matt Deckard]

Orgetorix... I must say, you still look ultra proper in that morning attire with top hat.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

I ask for opinions and discuss them. Perhaps I should have put a "lol" at the end of what I said.

I think that would be a good idea.

 

[scotrace]

This came UPS yesterday. Wearing it today, and like it a lot. I agree with Alan's bit about British University wear.

 

[Orgetorix]

Orgetorix... I must say, you still look ultra proper in that morning attire with top hat.

Thanks. The great thing about being a university professor is that you can wear whatever you want, and nobody cares. If it's out of the ordinary, they just think you're slightly eccentric--and professors are supposed to be a bit eccentric.

 

[Edward]

Thanks. The great thing about being a university professor is that you can wear whatever you want, and nobody cares. If it's out of the ordinary, they just think you're slightly eccentric--and professors are supposed to be a bit eccentric.

Well, I don't quite know about that! lol But yeah, I think they're more flexible here than in the real world. Certainly I feel that my relative eccentricities (cravats, fedoras, etc) tend to be treated here as eccentricities whereas in a commercial office I should expect them to be regarded more as an affectation.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Thanks. The great thing about being a university professor is that you can wear whatever you want, and nobody cares. If it's out of the ordinary, they just think you're slightly eccentric--and professors are supposed to be a bit eccentric.

Here's an interesting passage from an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education about a professor's experiment with dressing formally on campus:

In the process, I probably irritated some of my colleagues, a few of whom are aggressively informal on principle: denim, work boots, sandals -- anything goes but formality. The situation is not unique to my home institution. Professors (in the humanities, at least) don't make much money relative to other professionals, so we press our sour grapes into the sweeter wine of smugness: "We are too important to pay attention to such trivial, privileged matters as clothing."

But he also goes on to say:

I found that a higher level of formality improved my students' learning. My larger classes ran more smoothly. I had fewer disruptions, less chatter, more note-taking. I had fewer grade appeals, even though I graded more rigorously and made larger demands. I saw fewer bare feet, boxer shorts, bed hair, and pajama pants in my classrooms. E-mail messages to me almost invariably began with "Dear Professor" instead of "Hey."

It's an interesting essay overall. I don't fully agree with the author's moderate conclusions, because I am one to go all out and let the chips fall where they may (as I suspect you are too, Orgetorix). But that's a difference in temperament.

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/01/2008012501c/careers.html?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

 

[Italian-wiseguy]

I always had the feeling that corduroy was for us italians what tweed is for the Anglo-Saxon world.

I mean, at least to me, corduroy means warmth, old-school, and coziness.
Corduroy is also the fabric you see used in old hunting jackets (the italian type, with a huge back pocket closed by buttons), so wearing corduroy implies you're not in a formal context.

Tweed is almost the same, but here it sends the addictional message of being "foreign", which means you're informed and stylish enough enough to wear it in place of common corduroy.

For sure an italian Lex Luthor would wear Tweed when "informal", implying he's a stylish man; corduroy would make him look like the Tuscan old man annoying everyone giving his unaccessary advices during the cooking program of the Twelve (any italian here? the program of Antonella Clerici! )

Ciao!

 

[Alan Eardley]

I have to say, as an aficianado of tweed, that some of the best tweed tailoring I have ever seen has been from northern Italy. Including my favourite belted back 'Donegal' half-'Norfolk' suit (so many apostrophes there!)

Alan

I always had the feeling that corduroy was for us italians what tweed is for the Anglo-Saxon world.

I mean, at least to me, corduroy means warmth, old-school, and coziness.
Corduroy is also the fabric you see used in old hunting jackets (the italian type, with a huge back pocket closed by buttons), so wearing corduroy implies you're not in a formal context.

Tweed is almost the same, but here it sends the addictional message of being "foreign", which means you're informed and stylish enough enough to wear it in place of common corduroy.

For sure an italian Lex Luthor would wear Tweed when "informal", implying he's a stylish man; corduroy would make him look like the Tuscan old man annoying everyone giving his unaccessary advices during the cooking program of the Twelve (any italian here? the program of Antonella Clerici! )

Ciao!

 

[Feraud]

Doing it right in corduroy.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Doing it right in corduroy.

I just saw, on YouTube, DDL's eloquent, moving acceptance speech at the Screen Actors Guild in which he dedicated his Best Actor award for There Will Be Blood to Heath Ledger, and spoke of the impact specific Ledger performances had upon him. "Doing it right" in more ways than one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxr8mbvaB2E

 

[Mid-fogey]

From...

...time to time I've looked at a corduroy sport coat, but a suit...

As a sufferer of PTSSD, that is Post-Traumatic Seventies Stress Disorder, I have some lingering corduroy issues. It's frequent wear by smelly hippies haunts me still.

 

[jake_fink]

It's not a great version of the very famous photo, but painter Amadeo Modigliani was well known for wearing his well worn cord du roi suit.

Tres Modi (maudit - a hilarious joke about the artist's mood disorder, get it?)

Here's Andy Garcia posing up a storm in some half-arsed movie about corduroy suits and what not.

This would have been circa the first world war. Modigliani died in 1920.

 

[David Conwill]

I'm actually wearing a dark-brown cord sport coat as I type this, and I very nearly bought a three-piece corduroy suit not too long ago (it might still be in the thrift shop where I found it, those kind of came and went with the local hipsters right around the time I graduated high school).

I frequently lament not having bought that suit - but the thing is, I'd have had to turn the trousers into Plus 4s as they'd been hemmed unevenly and had worn too much to un-hem, and I know of no precedent for a 3-piece corduroy cycling outfit.

I've always viewed corduroy as a tweed-substitute for those of us on a budget, it has similar professorial qualities, as mentioned above. Plus, given its origins as work wear, it's usually nice and hard wearing, which makes for a long life.

-Dave

 

[dr greg]

pull the cord roy

About a year ago I had a bit of a run on corduroy jackets, they were suddenly hip it seemed, so I stocked up, and all of a sudden I'm stuck with 5 of them that I can't move...bloody fads, luckily I figured that the suits would be too much in this climate anyway so I wasn't caught out there.

 

[resortes805]

 

[carter]

I saw a terrific three-piece chocolate brown 38R corduroy suit at a thrift store last week. I almost bought it but decided I'd never be able to sell it. It's probably still hanging there.

 

[H.Johnson]

Well, you could have sold it it to me...

I personally wouldn't wear a corduroy jacket on its own, but I wear a corduroy suit a lot.

 

[WildCelt]

It's probably still hanging there.

What a pity I'm not in Texas.

 

[MisterGrey]

It's interesting how a fabric can have so many different connotations. In Oklahoma, a cordurory suit was the height of cowboy class, and could be seen at Southwest-themed/oriented formal/semi-formal events being sported with a pressed white shirt, bolo tie, cowboy boots and stetson. I owned a black one, myself, with wooden buttons, and at one point it was the best suit I owned, until I lost a good deal of weight and it was neither financially practical (or terribly feasible) to have it altered.

On a similar topic, I attended a "cowboy wedding" a few years ago in Texas, and the groom donned a corduroy suit for the ceremony. It's the only once I've seen since moving here, so maybe in this region it's a trend more associated with an older generation.

 

[carter]

Well, you could have sold it it to me...
I personally wouldn't wear a corduroy jacket on its own, but I wear a corduroy suit a lot.

What a pity I'm not in Texas.

I'll run by there tomorrow and see if it's still there. If it is and it's not too dear, I'll pick it up. I hope someone is serious about taking it off my hands.