Morning dress

[SLOshank]

Again, striped trousers are technically not breeches.

As for button boots or galosh oxfords, you can wear them anytime you want.

Best regards, Dr

No, I meant knee-high equestrian boots...

 

[SLOshank]

His morning dress looks far better than many I have seen on the day. Well balanced though I would have worn a b+w houndstooth tie for more contrast and to spice it up a bit. And a buttonhole which is essential in adding more colour.

Is a B&W houndstooth four-in-hand considered "dressy" and "traditional" when it comes to morning dress? Thanks.

 

[Salieri]

Is a B&W houndstooth four-in-hand considered "dressy" and "traditional" when it comes to morning dress? Thanks.

It is. It's pretty much the go-to tie as a safe bet for morning dress really, especially if you're keeping to a greyscale theme.

 

[Charlie Huang]

Well, Sator is a tailoring enthusiast who started to deal with serious clothing only a few years ago. It would seem that he has relatively little to no background experience with formal clothes. I remember one of his older posts, from a few years ago, on AAAC about the idea of wearing a dinner jacket at the Opera, something he obviously had never done before.
It means that he probably wore a dinner jacket to somewhere for the first time in his 30s or so and if he does own a morning coat (he may as he is a tailor and could have made one) probably never wore it.
All this means that he had to get his experience and understanding of clothes from somewhere and this was books for him. This brings out his somewhat dogmatic views on some subjects (Stresemanns/Director jackets) and probably brought out his recent conversion to “lounge suit only”.
With nobody or almost nobody around him wearing anything more formal than a lounge suit (he lives in Australia after all) he more or less deleted from the realm of possible everything else.
This, of course, is a very narrow view of things but experience is what shapes us all.

My experience is quite different and therefore I am rather happy to thank Sator for all the beautiful pictures and patterns he posted and for some of his older messages, but I am also quite happy to disagree completely with him on the subject of formal clothes.
Yours,

Phileas Fogg

P.S. I can agree with Sator's point that as he is paying for his forum he should be entitled to keep it serious and check its contents, but I do not agree with him about dress breeches being costume on par with some of the things in the pictures he posted.

P.P.S. Mr Huang you and your friends did very well on the day of the Royal Wedding.

TBH, in the past I was in an experimental phase and wore all sorts of non-sense combinations of formal dress. I was learning back then. I have since become very knowledgeable and have become increasingly conservative and traditional in formal dress after discovering the beauty in simplicity and well cut clothing and style.

The problem I have with Sator is his classification of what he thinks are in the realms of 'costume' which is so broad that you could also take lounge suits as costume as well since most in the world outside us sartorialists would consider it a 'work costume' and if given the chance would have ditched it long ago for the office and boardroom in favour of jeans and T-shirts...

 

[Phileas Fogg]

Well, it is only normal to experiment. We have to learn somewhere and experience is a good teacher. Some experiments may not be our happiest moment but if we recognize a mistake or somewhat which is anyway better dropped it is not that bad.

We are both Europeans and I imagine we get to see our fair share of formal clothes, for me a suit is just business clothes (I wear one daily for work and have done so for many many years), with all the formality of business but not of a special event. In Australia things may be very different, even a lounge suit may be seen as extravagant.

Some statements made on Sator's forum are clelarly ludicrous. I have been wearing a pocket watch for most of my life, a lot of my suites have waistcoats, I do own and use formal clothes and started to do so when I was 18 (dinner jacket, other things came later) and all these thing are seen as normal from where I come, perhaps a few are a little old-fashioned but nobody would see them as costume.
One of the posters on the C&T (I am not sure who) thought all these things were costume! I really wonder which kind of customers he does have or where he does live.

I agree that spats and frockcoats are very rarely seen (even though, the King of Tonga...) but shouldn't a good tailor be able to be up to the challenge?
The tailor whose services I currently employ liked very much the idea of trying something he had never done before (of course he got paid but he would have gotten a similiar amount of money out of a lounge suit or two but not the same experience and satisfaction).

As a last thing the appeal to be trying to keep bespoke tailoring alive by doing only the very trendiest lounge suit is silly. Bespoke tailoring is kept alive by having customers, whatever they may ask.
The old magazines did show only the very latest fashions? Sure, exactly as the ones we have nowadays and which suggest ridiculuos clothes nobody would wear. The main reasoning for both was to try to sell and customers may want to out do each other or they may lack guidelines and go for tasteless but expensive things and so on. The reason may be very different from "yesterday's things is passé".

Sator has the right to decide what gets in his forum and what does not but most if not all of his points are very weak to put it mildly and he has been pretty rude to you. The only valid one may be that his customers want a specific style and he is trying to support his business.

I am all in favour of traditional formal clothes and not just for admiring them in pictures but also for real use and this because I use them often. You have done well from all pictures I have seen, keep going (Fear God and Dread Nought).
Yours,

Phileas Fogg

 

[John in Covina]

As a last thing the appeal to be trying to keep bespoke tailoring alive by doing only the very trendiest lounge suit is silly. Bespoke tailoring is kept alive by having customers, whatever they may ask.

The old magazines did show only the very latest fashions? Sure, exactly as the ones we have nowadays and which suggest ridiculuos clothes nobody would wear. The main reasoning for both was to try to sell and customers may want to out do each other or they may lack guidelines and go for tasteless but expensive things and so on. The reason may be very different from "yesterday's things is passé".

A friend that went to get a suit made by a fairly famous tailor had an idea as to want he wanted. The tailor spent the time selling him on a completely different suit.

As to the current crop of magazines here in the US those that I have seen concentrate on the youth. So much of the trendy fashions shown come off as ridiculous that I actually imagine that the designers have a bet as to who can come up with the worst line up and still sell. (I am reminded of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. Wiki article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes )

 

[Tomasso]

Sator has the right to decide what gets in his forum and what does not but most if not all of his points are very weak to put it mildly and he has been pretty rude to you. The only valid one may be that his customers want a specific style and he is trying to support his business.

This kinda reads like you're under the impression that Sator is a tailor or cutter. He is neither; he's a medical physician.

 

[Lokar]

This kinda reads like you're under the impression that Sator is a tailor or cutter. He is neither; he's a medical physician.

True, although he can tailor, just doesn't do it professionally.

 

[Tomasso]

True, although he can tailor, just doesn't do it professionally.

Sorry, I don't believe that he can make up a jacket by hand. That's something that takes years of apprenticeship to learn. Let's just say he's a dilettante.

 

[Lokar]

I know he's made fully tailored overcoats at least, and have seen photos. He's said he's made body coats (and I have no reason to disbelieve him), so a regular lounge coat seems doable.

 

[Tomasso]

so a regular lounge coat seems doable.

It's the hardest garment to make; harder than all other garments put together. Look, has he ever referred to himself as a tailor? Let's just go with dilettante.

 

[Lokar]

A body coat is far harder than a lounge coat. I do agree with not calling him a tailor though (as that implies a career).

 

[Tomasso]

A body coat is far harder than a lounge coat.

They're the same make as a lounge, they can just be harder to fit sometimes. I would like to see this coat that he made, are there any photos?

I do agree with not calling him a tailor though (as that implies a career).

As I said, a dilettante. It's not meant as a pejorative, you know.

BTW, I have no problem with Sator or his forum, though I was surprised at how nasty he was to Charlie. Sator was/is occasionally treated poorly on the other boards but not to that degree and not by the owners.

 

[Qirrel]

Making a lounge and making a body coat is not the same. The body coat requires more shaping, more padding, more intricate sewing because of more seams and tight fit, the skirt is tricky to make, &c.

A picture of one of Sator's works appears in this thread: http://www.cutterandtailor.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=652&st=0 (A greatcoat).
While he is no professional, he is a knowledgeable hobby tailor. While I disagree with his views about what constitutes the future of tailoring and his sometimes overly aggressive argumentation, I do admire him for the work he has put into creating and managing the C&T forum. Sator has the right to run the forum how he likes and I use the forum for what it is, not what I would like it to be.

 

[Phileas Fogg]

Yes, I am fully aware that Sator is a doctor (I do not write a lot but I have been reading for years). I just tried to find some rationale for his recent attitude. From how he sounds it looks like he is on a crusade to save bespoke tailoring put I do also fear he is on the wrong track. I just saw again something akin to his "anti-stroller crusade", when he went from being an enthusiast to knocking down everybody who said that it was a more formal type of dress than a standard lounge suit.

For what it matters I did admire the effort he put in his website (even though it is not my cup of tea, I am no tailor, I am a customer) and like many of his older posts in various fora. But after going back to his website and reading some of his more recent replies I cannot say I find it that useful anymore (especially as a non-tailor). The way he hijacked the thread on Stresmanns was outrageous. He made fun of the whole concept and started talking about blue, green and bron morning coats, jackets of any colour as acceptable and no-tie as a novelty look one should try. I think no more needs to be said about him a part from "Sic transit gloria mundi".

Yours,


Phileas Fogg

P.S. as for the lounge coat-body coat debate my tailor told me that a body coat takes him a lot more effort.

 

[Salieri]

While I admit to being pretty surprised with Sator's unexpected change of heart, it's not when you really think about it that unbelievable. I think he was pretty clsoe to what you might call a vintage style fundamentalist. A lot of his views were very extreme and strongly held, and he did go about other fora somewhat ramming it down people's throats where it wasn't really appropriate (aaac f'rinstance). He had quite a body of evidence behind him, but it was all from a rather narrow selection of sources (tailoring manuals, journals etc) and I suppose it was actually rather inevitable that he was going to have a crisis of faith at some point, and extremists often go from one set of strongly held beliefs to another, rather than simply becoming moderate overnight.

Sort of continuing on the subject, but bringing the topic back to morning dress, I've often thought that one of my favourite aspects of morning dress, its flexibility, is also one of its greatest failings. The fact that it does permit more experimentation and variation than black tie for example, leads eventually to the terrible shiny silk waistcoats and massive cocolupa cravat combinations and other seriously gaudy outfits that you will often see in formal hire establishments. I think if modern tailors want to give morning dress a new lease of life, bring back the black waistcoat with a vengeance. It can look extremely elegant (cf Duke of Edinburgh) and more sleek and timeless really than even the best variations (DB buff etc.) Importantly, I think it would cater very well to people who understandably don't like to stand out in a crowd, much in the way that black tie does.

Basically, morning dress has become something which is synonymous with 'showing off', to the extent that quite a lot fo people think it's inappropriate for a wedding unless you're in the wedding party. I've heard from a lot of people, principally from the US, that one must sort of dress down to weddings for fear of outshining the groom. No one would for an instant anticipate outshining the host by wearing black tie to a black tie function.

People like uniforms, they're easier to deal with and rarely offend.

 

[Phileas Fogg]

Well, there is some latitude in morning dress but I do not see as an issue of too muc flexibility.
The coat can be of only three colours lighter grey for a morning suit and oxford grey or black for a morning coat. The trousers have to be in the white-grey-black colour range.
Once shirt were supposed to be only white, the pal blue and pink which crept in are a relatively recent thing (more or less after WWI). Ties have always allowed some latitude to the wearer.
If done correctly the worst thing you should see is a very weird waistocat coupled witha bad shirt and/or tie.

The main problem is that some genius designers have tried to "refresh" the garment and have made availbale some ghastly things like metallic dark grey long coats (with no waist seam) to be worn with Louis XVI lace cravats. To be hoest such things are usally worn only by those who would wear a dinner jacket for a daytiem wedding (at least in Europe), still I agree that it does not help the average customer to understand what he should do.

I am unde the strong impression that up to some time ago people would just go for the right thing, maybe witha bad tie, but they would avoid some of the horrendous items we see nowadays. If they could afford a morning coat they would have gone for it, if they could not they would have worn their best suit and looked good.
Today we have a very different situation where only some people know the rules and bother to follow them, the rest will go for whatever may strike their fancy. Still "O tempora o mores", I would just add that the current tempora do not look good at all.
Yours,

Phileas Fogg

 

[Tomasso]

my tailor told me that a body coat takes him a lot more effort.

And who would your tailor be? Just curious.....

 

[Lokar]

The actual sewing of a body coat might not be a huge amount more difficult (although there are many more seams - e.g. the horizontal waist seam, and more pieces on a body coat - a morning coat has two tail pieces, one centre back, two back and two front pieces - a total of seven compared to a lounge coat's four), but the actual cutting (which is absolutely a part of tailoring) is definitely much more difficult. Body coats (assuming you want them to look good) need to be a perfect match to your body, unlike a lounge. That's why they're called body coats.

Even if you disagree with Sator, all the known true professional tailors on the C&T forum say a body coat is the hardest thing to tailor by far. It's stated there time and time again.

Not that a lounge coat is easy, of course.

 

[Charlie Huang]

Making a lounge and making a body coat is not the same. The body coat requires more shaping, more padding, more intricate sewing because of more seams and tight fit, the skirt is tricky to make, &c.

I agree. All those seams and different pieces interlocking like a jigsaw puzzle and getting the coat to hug the body with a good waist suppression as well as getting the line right. The lounge coat does not have the same demands for fit nor does it have so many more pieces to mess around with.

Also, you can alter a lounge coat easily but a body coat is almost impossible withoiut throwing the balance off. One of my morning coats is around a size or two too big but I am not even going to attempt taking it in as I would have to take the vent and the skirt apart and literally recut the whole coat which I am not going to risk for fear of destroying it.