The Library

A former military man demonstrates, among other things, the ironing of a shirt, the polishing of shoes, and various domestic competencies which he has clearly practised for many years and to a standard I would describe as serviceable. His approach to the collar is sound, and his advice regarding the inspection of the iron's plate in a hotel room is the sort of practical intelligence that cannot be taught from a book, only from experience, which he has evidently had in quantity. I will note that his method of pressing the sleeves, which involves setting a crease along the upper edge, is derived from his service background and would not have been tolerated in any private house with which I was acquainted; a gentleman's shirt sleeve carries no crease, a distinction which separates the civilian from the uniformed man and which matters rather more than one might suppose. His insistence upon wooden hangers, however, is entirely correct, and his general demeanour throughout, which is calm, practical, and entirely without pretension, is precisely the tone one wishes more men would adopt when discussing matters of personal maintenance. The series is worth your time.

I will say this plainly: the Gentleman's Gazette produces work of considerable quality, and does so with a consistency that is rare in any medium and rarer still in the one they have chosen. Their knowledge of cloth, of construction, of the history and logic behind the way men have dressed for the better part of two centuries, is genuine and evidently hard won. When they explain why a jacket is cut as it is, or why a particular cloth behaves as it does, they are drawing upon understanding rather than repetition, and the difference is always apparent to those who know enough to notice it. I have watched a great many of their productions, and I have learned from several of them, which is a concession I do not make lightly or often. Their treatment of tailoring, of accessories, of the principles which distinguish a well-dressed man from a merely expensive one, is frequently excellent and occasionally superb. That said, I observe that they are, in the final accounting, a commercial enterprise, and the attentive viewer will notice that the education and the commerce are not always entirely separable. There is rather more discussion of acquisition than I should like, rather more attention to what one might purchase and rather less to the discipline of wearing what one already owns with care and consistency. An Edwardian gentleman of good standing did not think overmuch about his clothes; he thought about his duties, his conduct, and the comfort of those around him, and his clothes were simply the outward evidence that these matters had been attended to. The wardrobe was a tool, not a subject of fascination, and the man who makes a study of his own appearance has, in my experience, already begun to neglect something more important. I would also note, regarding their otherwise commendable survey of menswear in the nineteen hundreds, that the picture they paint is perhaps a shade too tidy. Fashion did not sit still during those years, and I, who lived through them and dressed gentlemen throughout, can attest that the changes from one end of the decade to the other were more considerable than a single summary can convey. The lounge suit, for instance, was gaining ground steadily against the frock coat, and the morning coat was shifting in cut and purpose in ways that a man of eighteen ninety five would have found quite novel by nineteen ten. Which brings me to a point I feel compelled to make, and I hope I may be forgiven the directness: there is a danger, in the study of historical dress, of treating the past as a costume to be replicated rather than a set of principles to be understood. I have seen men of your era dress themselves in the manner of mine, and the effect is almost always unfortunate, not because the clothes are wrong but because the intention is visible. A gentleman does not dress to evoke a period; he dresses to be correct, which is a living standard that moves with its time, however slowly. One may prefer a high collar or a watch chain, but one must wear them as a man who has chosen them for reasons of his own, not as a man who has copied them from a photograph. The distinction is subtle but absolute. The Gazette understands this better than most, but the enthusiasm of their audience does not always follow where their knowledge leads, and I think a word of caution is not misplaced. Dress well. Dress with knowledge. But dress as a man of your own era who has learned from the past, not as a man who wishes he lived in it. The past, I assure you, was not as comfortable as it looks in the illustrations.