ART IMITATES LIFE & VICE VERSA

To compensate for the volume of shoe-centric pieces lately, I thought I’d throw up some more film inspired stuff on here. In terms of traffic, a little less potent, but for the few of you who check this site out semi regularly, I’ll be presumptuous and assume it’s relevant to your interests. If you’re here and haven’t seen ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ and you’re over the age of 20, you’re one of those characters who I don’t want to be seated next to at a wedding dinner. Pacino in a role that’s shouty but nuanced (those phone call scenes are pretty much as good as ’70s cinema gets), the amazing and much-missed John Cazale and an excellent Chris Sarandon on support and…fuck it, there’s no point even trying to talk it up, because if you know, you know. I knew it was based on a true story; P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore’s ‘The Boys in the Bank’ from a September 1972 issue of ‘LIFE’ about the John Wojtowicz case, but I forgot how much of that article (and the accompanying imagery) is in Frank Pierson’s screenplay and the final film, rather than Scorsese loosely channeling the doom atmosphere of Larry Clark’s ‘Tulsa’ for ‘Taxi Driver. For all the drama and panicked humour, it’s a strange, sad story really.

This Ain’t It Cool News conversation between Jason Schwartzman and Quint is a fun tangent from the usual press junket topics and Quint breaks out some close up shots of the University of Texas’s De Niro donations. I’d seen the ‘Taxi Driver’ “King Kong Company” tank jacket and shirt before, but Sam Rothstein’s burnt post-car bomb jacket from ‘Casino’? Insane.

Images taken from here.

I had the pleasure of talking to Jerry Cohen, founder of Ebbets Field Flannels recently. There’s a lot I wanted to ask him with regards to sportswear’s lost brands and techniques, but it’s heartening to see a man who is obviously obsessed with the subject of old sports making a career out of it and on his own terms. Go visit POST/NEW for the whole thing, but beyond the talk of several cities having their own hat shape as well as their own logos and colours, Jerry also schooled me on the difference between a varsity jacket and baseball jacket. To tie this to the talk above, Ebbets make a replica of Robert Redford’s New York Knights jacket from ‘The Natural’ (I think the OG was made by Maple Authentic Sportswear who made the film’s flannels too). Word to Wonderboy…

GW: On the jackets, is there a difference between baseball jackets and the more commonplace varsity jacket?

JC: Absolutely. Nobody asks me that because they assume they’re the same. The big difference is length. Varsity jackets went up on the waist but baseball jackets went longer. They were meant to be worn to warm up in, so the shoulders were cut different too. They used to make them tailored and varsity jackets were more bulky — Wilson made the best ones and I have a few originals.

GW: Are they from the 1950s?

JC: Yep, the 1950s. The Wilson jackets were beautiful, with a zipper or buttoned front and they just had a certain drape to them that was just gorgeous. That’s what we try to replicate. The wool isn’t as heavy. A varsity jacket used a Melton wool , but baseball jackets used an 18 or 19oz wool rather than the 24oz.

TECHNOLOGY & OTHER STUFF

Sometimes it’s nice to break away from the WordPress logger look and wear something a little more progressive. The best work comes from those with a more nebulous approach to clobber than just remaking past triumphs and Mr. Dominic Stansfield is one of those chaps who knows clothing design inside out, displaying otaku levels of interest in military apparel, but grew bored of the fixation with all things waxy and quaint. As has been reinforced here and elsewhere, the best things come from the minds knowledgeable enough to get playful. They’re not the Muppets banging on about curating or tastemaking, but rather the ones quietly getting shit done in the background. Rushmore and Stansfield were doing the stuff that everyone’s into now a while ago and swiftly moved onto the next thing after suffering an attack of reverse nostalgia. Stansfield’s work was already playing with existing design rather than being some kind of repro-facilitator, so what would happen if he was given an almost limitless supply of manufacturing resources? You get UVU.

While we wait for Mr. Stansfield’s sweatshirt project (bearing in mind he appreciates a Reverse Weave or two), the UVU collection is shaping up nicely. Notions of everyday performance sound nice when they’re reeled off in a brainstorm for the easily impressed, but when they’ve got you looking like some kind of angular future cop from the waist up once they’re on your back, the novelty swiftly wears off. That’s why real performance needs to be the driving force of technical apparel somewhere down the line. That’s why I love Arc’teryx, ACG and Rapha. Bear in mind that even Hiroki Nakamura learnt his craft at Burton before he started emptying your pocket with those beautiful boots and jackets.

UVU is made by KTC, who know performance manufacture inside out and it shows in the samples. Just as there’s evidently room in the market for a hundred old Sierra Designs-alikes, there should be room for several technical contenders when that bubble bursts. Hopefully the explosion should usher in the next rather than some neo-heritage twattery. This interview with FreshBritain main man Bob Sheard on the KTC site, discussing breaking down costs, brand integrity and notions of authenticity is excellent, as is the piece on Chinese manufacture. Like most people, I feel the urge to kit myself out with gear that could perform. That’s not to say I’ll ever put my Lunar Eclipses or Arc’teryx Alpha SV through the paces that they’re built for, but it’s nice to know that in a pursuit situation, or should I find myself stranded on a hill somewhere, I might survive an extra quarter of an hour before I’m stabbed or eaten by a bear. That’s what made wearing the UVU North Pole Race Jacket to commute to work these last few weeks amusing.

I can’t say I put the jacket through its paces, but I enjoyed the experience, despite being a little thrown by the pockets zipping upwards. That’s the kind of thing I would probably appreciate if I was legging it in sub-zero conditions where time wasted equals fingertips. Intact fingers crossed, I’ll never find myself in that situation.

At an un-athletic, luddite level I appreciated the olive accents and reflective ‘U’ details, plus the way the hood protected my massive head from rain without sending me sprawling across a car bonnet when I was crossing Euston Road. There’s your performance review. Set to offer casual counterparts to each part of a hardcore, cold running layering system, you can expect water resistant fleece sweats and shirts (that’s shirting in bellend parlance) with bonded seams that don’t make you look like you’ve just fallen from space — again, to create wardrobe staples that can perform without getting tackily techy from a visual standpoint is quite an achievement. I’m interested in seeing where UVU goes in 2012.

I’m also interested in seeing what Mos Def, Chris Gibbs and Alyasha are cooking up collaboratively for 2012 too. Did they meet up as some secret society for the really fucking well dressed?

Other things on the internet that are far more interesting than this blog include the Martorialist interviewing Mob Style’s Fred Flak and Loomstate covering the opening of the London Ralph Lauren RRL store on Mount Street this week. Dapper looks abound in those photos and the Deadwood theme to some pieces reminded me of my regret at not bidding on the Deadwood wardrobe when the show was officially deaded (I think I blogged it here somewhere). Now Al Swearengen’s suit and underwear will set you back $7000, which is probably how much a similar RRL set would cost. Just as Très Bien have started stocking Alden’s Cordovan leather goods (the frequent object of my affections), RRL London has its own black, limited to 20 pair, take on the brand’s Cordovan Madison boot. Europe’s horse population should start panicking, but I imagine it’s the ones near Chicago’s Horween tannery that are really shitting themselves.

Rice-tranced rap god Riff Raff’s twitter antics are easily the best of any rapper doing social media (“TALKiNG ON MY iPHONE SMELLiNG LiKE A PiNE CONE”) and he’s also alluded that he’s selling a copy of his alien chain with an “Ain’t nothing important to me except …codeine over ice” cup. Riff-Raff is a good advert for codeine misuse, and his twitpic group shot of chains (sadly excluding his Slimer effort) is inspirational in its riced-out glory.

Searching for some old West Coast punk footage for one reason or another, I reacquainted myself with ‘Urban Struggle: The Battle of the Cuckoo’s Nest’ documentary, but I hadn’t seen this footage of Gary Panter and Penelope Spheeris being patronised by Stanley Siegel in 1981. The heavy metal kid in the Hawaiian shirt is a true boss.

DONKEY JACKETS

Recently I pondered aloud, via the medium of Twitter – the best outlet for self-important blusterings to noone in particular as to why, we Brits in particular, are so prone to penning lengthy paens to the joys of the chambray shirt. Yes, there’s Gap, there’s Flathead, there’s Workers…but more often that not, I’m seeing paragraph after paragraph of the same point reiterated. At trend level has the chambray superceded plaid to become the new uniform of the post-hypester? It left me pondering as to why we don’t celebrate our own history of working class style enough.