December 13, 2011
“Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I look at my tie rack. And I think, ‘Should I wear a tie?’ Because I don’t want to wear a tie. But I have all these nice ties. And you have to decide whether you’re going to wear a tie before you pick your shirt, you know, because some shirts don’t really work with ties. But you have to also sort of know the color of the shirt you’ll end up with so you know what tie would go with it. So I’m looking at the ties, thinking I don’t necessarily want to wear one of these, but also thinking about which shirt would go well with the tie I don’t want to wear. And it’s kind of dark because it’s the morning and I get this feeling that there’s maybe a tie that I would want to wear hidden behind all these other ties that are sort of meh. So I’m basically paralyzed. Anyway, in these moments I used to feel terribly, horribly alone. But then came 2006, and with it menswear blogging. And now, with this oral history, I have learned that not only am I not alone, but also people are making a living having the same thoughts I have from 7:58 to 7:59 a.m. every morning.” —

- Vanity Fair’s oral history of the time they read the oral history of menswear blogging. A pretty hilarious read. (Also, he should pick a navy grenadine tie.)
Posted in GQ Vanity Fair
October 21, 2011
“The minute a man is overdressed, he is badly dressed.” — Charles Bryant, Anderson & Sheppard’s managing director in the ’60s and ’70s. (Taken from this great article about Anderson & Sheppard)
Posted in Anderson & Sheppard Vanity Fair Overdressing
February 12, 2010
“Whereas, in the 80s, he had hewed faithfully to the fashion conventions of the time, collecting expensive basketball shoes and wearing his hair in a rococo power mullet, in his last decade he pointedly dressed in a suit nearly every day, favoring Brooks Brothers and the custom tailor Henry Poole of Savile Row. “I think it bothered him that people his same age, of similar means, were wearing sweat suits and Twittering,” said James. Though he still kept up with new music—Hughes had been a legendarily voracious record buyer in the old days, admired by rock snobs for the acuity of his soundtrack picks—he now viewed it as his primary duty to be, in his younger son’s words, “the curious, engaged grandpa in the seersucker.” — Vanity Fair’s David Kamp on John Hughes (thanks Rich)
Posted in Wisdom John Hughes Vanity Fair Seersucker Henry Poole Brooks Brothers