In September 1960 George Frazier, the acerbic Jazz critic and cultural reporter, wrote a famous Esquire piece called “The Art Of Wearing Clothes.” The essay traces the history of dressing well, ending with a list of men who practiced the art gracefully (as might be expected many of names are WASPy scions from the worlds of commerce and public service).
It’s safe to say that Frazier would be aghast at the current state of sartorial affairs (he died in 1974). Another Man’s Poison, Charles Fountain’s 1984 biography of Frazier, contains the following quote:
What the hell ever happened to the sense of style of the campus, to undergraduates with taste?
Frazier also wrote the liner notes for Miles Davis’ Greatest Hits (1965). It was entitled “Warlord of the Weejuns.” Ostensibly about music, it also contains a stinging indictment of men’s fashion at the time (he was writing during the Kennedy/Mad Men era, a moment we now regard as unattainably stylish).
All I’m trying to say, really, is that most boutique customers should be lined up before a firing squad at dawn and that there should be a minute of silence to thank God for the existence of people like Miles Davis.
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