The Masculine Mode

Fashion, to the average U.S. male over 30, is something for other people -- females, fops, and perhaps the Duke of Windsor. As for himself, as far as his clothes are concerned, he would like to be invisible. And if one of his colleagues -- or two of them -- turns up in the same outfit he is wearing, he does not feel embarrassed, as would his wife. He feels reassured. His instructions to his clothier are likely to consist of asking for a suit, a shirt or a pair of shoes "just like what I've got on." But whether he is aware of it or not, the U.S. male is indeed subject to fashion. It is not because he likes it; it is because he can't help it. Take derbies.

Can a man who likes a derby find one when the time comes for a new hat? Rarely. So he buys a soft felt, because that is all there is to buy. And whatever happened to the all-white suit, a favorite of President Harding? Where is the Chesterfield, the spat, and the well-starched evening shirt? The Unbuttoned Look. But such changes are relatively glacial, and the menswear industry wistfully eyes the process of seasonal obsolescence in women's fashions. The makers of men's clothes have had their successes, for instance, in the spectator sporting look.

No man can get by any longer with a pair of white flannels, a blue blazer, and a few white tennis shirts. Nearly everyone now owns at least one sports jacket and usually several. Twice as many sports shirts are made today as business shirts, and Cluett Peabody & Co. has just closed down its necktie division, as have all other major shirt companies.

The manufacturers have also had some reverses. The vest has almost vanished. The dinner jacket has supplanted tails almost completely, and what demand there still is for "white-tie" is largely supplied by the rental houses.

To no one's great sorrow, the double-breasted suit has disappeared. Sartorial sociologists blame this on the trend toward informality. "They always had to be buttoned. If you walk around in an unbuttoned double-breasted, you look like a taxi with all the doors open," explains Irwin Grossman, vice president of Manhattan's Groshire-Austin Leeds.

But when it comes to figuring out what makes a trend, the menswear men only wish they knew. It can be a President -- but not necessarily. Ex-Haberdasher Harry Truman completed the apotheosis of the wild sports shirt worn outside the trousers, but otherwise excited no sartorial emulation. Jack Kennedy did. "Suddenly everybody wanted to look like he came from Harvard, or like he thought everyone looked at Harvard," says Grossman. And it is hoped that the floundering hat industry, for which Kennedy's wind-blown look did nothing, will revive under the ten-gallon-Texan inspiration of President Johnson. Fortnight ago Alex Rose, president of the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union, paid a call at the White House and announced President Johnson's blessing for an L.B.J. hat--a lightweight model with a somewhat narrower brim than the five-gallon number the President likes to hand out to visitors.

Fads & Impulse. The best hope of the industry is the young man between 14 and 24. For one thing, he spends much more money on adornment than his father ever did; a recent survey by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. shows that the average college man spent $387 on clothes last year, compared with only $265 for members of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, who were 15 years older on the average. For another thing, the young man is apt to be fad-prone.

Clothing Retailer Robert R. Storrer of Owosso, Mich., speaks respectfully of the "extremely style-conscious teen, a year-round buyer. If he sees any item he likes, he buys it on impulse. A few calls for a style or color today may mean a headlong rush for it tomorrow." If the college crowd picks it up, and the clothiers climb on the bandwagon, the middle-aged man may find it on his back two years later without even knowing why.

But the clothiers' real frustration is suits. A major breakthrough was scored ten years ago with the introduction of lightweight fabrics that could be tailored, and today the sale of summer suits exceeds that of winter suits. In fact, the heavy winter suit is obsolescing fast. When heaters became standard equipment in every car, men no longer were out in the cold long enough to bother with the real woolly type.

They now almost always buy the medium-weight suit that serves for eight out of the twelve months.

In the U.S. today there are three basic suit styles: the Ivy League, worn by collegiates and Madison Avenue; the more form-fitting "forward look," favored by the young and sharp; and the American classic, worn by about 50% of all American males.

Unable to persuade men to change their suit styles, clothiers concentrate their efforts on urging men to "trade upward." Here their trouble is the lack of status identification--from across a room a $50 suit looks too much like a $250 one. As Irwin Grossman puts it: "A Caddie, or a Lincoln, or an elegant house, or a mink coat--they smell of money, everybody knows what they cost. But the trouble with a man's suit is that, to most men, all suits are pretty much alike. You know--two legs, two sleeves. The label's on the inside, where nobody sees it. If we knew how to get the label on the outside, we'd all be in clover."

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