A collaboration between Street Etiquette and Unabashedly Prep has been making waves in the style blogosphere over the past week. The project, entitled "The Black Ivy," is a set of photos depicting several  preppy black students going about their daily lives around the campus of the City College of New York. The slideshow concludes with a different series of photos, shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt at Howard University (one of America's historic black colleges) in 1946. Rather than any racial implications of either photoset, their juxtaposition got me thinking about the interrelationship between style and fashion, and particularly how fashion trends tend to date clothes.

Let's take a look first at these two photos from 1946. You'll notice many ways in which the suits of that era differ from the suits of today: higher-waisted trousers with wider legs, plus longer jackets that had wider lapels, longer sleeves, and higher button placements. And of course, hats were fairly common for everyday wear in 1946, whereas now they're exclusively reserved for the realm of fashion statement.

What we're seeing here is representative of the very particular way that men's fashion tends to change over time. That is to say: Men's fashion is a series of deviations away from one universal reference point. This reference point (or, for the Aristotelians in the room, the "Golden Mean") is a particular point in time, usually around the origination of the garment in question, which sets the standard for all subsequent iterations of that garment. In the case of suits, the reference point is the classic British/Savile Row cut of the 1930s (see photo at right). And the reason why I call it the "Golden Mean" is that the reference point is usually perfectly in balance with the proportions of its wearer, because (in the realm of suiting at least) the garment would have originally been custom-made to fit its particular wearer's body. No aspect of the garment is exaggerated or out of proportion; everything is perfectly suited to the particular individual. The width of the trouser leg is in proportion to the wearer's shoe size; the width of the lapel is in proportion to the breadth of the wearer's shoulders; the placement of the jacket's buttons and the height of the waist of the trousers are in proportion to the wearer's overall height. And, when you have a suit that conforms to the Golden Mean, it becomes nearly impossible to date. It is timeless. That's the reason why the evil EPA agent in Ghostbusters would still look perfectly well-dressed if he brought his suit from 1984 to today: because it is, essentially, outside of fashion.

Bearing that in mind, let's now consider one of the modern-day Black Ivy photos.

 

What we see here is a deviation in the opposite direction from the 1946 photos. In 1946, it was all about more and bigger: longer jackets, wider lapels, wider pant legs, longer hems. In 2010 (and for pretty much the last decade), it's all about less and smaller: shorter jackets, narrower lapels, skinnier pant legs, shorter hems. Note the fellow in the middle, wearing the light grey sport jacket with jeans: the width of his pant leg is ludicrously narrow relative to his shoe size. The chap with the tan striped sport coat? It's so short that it's barely covering his ass. Also note the two guys with their skinny pant legs cuffed or rolled a few inches above their shoes. Sure, this looks spiffy now, because it's 100% on-trend in the minds of those who follow fashion. But ten or twenty or sixty years down the road, these sticklike pants will look just as ridiculous in retrospect as those tentlike '40s pants do to us now.

Contrast those outfits with the one at left. Admittedly, the shawl-collar cardigan with toggle closure is a bit of a trendy style. But it references classics from the past history of menswear; shawl collars and toggle closures are both authentic details, though not necessarily on the same garment. And more importantly, the fit of what he's wearing is relatively timeless. The khakis are neither tight nor loose, long nor short, skinny nor wide; they're perfectly proportionate in every way. Likewise, the fit of the sweater is close, but not tight. In short, everything balances. No one aspect of the ensemble stands out as being exaggerated in any direction.

The lesson here: When you're putting together an outfit, avoid trendy extremes to avoid dating yourself. Don't go for the jacket with the 1.5-inch lapels or the pants with the 7-inch leg opening. Think first and foremost about what suits you: your body, your personality. Wearing things just because they're fashionable (hello, square-toed loafers and multicolor-striped shirts) is the surest way to look back ten years from now and regret every photo ever taken of you. Instead, dress to suit yourself. That way, you'll avoid becoming a fashion victim, and instead grow further towards your own personal style.

I posted the following as my Facebook status earlier today:

Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers: Would it kill you to put on a pair of freaking khakis? You look like shit. Seriously.

My brother-in-law's girlfriend left the first comment. I decided to use it as the title of this post. It got me thinking about why I said what I said, what I was really trying to say, and how the message may have gotten skewed by the way I chose to say it.

First off, I'm not asking for people to “dress up” when they go to Wal-Mart. I recognize there's an appropriate time and place for dressing up. I don't expect the average Wal-Mart shopper to look as nice as the average Michelin-starred restaurant-goer. (As one of my other friends archly observed, “Extensive socioeconomic research has actually revealed that many lower income families are unable to afford tuxedos for everyday wear.”) But the issue isn't “dressing up.” It's really just “dressing nicely.” Just a modicum of effort to not look terrible.

Image from http://www.peopleofwalmart.com

I like to think of it as analogous to proper spelling and grammar use on the Internet. The fact that it does require some effort to present yourself well, coupled with the comforting shield of anonymity (“I'm not going to see anybody I know”), may tempt you to let your standards slip, just because it's easier. It's not like it's a job interview, right? It's not your resume! It's just the Internet! It's just Wal-Mart, for God's sake! It's not like people are judging you based on what you're wearing!

And that, in fact, is the crucial assumption: people are judging you, no matter where you go. You might think that they're too busy trying to get everything they need so they can get home and cook dinner, and maybe some of them are... but probably, some of them aren't. But hey—that's okay! You don't give a damn what they think, do you? What right do they have to judge you? They don't even know you. Maybe you're dressed this way because you've got the flu, or your grandmother just died, and it was all you could do to drag your carcass out of bed to Wal-Mart to get more chicken soup and tissues.

Okay, that's fine. I suppose I can't say with certainty whether such an excuse applies to any one particular shopper, so I can't soundly make a judgment about any particular person I see based on what they're wearing on any particular day. But I think I can safely presume that it doesn't apply to everyone at Wal-Mart all the time, which means that I can soundly make a judgment about people and their appearances on a more general level.

I really think it's a shame that the common discourse (both appearance-wise and language-wise) has degenerated as far as it has. When you dress up for a job interview, and when you take the trouble to compose a typo-free resume, the effort you expend is a sign of respect for your audience. Your effort demonstrates that you do care about what they think, because you value their opinion enough to put in the effort to make sure that it's a positive one. If you don't care what people think, you don't put in the effort. So, when people put in little or no effort to make themselves presentable, I essentially see it as a sign of general disdain for the opinions of everyone who's going to see them that day. And this is why I think it's much worse to look shabby at Wal-Mart than to look shabby at the corner store: so many more people are going to see you! I just think it's unfortunate that so many people are giving this big sartorial "fuck you" to the rest of the world on such a regular basis.

All I ask is a little effort. I don't think that's unreasonable. And besides—you never know who you're going to run into.

I'm not going to go out of my way to link to every piece of True Prep media coverage, but because I love Colbert so much—and because he's part of True Prep's Preppy Pantheon—I had to post this video from last night's episode (for Canadian residents only; if you're watching in the U.S., click here.) I just wish the interview had been longer!

Less than two weeks left! I'm not going to add too much of my own commentary, but it was really interesting to hear Ellen Mirojnick's thoughts about her costume designs for Wall Street and its upcoming sequel. The fascinating thing is thinking about who the characters are, what place and time they're in, and then thinking about how you reflect that in their clothes—how does that translate into wardrobe design. The contrast that I noted earlier, for example, between Gekko's casual clothes and his suits, is actually an evolution of his character over the course of the film. The casual clothes are at the beginning, when we first meet him and when he first meets Jacob Moore. He's lost his way a little bit. And so when he gets out of the off-the-rack stuff (Canali, e.g.) and back into the custom-made suits, it's a stylistic homecoming, but also a renaissance: he has to evolve. As Mirojnick says,

I didn't want to put him in contrast collar, I didn't want to put him back to exactly what he was. He was a groundbreaker at that time — he was outshining everyone around him — so why would he go back to that? Naturally, as a person of strong personality, such forceful instinct would progress. Sharks need to move forward. If they're not moving forward they're dying.

... is because, before I went to Chapters today, I went to H&M first, and ended up buying a couple of fantastic cotton sweaters for the fall.

My wardrobe has just been crying out for cable knits, and lo, the Good Lord provideth! I am absolutely loving H&M this season because they have great preppy sweaters and shirts that actually FIT my twiglike frame. (Sweaters are a nightmare for me to find a proper fit - even Ralph Lauren's "small" and Lacoste's size 3 are way too big for me.) And after seeing a perfect navy cardigan with white tipping (not in my size), and a perfect off-white tennis sweater with navy-and-green tipping around the V-neck and cuffs (also not in my size), I decided I had to seize these two before it was too late. That's the only thing I don't like about H&M: they always run out of small sizes first.