"SAVILE ROW": a film

Recently I watched a documentary called "Savile Row" about the famous suit-makers.  The tailors have achieved a satisfying reconciliation between high end luxury (the suits can cost thousands) and conscientious parsimony (the suits last forever -- not just a lifetime but for generations).  The kernel idea of the narrative was that Abercrombie and Fitch had just moved into a big old building on the street and they were spoiling the venue by being modern, vulgar and cheap.  I didn't quite get that because I thought Abercrombie and Fitch were also high end.  Wrong.  

"Abercrombie and Fitch is an American lifestyle retailer that focuses on upscale casual wear. Its headquarters are in New Albany, Ohio."   https://www.abercrombie.cn/en_CN/home  This looks like a mix of outdoors, semi-military, expedition wear.  I had a safari jacket from them.  Wore it out. Thought I was in an Isak Dinesen story.  (Also had an Antarctex sheepskin coat until someone stole it out of the hunting gear at Scriver's.)

The peculiar thing about the film about Savile Row is that all the advertising for "A and F" depicts naked men!  No clothes at all.  They are very well-developed young men with heads cut off and ending below at the Adonis belt, also called the "iliac furrow" that marks the top of the groin.  Large photos of torsos are on all the shopping bags.  No hair whatsoever.  An advertising version of sexy, I guess.  Not allowed to smell.

Photos of the customers waiting to get in at the opening include no one who looks like this, though there are paid models inside.  (Pants on, worn low.)  It's raining (it's England) and there are women.  Everyone is young and rather grungey.  We're told that the clothes offered are mostly t-shirts and jeans, worn with flip-flops.  The bare models were not at all sexy to me -- maybe to others.

In the bespoke suit shops that otherwise fill the street and are seen as highly desirable tenants because they bring in money and class, most customers are old because it takes time to make money.  This is not seen as a bad thing.  (I'm told that those who make sex-dolls for women have changed their molds to create dummies with "dad bods," a little paunchy.)

Satisfying shots of tailors at work in large rooms suitable for hanging trophy heads of African animals with very long horns abound.  This a business supported by 19th century colonization and exploration, Brit glory.  One man of the type explains his suit.  He tells us it is exceptionally comfortable in every situation, which is good since one will probably wear it constantly.  We are shown that the label is modestly sewn inside a pocket, so as not to brag to those who can't tell by looking.  There are special pockets according to the needs: fountain pen, watch, keys, handkerchief, clippers, nail file, Swiss folding knife, kinds of papers and moneys -- some with zips to keep contents guarded.  One supposes possibly a compass and, of course, today's electronic gizmos.  The major jacket itself takes months to adjust, baste, pad, and ease -- on the customer, of course.  Finally we drive off to see the remote source of the particular well-known, and greatly loved source of the tweeds.

Near the end, one of the men demonstrates the accumulation of family tail-coats, dinner suits, military uniforms and so on needed by Englishmen of a certain class.  He shows his great-grandfather's jacket which he considers to be of great age: sewn in 1960.  (I was in college.)

When I lived a few blocks from the Lloyd Center ('70's) and had a little dog that needed to be walked at bedtime, I often stood for a while at the windows of Marios.  https://shop.mitchellstores.com/t/mens  The clothes were only men's and almost as high-end as Saville Row, with clever tabs and collars, unique pockets, suede elbow-patches, special buttons, subtle but sensual colors.  They were meant for slender but athletic young men, possibly gays or blacks -- men who really cared about how they looked.

When there is writing about sex/gender, it is often by youngsters who -- like a horse we once had -- only operate sexually at two speeds: fast-as-you can-go and stop.  Older people with more dimension have many more modes and speeds, but I've read few pieces about females who identify as males in terms of life-styles, something like gender nonconforming, because of reading so many novels and seeing so many movies and living so many scenarios in which males are the protagonists, maybe in pairs but not lovers.  Huck and Tom, you know.  "Penrod and Sam" (Booth Tarkington's version), "Two Little Savages" (Ernest Thompson Seton's version.)  Even adult versions like Matthiesen and Schaller expeditions. ("The Snow Leopard.")

I'm not lesbian, I just wish I were more like Katherine Hepburn.  I don't want to kiss Katherine anymore than Spencer, but I would like to be built like her so I could wear suits from Marios.  (Savile Row is too much to aspire to.)  I don't need to be sexy or to attract partners -- I just want to embody that ease and style.

Somehow this seems to be related to a category of novels about gay young men, lovers to powerful older men, that are written by lesbian women.  Mary Renault and Patricia Nell Warren are among them.  (The latter died just now.  I'm so glad she was able to be herself, cherished by others.  I should find a bio of Renault.)  Maybe it's that these women's physical/sexual selves were able to identify with the male freedom to attach and perform as they please, which is supposed to be the idea of the protagonists of novels.  The reader is free to invest in them emotionally without being forced into crinolines and brassieres.  No one will question what they wear, the class and convenience will be a moot point, obvious to those who care, even if they were picked up in a second-hand shop.  They used to tell us that using the male pronoun was meant to include women.  I would like that to be true.