The Coat Route (27 page)

David Gould read portions of the book and offered his eloquent and much appreciated encouragement. I’m sure Mrs. Manahan is smiling. Susan Roy also read early drafts and was generous with her astute publishing and fashion advice. Terry Moffatt, as always, cheered me on. Joni B. Cole, Marjorie Mathews, and all the good folks at the Writer’s Center in White River Junction, Vermont, gave me guidance and kept me on track. Sam and Joanne Lukens read much of the manuscript and assured me that they would have liked it even if they weren’t my parents. T. Alan Broughton inspired me, way back when, to think of myself as a writer. My sincere thanks to them all.

I am forever indebted to my terrific agent, Deborah Grosvenor, of the Grosvenor Literary Agency, first for thinking that a book about an overcoat was a pretty good idea, and then for helping me shape it into something worthy of its home at Spiegel & Grau. I am also extremely grateful to Julie Grau and Hana Landes, my warm, wonderful, and wise editors. I don’t know how I got so lucky. Thanks to the rest of the Spiegel & Grau team, including Carol Anderson, Evan Camfield, and Laura Van der Veer, for taking such good care of me.

Thank you to my sister, Andrea, and to Suse, Leslie, Amy, Betsy, Cathie, Karin, Scooter, Wende, and the G3 gang for providing timely and much needed diversions.

Finally, my deepest thanks go to my husband, Michael, and my daughters, Kelley and Claudia, who put up with my absences, both physical and mental, and were there with love, good cheer, and, often, spaghetti carbonara when I returned. I couldn’t have done it without them.

NOTES
 

1
“One should either be a work”:
Oscar Wilde, “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young,”
The Chameleon
, 1894.

2
“The woolen-coat”:
Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations
, vol. 1, 6th ed., Introduction by Ernest Belfort Bax (London and New York: George Bell & Sons, 1908), p. 12.

INTRODUCTION

1
When did clothes become disposable?
Ferdows, Kasra, Michael A. Lewis, and Jose A. D. Machuca, “Rapid-Fire Fulfillment,”
Harvard Business Review
82, no. 11, November 2004.

2
“Finally, I went to the craftsmen”:
Plato, Five
Dialogues
, trans. George Maximillian Anthony Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2002), p. 27.

1. THE ROOTS

1
“I hold that gentleman to be”:
Anthony Trollope,
Thackeray
(London: Macmillan, 1879), p. 200.

2
Mick and Bianca Jagger:
James Sheridan,
Bespoke: The Men’s Style of Savile Row
(New York: Rizzoli, 2010), p. 208.

3
“It happened quickly”:
Richard Walker, The Savile Row Story:
An Illustrated History
(New York: Prion Books, 1988), p. 17.

4
“The perfect man, as conceived by”:
Anne Hollander,
Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 92.

5
The poster boy for this neoclassic:
Ian Kelly,
Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

6
“Who’s your fat friend?”
William Jesse,
The Life of George Brummell, Esq., Commonly Called Beau Brummell
(London: Saunders & Otley, 1844), p. 391.

7
The essayist Leigh Hunt was imprisoned:
Leigh Hunt,
The Examiner
, London, March 12, 1812.

8
Lord Byron observed that there were three:
Jesse,
The Life of George Brummell
, p. 15.

9
Brummell fascinated Virginia Woolf:
Virginia Woolf,
The Second Common Reader: Annotated Version
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003), p. 149.

10
“His excellence was entirely personal”:
Hollander,
Sex and Suits
, p. 9.

11
Sherman McCoy, the protagonist:
Tom Wolfe,
The Bonfire of the Vanities
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987), p. 93.

12
“People who are going to go”:
Andy Hawke, “Gieves & Hawkes Exclusive!”
British GQ
, April 25, 2011.

13
“In actual fact,” Hitchcock said:
“Love Thy Neighbour,” Savile Row, BBC 4, Episode One, Part 2, first aired February 4, 2008.

14
“a trap for men”:
“A Tailored Trap for Men,”
Life
, October 10, 1955, pp. 126–30.

15
The Armani look also bridged:
Woody Hochswender, “Review/Fashion: Images of Man, Labeled Armani,”
The New York Times
, December 21, 1990.

16
It didn’t help that the era’s:
Clover Hope, “The 15 Worst Dressed Men of Silicon Valley,”
GQ
, August 3, 2011.

17
Looking at the popularity:
Shira Ovide, “Perfect Fit: To Some Outfits, Nothing Speaks Like ‘Bespoke,’ ”
The Wall Street Journal
, May 3, 2012.

18
“It’s like Build-A-Bear”:
E. Palmieri and Brenner Thomas, “From Savile Row to Main Street: Custom Suits Go Mass,”
Women’s Wear Daily
, March 11, 2010.

19
Tailor Made’s website acknowledged:
www.tailormadelondon.com
.

20
“Mass luxury is not luxury at all”:
“Made to Treasure,”
South China Morning Post
, June 17, 2011.

21
Global Blue, a retail-market-research:
Simon O’Connell, “The Growing Complexity of the Chinese Shopper,”
www.luxurysociety.com
, April 13, 2012.

2. THE FLEECE

1
“What is this strange animal”:
Sylvan Stroock,
Vicuña: The World’s Finest Fabric
(New York: S. Stroock, 1937), p. 7.

2
As early as 1553:
Pedro Cieza de León,
The Incas
, ed. Victor Wolfgang Von Hagen, trans. Harriet De Onis (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959).

3
“Such in those times was”:
Garcilaso de la Vega,
First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Incas, vol. 2
, trans. Sir Paul Rycaut (London: M. Flesher, 1688), p. 195.

4
In 1768, viceroy Marqués:
Luis J. Cueto and Carlos F. Ponce,
Management of Vicuña: Its Contribution to Rural Development in the High Andes of Peru
(Rome: Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1985), p. 3.

5
“Yes, rare indeed is the vicuna”:
Stroock,
Vicuna: The World’s Finest Fabric
.

6
At Christmastime in 1938:
“Manufacturing: Stroock’s Fleece,” Time, January 2, 1939.

7
“As long as the lady is”:
Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D. M. Marshman, Jr.,
Sunset Boulevard
script, dated March 21, 1949.

8
Stanley Marcus, the former chairman:
Stanley Marcus,
Minding the Store
(Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1974) p. 190.

9
In 1955
,
Life
magazine reported:
“Glad Tidings About Glad Rags,” Life, July 11, 1955.

10
In 1957, Jack Kerouac wore an:
Ellis Amburn,
Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 262.

11
That same year, the slugger Ted Williams:
Tom Fitzgerald, “Open Season,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, July 8, 2002.

12
“I began to bellow and shout”:
Faith McNulty, “Peruvian Conservationist,” The
New Yorker
, October 4, 1976.

3. THE LINING

1
It didn’t hurt that:
Nicola White,
Reconstructing Italian Fashion: America and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry
(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), p. 38.

2
According to Confucius, the story:
Silk,
Mohair, Cashmere and Other Luxury Fabrics
, ed. Robert R. Franck (Cambridge, England: Woodhead Publishing, and Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, 2001).

3
In 2011, researchers from England:
Tom Gheysens et al., “Demineralization Enables Reeling of Wild Silkmoth Cocoons,”
Biomacromolecules
12, no. 6 (2011): 2257–66.

4
In the past two decades:
Peter S. Goodman, “China’s Silk Noose Tightens,”
The Washington Post
, December 18, 2003.

5
In one case, the Babei Textile Company:
James Kynge,
China Shakes the World
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006) p. 88.

6
With the production rate:
Guy Dinmore, “Tuscan Town Turns Against Chinese Migrants,”
Financial Times
, February 8, 2010.

7
What seemed to annoy some Italians:
Rachel Donadio, “Chinese Remake the ‘Made in Italy’ Fashion Label,”
The New York Times
, September 12, 2010.

8
The conversation makes me think:
Mary McCarthy,
The Stones of Florence
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 4.

4. THE MERCHANT

1
“I pity the man”:
Benjamin Harrison,
Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States
, compiled by Charles Hedges (New York: United States Book Company, 1892), p. 548.

2
Researchers from University College Dublin:
Browne, Mark et al., 2011. “Accumulation of Microplastic on Shorelines Worldwide: Sources and Sinks,”
Environmental Science and Technology
45, no. 21 (2011): 9175–79.

5
.
THE CLOTH

1
As Charlotte Brontë wrote:
Charlotte Brontë,
Shirley: A Tale
(London: Smith, Elder, 1849), p. 39.

2
“What loomed before them”:
Kirkpatrick Sale,
Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution
(Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1995), p. 8.

3
“Besides taking the children”:
John Ramsay McCulloch,
A Statistical Account of the British Empire
, vol. 2 (London: Charles Knight, 1837), p. 86.

4
“Cooped up in a heated atmosphere”:
P. Gaskell,
The Manufacturing Population of England
(London: Baldwin & Cradock, 1833), p. 202.

5
“It is too late now”:
Charles Wing,
Evils of the Factory System Demonstrated by Parliamentary Evidence
(London: Frank Cass, 1837), p. 28.

6
“Here … in the Huddersfields”:
James Morris,
The Road to Huddersfield: A Journey to Five Continents
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1963), p. 4.

7
“Cumbersome baggage will be”:
Harland Manchester, “New Suits Stay Pressed All Summer,”
Popular Science
, April 1952.

8
And there was the disheartening:
Crap Towns: The 50
Worst Places to Live in the UK
, ed. Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran (London: Boxtree, 2003).

6. THE BUTTONS

1
“It is wonderful, is it not?”
Charles Dickens, “What There Is in a Button,”
Household Words
, April 10, 1852.

2
“The men, women, children, country”:
Cecil Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times, 1819–1861
, vol. 1 (London: Cardinal, 1975), p. 119.

3
In
The Old Curiosity Shop:
Charles Dickens,
The Old Curiosity Shop
(Hertfordshire, U.K.: Wordsworth Classics, 1995), p. 44.

4
“Buttonholes! There is something lively”:
Laurence Sterne,
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
(London: James Cochrane, 1832), p. 270.

5
White wrote that the development:
Lynn T. White,
Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1978), p. 273.

6
It was a new social order:
Diane Epstein and Millicent Safro,
Buttons
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), p. 25.

7
In fifteenth-century London:
English Medieval Industries: Crafts, Techniques, Products
, ed. Blair and Nigel Ramsay (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1991), p. 373.