SUIT YOURSELF
CHAPTER 10: ITâS ALL ABOUT TAILORING
JOE STRUMMERâhobo chic. With his sport coat, hat, and two-tone shirt, Joe looks like a cross between Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless and an American outlaw. Photograph by Roberta Bayley.
Tailoring, for me, is the heart and soul of rock & roll fashion: the tailored topcoat, jacket, pant, and vest. When you consider music history, every important artistâs look was based on tailoring, be it Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, or John Lee Hooker. The Chicago blues players wore a tailored suit: a jacket, a shirt, a tie, a vest, and trousers. Over time, wearing just the individual pieces has become more popular among musicians, rather than putting on the entire three-piece suitâexcept for traditionalists like Leonard Cohen and some young bands whoâve acquired a taste for tailoring, such as Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, and the Strokes.
I became interested in tailoring when I was young. As a kid, I never wanted to wear a suit, but then I saw cool-looking bands wearing them, and that totally changed my thinking. I loved the modsâ custom-made, three-button, Italian-styled suits with skinny lapels, short jackets, and narrow pantsâperfect for riding a scooter or Vespa.
Dylan transformed his look in 1965, when he toured England and picked up his pegged pants, polka-dot shirts, and tailored jackets on Carnaby Street. Some British groups started going for longer jackets inspired by Englandâs Edwardian period, with a silhouette more like an hourglass, and Kingâs Road shops were a prime source for these. Granny Takes a Trip made crushedvelvet jackets and suits, giving us the rock & roll dandy. They also took a classic shape such as the two-button suit and created the garments in exotic fabrics. In the 1970s, Roxy Musicâs front man and fashion plate, Bryan Ferry, wore eye-catching custom-made suits. Some of the design ideas from these halcyon days are still with us. Paul Smith said in the book Rock Fashion, âIt was really the [London] shops of the times that led the bands and then the bands who make a particular look [like] the neat, modinspired look. . ..They all made the looks that the bands took on, and that led to acceptance by the mainstream. These shop owners and designers were the unsung heroes of fashion.â
Over the decades, the changes in tailoring styles, such as the width of the trouser leg, have affected other garments. For example, the bell-bottom jean came from the bell-bottom tailored garment, and both wide-leg and skinny jeans started as a suit style. Every season for my new collection, I begin with the tailoring. Whether itâs casual, funky, or chic and elegant, tailoring is at the root of every collection I design. In menswear, the tailoring is what differentiates one designer from another; along with cut, shape, and fit, itâs important how you make a statement with fabric. Changes in menâs tailoring tend to come as a gradual evolution: the lapel gets slightly wider or narrower; the pant gets a bit trimmer; the rise on a pant gets shorter or longer. In the last ten years, narrow pants and skinny jeans have become popular; a heavier guy feels slimmer in these, and a slimmer guy just feels kind of cool wearing them. With a tailored jacket, the shoulders can make you look stronger, tougher, or very sexy, depending on the cut.
Paul & Pete: PAUL WELLER, whose band the Jam took its style cues from the Whoâs mod period, with PETE TOWNSHEND.
Photograph by Janette Beckman.
âMod had had a vast effect on the bands...rather than vice versa...Townshend has always gone to great lengths to explain the influence mod had on him. Small Faces, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, and Marc Bolanâall of them came out of the mod scene.â
âPaul Weller, from Cool Cats, 1982
Onstage, artists want fabrics that reflect light so they stay cool while theyâre performing: they want lighter-weight clothes, textiles with sheen, fabrics they can move in and that arenât going to cause them to sweat under hot lights.
But rock & roll fashion isnât just about the stage. Fashion starts on the street, then artists grab it, make it their own, and take it to the stage. Of course, rock & roll fas...