MAKING THE MYTHby Réginald-Jérôme de MansWhy make a myth? I had that question re
MAKING THE MYTHby Réginald-Jérôme de MansWhy make a myth? I had that question reading David Dowsey’s Making the Cut, a history of the Australian tailoring firm John Cutler. By coincidence, I’d also finally got round to reading Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, his exploration of myth-making in the modern world, where pro wrestling is our morality play, the steak frites is a sort of French Eucharist, and soap flakes promise absolution to our flatware. It is blessedly easy to mythologize bespoke tailoring: its vocabulary is arcane and ancient, its true practitioners rare and its initiates often exult in being part of the elect – men (generally) who have not only cash, but the time and the unnatural will to have sought out a legendarily disappearing craft. Tailors now hold themselves out to be – or are held out to be by credulous bards in the media –not only that modern Jedi, actual craftsmen, but practitioners of a sort of wizardry, who lay hands on cloth and thread to create garments that transform the wearer – supposedly slimming the fat, straightening the stooped – into the icon he dreams of being. And the price of that magic is also of another world. In fact, it was the price of one Cutler garment that caused whatever global notoriety he enjoys, and which was the likely trigger for Making the Cut: in 2013, Meg Lukens Noonan came out with The Coat Route, an examination of all of the materials and crafts that went into the creation of a $50,000 custom coat Cutler made out of a length of vintage Dormeuil vicuña for a customer who had given him carte blanche. Noonan visited vicuña conservators in Peru, met with Cutler’s horn button suppliers and the smith who made the gold chain inside the coat, and interviewed Stefano Ricci, who supplied a length of his trademark garish silk for its lining, as well as, of course, Cutler in Sydney and his Canadian customer. Noonan found that nearly all of her interviewees were endangered species (now humanely herded and sheared instead of killed for their wool, the vicuñas are an adorable exception). For seeking them out, customers of bespoke clothing can pride themselves on being connoisseurs, not least the coat’s owner, who I believe has now ordered a second one. As it happens, Dowsey, the author of Making the Cut, first met Cutler (one of a long series of tailors of that name) on a Ricci-sponsored junket in Italy. Like its subject’s custom clothing, Making the Cut itself has been hard to obtain, exquisitely packaged and prohibitively priced: various special editions came with bottles of Scotch or lengths of vicuña cloth, all reminders of Cutler’s creating the most expensive coat known to popular imagination. Making your vanity book so rare and expensive it itself is a luxury item seems a strange way to make a myth, to get the word out about your subject. Certain of the Savile Row tailors Making the Cut explicitly references sell their books on their websites and through online booksellers, and use their publication to do tie-in articles and pictorials in magazines like The Rake and Vanity Fair. Making the Cut definitely draws on those dutiful and dry tailors’ histories for inspiration. It repeats their narrative arc: heroic founder, struggle of heirs against unforeseen challenges, and eventual restoration to a secure footing, recounting the Cutler dynasty’s immigration to Australia and gradual development into a prestigious bespoke tailoring business making for the rather colorful Australian great and good – athletes, hotheaded sheep farmers, politicians and businessmen. Dowsey compares the Cutlers’ rise to that of another traditional bespoke craftsman who had emigrated to Australia, John Lobb, who became successful making boots during the gold rush there before returning to London and opening what is undoubtedly the most famous custom shoemaker in the world. The Lobb family’s own history, The Last Shall be First, came out 45 years ago. Making the Cut seems intended to set Cutler among these otherwise British legends of traditional craft.But why? The reasons the British tailors and bootmakers whose stories set the pattern for Making the Cut came out with books were apparent: age-old houses, many under different, corporate ownership now, seeking to spread their reputations in an age of new accessibility. Their continuity was assured. In contrast, Making the Cut itself notes that the current John Cutler’s children are not likely to enter the business, and that most of the cutters and coatmakers instrumental to custom clothing have gradually left. So this book, for all its painstaking immigration details, vivid recitation of John Cutler’s romantic histories and dozens of pages of press cuttings and customer pictorials, attempts to create a myth without much commercial justification – the justification for so much of today’s myths. Cutler the man, Cutler the business may soon be names out of time.Does recognizing the components of a modern myth collapse it? Both The Coat Route and Making the Cut approvingly inform the reader that no less an authority than Forbes magazine proclaimed that Cutler was one of the best tailors in the world. The reader must be expected to imagine that Steve Forbes (or Teve Torbes) himself announced this epiphany. Unfortunately, the article in question is a clickbait listicle from the Forbes website, which is better known for unhinged and unsupported op-eds that would make The Wall Street Journal opinion page blush. Its support for why Cutler is the best appears to be that a customer can also order a custom overcoat and a pair of shoes there. But any tailor who makes suits cam make an overcoat. As for being able to order shoes, if variety meant quality then the Chinese place near my house that also sells sushi and Thai food must be the best restaurant in the world. In any case, Cutler’s shoe offer was a special order service with the late Italian shoemaker Stefano Bemer, not a true bespoke service with a custom maker creating a wooden last for each customer and welting shoes by hand. For all I know, Cutler may be one of the best tailors in the world, but the Forbes list isn’t why. I have no personal experience with Cutler or any Australian tailors, but my friends and I have worn out the carpets at the good tailors of Paris, where the Forbes article recommends solely the bespoke section at the department store Galeries Lafayette, which is a bath-salts level of unreliable, crazy and stupid. None of us had ever heard anything memorable about this service, although my 2003 Paris sur mesure does mention, as an alternative to good full bespoke and cheaper made-to-measure tailors, a demi-mesure service at Galeries Lafayette, where customers could select cloth for a factory special order made to stock sizes, with the possibility of some alterations after the fact. But in no way could that compare with having someone who knows what he or she is doing measure, create a pattern for, fit and otherwise hand-tailor you. With Making the Cut, Cutler no longer needs to found its myth on Forbes’ shoddy support. It has all the architecture (long history and heritage, glossy photos and testimonials and mildly entertaining anecdotes) for today’s mythmaking, craft trades edition. Even if it’s a final snapshot for a family album.Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This post first appeared on the No Man blog in 2018. -- source link
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