The best part of Hamish Anderson’s fluffernutter Wall Street Journal article lampooning the “spread collar” on men’s dress shirts was an editor’s note at the bottom: “The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.”
That’s a clumsy way of saying the story wasn’t an advertorial, even if it was. I rarely read fashion articles—and didn’t in the late-20th century when I wore a suit and tie (and usually cuff links) to work every day—but the “spread slur” reeled me in, and was worth a couple of salty chuckles.
Just as the old phrase, often attributed to P.T. Barnum, “Any publicity is good publicity,” (when there were far more publicists performing a scummy job and routinely ridiculed, but for an often-decent salary), sometimes true, sometimes not, was heard every day, I’d imagine that the WSJ editors, and author of this dross, are just happy that people read it at all. To revive a slogan that was temporarily popular at the same time the never-out-of-style spread collar wasn’t dismissed, “Mission Accomplished”! (I’d add that George W. Bush nostalgia is still maybe five years away, even if you can smell the start of that trend.)
On the record (another anachronism), these are the retailers included in Hamish’s advertorial: SuitSupply, Reiss, Bonobos, Armoury, Drake’s, Todd Snyder’s and 100Hands.
Not mentioned in the article is Harvie and Hudson (established in 1949), whose branch on Jermyn Street in London I shopped at on dozens of occasions in the late-1980s and 1990s—also, representatives would travel to Manhattan annually, setting up in a hotel, and three of my brothers and I would often stop in—for spread and straight collar shirts, ties and, once we were well-acquainted, demure chats about current events.
As a kid and young adult I usually wore half-cotton/half-poly button-down shirts, a relatively inexpensive fallback since I knew zip about “dressing like a gentleman,” but in 1987, on a lark I had a blue and yellow striped button-down made by a tailor at Harvie and Hudson (his distaste for my request was muted but unmistakable) and it’s still in my closet, despite the frayed cuffs. I did have a suit made in London (at Savile Row’s Anderson Sheppard), but that’s a laborious process—three fittings over six weeks), so most of them came from Paul Stuart on Madison Ave. and a few from Barneys. Also, two excellent linen suits—light green and off-white—from Bernard Hill (which had locations in Baltimore and Manhattan, now closed) and a three-piece number made by Alan Flusser for my wedding.
I rarely get “dressed up” now—few occasions call for it, save weddings and memorials—and I’m not particularly nostalgic about that since every kind of culture evolves (and devolves) but will say that if I were asked in, say, 1996, if I’d often wear a suit at the age of 68, I’d have answered in the affirmative. My Uncles Joe and Pete, at family dinners at restaurants like Primavera and Sparks, were reliably well-turned out, and Joe always included a pocket square, and they’d make slightly derisive remarks about customers who were sloppily-attired.
Anyway, here’s one bit of silliness from author Anderson: “Though they’re often unflattering and can make faces look wider due to their relatively horizontal planes, these collars have spread like a stain in menswear in recent years. You’ll find them tainting everything from polos to summery linen button-ups to office shirts.” I haven’t noticed the “taint,” and, just a guess, men in a younger demographic probably haven’t either.
The photo above, snapped by Michael Gentile, is of John Waters and me at a New York Press “Best of Manhattan” party at Soho’s Puck Building at a time when no one had yet heard of Uber or Lyft. (And how in the world is no one willing to give him enough money to make Liarmouth?) Look at the following clues to guess the year:
T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity are published; Lloyd Bentsen (who was no Jack Kennedy) steps down as Treasury Secretary; Courtney Love punches Kathleen Hanna in the face backstage at Lollapalooza; the Dow closes above 4000 (and later 5000) for the first time; John Daly wins the British Open; the horrendous Denver International Airport opens; the New Jersey Devils win the Stanley Cup; Timothée Chalamet is born and Eazy-E dies; Chief Keef is born and Burl Ives dies; Newsday’s Jim Dwyer nabs a Pulitzer for Commentary; Frank Bruno wins WBC heavyweight championship; Seamus Heaney takes Literature Nobel Prize; incredibly, Waterworld is the year’s ninth-highest grossing film, with over $264 million; Stephen Henry wins the World Snooker Championship; Billy Corgan shaves his head; and the remaining Beatles unwisely release “Free As a Bird.”
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023