I posit that pink is the most underappreciated color in a gentleman’s pallet these days. A century old gender bias has forced too many men to keep pink at bay. For others, it remains a curiosity to be admired on others but they dare not try it themselves. Others still, dabble with good intentions but entirely misuse the color. Most men depend on darker shades of blue, gray and black as well as earth tones like browns and greens. An ideal accent color for all of these, when applied properly, is pink. Despite stereotypes, its application transcends all style categories and seasons. A splash of pink will add flavor to anyone’s closet with a few careful considerations.
Let’s begin with a consideration of pink unto itself. What a marvel of contradiction and embellishment. Pink endows an otherwise drab outfit with resplendence. Whether used as an accessory or a foundational garment, pink catches the eye. We have only to look to nature for the source of pink’s draw. Flowers have been the primary representation of natures beauty throughout human history and pink is the most floral of all sartorial colors. When viewed abstractly, adding pink to an outfit engages an observer like placing a flower on a mahogany dresser.
Pharrell Williams
Pink, more than any other color is shackled with a gender. Yet when artfully applied to menswear it exudes a masculine confidence. That confidence suggests a comfort in defying gender bias. Is it then removing or reinforcing said gender bias? The answer is both dependent upon the wearer and completely irrelevant. What matters is that no other color can elicit that kind of sociological debate.
Now this power is to be respected. Like any warm color, pink should be worn in measure. With the exception of some suits, you never want pink to exceed 50% of your outfit. Anything more than 25% should be approached with caution. If you stick in the 5% to 15% range then you can go nuts. You must also maintain a balance with corresponding colors. Pink goes as well with black as it does with white. Dark shades and earth tones work well. Denim is always a good choice. Just avoid red, yellow, orange and any warm colors.
Winslow Homer cannot officially be considered an Impressionist because he was from Massachusetts and not France but that geographic disconnection became a defining factor of Homer’s brilliance. While his technique was greatly influenced by his Parisian colleagues, his subject matter was distinctly New England. Just like Monet, his greatest muse was the Atlantic Ocean but Homer saw her from the other side and presented an entirely different aspect of her beauty. Homer’s Atlantic was defined by muted colors and suggested restless action. Homer’s work compared to the French Impressionists represented the distinction between American and French life at the turn of the twentieth century. The French were depicting idyllic landscapes and a life of leisure, always still and serene. While Homer’s subjects, whether at work or at play, constantly suggested motion – either fighting against nature or embracing it. The natural world is never still. Homer saw the beauty in that and captured his impression of it with paint on canvas and that, in my humble opinion, makes him an Impressionist.
Sunset Fires is my favorite work of Homer’s because it captures the incendiary tones of a North Atlantic sunset. The subject of the painting is the sky itself, blooming with orange as twilight creeps down from above. A schooner and a dingy are silhouetted against the vibrant colors. All the humans in the painting are going about their business, presumably at the end of a day laboring at sea, each merely a muddled shadow against the sunset’s reflection. I believe that this was Homer’s way of showing man’s insignificance before nature’s beauty.
Winslow Homer’s work is prolific and he’s one of America’s painters. Check out more of his work here.
Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images Edit: The Indubitable
Alessandro Michele is a visionary designer, that’s almost unanimously agreed upon in the fashion world. But the mastermind behind Gucci’s ascent over the past four years also has a genius for marketing. More specifically, co-opting the organically created cultural marketing of the brand that already existed by embracing the use of the Gucci name by entities outside the company rather than fighting them. Gucci is one of a handful of icon brands that have come to represent money and success but for some reason Gucci alone has transcended fashion and become an analogous term for being happy and successful.
Long before Michele became Creative Director of the Italian stalwart, the word “Gucci” had taken on a life of its own. This transformation can be traced back to hip-hop in the late 1990s. As Tom Ford was transforming Gucci into one of the hottest brands in the world, hip-hop was enjoying massive mainstream success and reaping the financial benefits that came with it. As wealth became a focal point for rappers, Gucci became one of the primary brands used to display their wealth.
A Guccighost version of Gucci’s classic Mule loafers
Phonetics almost certainly played a part in Gucci’s proliferation across the cultural landscape. If you vocalize the brands that existed at the top of the fashion world in the late 90’s and early 00’s – go ahead, say them with me – Louis Vuitton, Coach, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Hermes, none of them roll off the tongue as smoothly as Gucci. Hip-hop is an auditory medium first and foremost so it makes sense that the best sounding brand name received the most attention. There is also a long-standing practice in English language slang, dating back to Victorian London, where a similar sounding word will come to replace a word that has no other connection beyond phonetics. In this case, “Gucci” is a much more eloquent sounding stand in for “Good” while also carrying the double entendre representing wealth.
Pop-culture’s obsession with the word “Gucci” beyond the brand Gucci is best represented by Trevor Andrew. The Olympic-snowboarder-turned-graphic-artist gained a cult following from 2013 to 2016 by using the Gucci name and logos mixed with original designs in archaic graffiti formats done mostly in spray paint. The designs were clearly thought out but looked hurried and were done in simple, often neon colors. Social media grabbed ahold of Andrew’s work and it became the kind of organic marketing sensation that no amount of money could buy. So rather than spend money trying to sue Andrew for copyright infringement and stop him from using the Gucci name, Michele invited Andrew to Milan to work for him. Michele recognized that in the modern age where everyone is under a constant marketing blitz across all media platforms, the kind of organic buzz that Andrew produced was far more valuable than any marketing campaign. Andrew went to work designing a full line along with personally crafted one-off pieces under the name Guccighost. The line has been a sensation and another victory for Gucci.
Dapper Dan by GQ
Following the success of Guccighost, Gucci arranged another partnership with a would-be target for litigation. This time Michele partnered with perhaps the most legendary bootlegger in the history of high-end fashion. Harlem’s own Dapper Dan. GQ Style did a great piece in their Spring ’18 issue on the history of Dapper Dan’s work and the arrangement he has worked out with Gucci. In short, Dan spent 1982 to 1992 producing bespoke pieces for rappers, athletes and drug lords using the most expensive materials obtainable and hand produced, unsanctioned replicas of iconic fashion brands. The FBI shut him down for copyright infringement but his legend has only grown since. His pieces were all one of a kind and because of their illicit nature, they were not well documented. His work has become the kind of folklore, passed on only by word of mouth, which could only have been created under his unique circumstances. This kind of backstory is impossible to reproduce and the organic marketing potential it offered drew Michele’s attention. This partnership has only just begun but the hype behind it is huge and potentially very lucrative for both Gucci and Dapper Dan.
Guccighost and Dapper Dan offered two unique opportunities for the Gucci brand that Michele took advantage of. In both cases, the Gucci name and ethos were already involved even without the brand’s official sanction. Most other companies, especially ones as protective of their likeness as high-end fashion houses, would never have taken the risk of collaborating with a street artist and a notorious bootlegger. Michele overlooked the fact that these two designers had illicitly profited off the Gucci name and saw their work as a mutually beneficial opportunity. These designers offered a king of cool, a street cred, that no major brand can produce on their own. In order for a fashion giant like Gucci to garner the kind of social capital that a hip young company like Supreme has, they had to co-opt it where it already existed. Michele capitalized on these opportunities and it looks to be a growth strategy that he will continue to deploy as Gucci reigns atop the Fashion world.
Robert Redford is objectively cool in the truest sense – removed from any context of time, place or perspective. But what does that really mean? The term cool is universal and ubiquitous. Calling something cool should be a platitude by now but it has defied that cultural pitfall of over-satiation. Cool has retained its significance because we lack of a better term and probably don’t need one. It is thrown around in all cultures (allowing for translations into other languages) throughout the world. Cool is a concept not unlike faith, it depends entirely on feeling and cannot be articulated definitively because it depends on the eye of the beholder. To many people, the faith aspect can be taken even further. If, for example, music or fashion is your religion then cool is the faith you depend on as the foundation of your religion. In western culture of the twenty-first century, most people worship at the altar of cool.
Cool is certainly not a science, it cannot be quantified or defined by certain terms so that means that cool is a philosophical term. The beauty of a philosophy is that it is indefinite; meaning that it’s attributes and limits can change with time and are always open to interpretation and debate. The meaning of cool can be debated forever. It can be both subjective and objective. Very few things are universally cool but some do exist. At the same time, you can tell me something is cool and I can tell you that you’re wrong and we are both correct based on our own perspectives.
You can list attributes that make something cool but those attributes alone, removed from the subject in question, do not automatically make something cool. That is to say that cool is greater than the sum of its parts. We know it when we see it and we know it when we don’t see it but we cannot set a definitive line where cool separates from uncool. Yet, that line certainly exists. Given a list of subjects, you can divide them into cool and uncool. However, the criteria for those differentiations are amorphous and cannot always be articulated. So, we are left to rely on “we know cool when we see it.” Therefore, in a way, cool defines itself. A subject is cool because it just is and in being cool that subject contributes to the overall definition of cool. That is why one subject’s coolness is so often demonstrated by comparing it to another, well established subject. This logic leads to the philosophical conundrum of being able to give an infinite list of examples without being able to create a set definition for what qualifies those subjects. Thus, in the search for a definition of cool we will always have to rely on examples. So, to me, Robert Redford is the definition of cool.
This is one of my all time favorite pictures. Photographer Jill Freedman caught this whimsical moment in a pub in Ireland during the mid 1980’s. Not only does it stand alone as an entertaining piece of art but it makes a wonderful statement about the Irish culture.
A few years back I traveled across Ireland in a rental car with three of my best friends for eight days and had the most fun I’ve ever had on vacation. Irish culture is uniquely civilized and nonchalant simultaneously. The Irish people can trace their culture back linearly, with only a few interruptions from some Vikings and the British, over 2,000 years, a prestige that very few societies have. Their Gaelic language, which can be traced back to pre-Roman europe, is an ever-present reminder on street signs and place names that these people have been around a long time.
The people of this tiny little island have made a profound impact on modern western culture as well. I’ll breeze over their contributions to whiskey and beer (see: invented whiskey, Guinness rules the world). History geeks like myself dive into the complex details of how Irish monks maintained a vast collection of knowledge from classical Greece and Rome that was lost to the rest of Europe during the so-called Dark Ages. Historian Thomas Cahill wrote a great book about it.
However, Ireland’s impact on music and literature is unavoidable. It is well known that Ireland’s authors and poets comprise a roster unrivaled by any other country in the western world and I’ll fight you (verbally) on that. What is less known is that contemporary rock, folk and country music can all be traced back to American folk music from the 19th century created by Irish and Scottish immigrants who brought their traditional Celtic folk music with them to America. The Americanized style has now migrated back to Ireland and infused with it’s Celtic ancestry to form a beautiful hybrid that can be heard in pubs throughout the country.
Which brings me to my point of posting this photo (aside from it’s objective awesomeness), the Irish are unpretentious and le-se-faire while maintaining a profoundly important cultural heritage. Which is why the Irish would think nothing of a dapper old gentleman giving his pony a sip of his pint in a pub.
