Why this man has 150 bespoke suits in his closet

When Larry Richardson walks down the street in Victoria, people openly stare, and often ask if they can take his photograph. The 65-year-old knows he cuts a dashing figure in his vintage bespoke suit, bowler hat and wingtip leather shoes. Born a dandy, he revels in it.

“I’m never more photographed than when I’m in London,” says Richardson, who travels to Britain frequently in search of bespoke – or clothing tailored for a specific individual – treasures, some dating as far back as the mid-1830s but also including “some pretty wild” Carnaby Street suits from the 1960s. But he also causes a stir in his West Coast hometown, where his natty attire regularly slows traffic as he walks to work everyday at a nearby seniors’ home.

“The joy of collecting, to me, is not having the stuff in my basement, but in wearing it. I wouldn’t have top hats, for instance, if I didn’t want to wear a top hat myself. It’s my way of preserving things. Bespoke, sadly, is fading away. It’s becoming impractical.”

Over the years, Richardson has lovingly retrofitted his art-deco home to accommodate his vast collection, which includes 600 hats (top hats, fedoras, trilbys, homburgs and pork pies); 150 tailor-made suits (frock coats, morning and tailcoats, Privy Council uniforms, royal household, hunt dress and court attire) as well as other accoutrements, such as ascots, cufflinks, collar studs, leather and cloth gloves, spats and braces (or suspenders, in North American parlance). He also has alloted space for what he calls “boy toys from previous centuries,” including antique hip flasks.

“I’m interested in collecting anything that is no longer made,” says Richardson, who adds that his long-time partner, Albert, “has been indulgent of me. My hat space, alone, could be leased as rental accommodation.

“But when I’m fully dressed in an outfit I like – and it fits me well – I stand taller. It’s like putting on a suit of armour to go out and face the world. And I face it with a lot more ease when I’m well-dressed.”

Roughly 85 per cent of Richardson’s collection comes from Britain, where men’s wear etiquette dictates that day wear can’t be worn after 5 p.m.; evening wear before 5 p.m.; and that tweed should never be worn in the city on a weekday. “Although Fridays are allowed because it implies you’re going to the country,” Richardson explains.

Ten years ago, he would haunt London’s markets and thrift shops for bespoke suits and hats. Now his main go-to is eBay, primarily because supply is getting scarce as interest soars for quality, vintage men’s wear. “If I’m looking for something specific, I have to be prepared to pay for it, because there are no deals,” he says. “One of my favourite everyday suits is a green herringbone from [Savile Row tailor] Gieves & Hawkes. It’s an early 1960s, three-button, three-piece suit that I purchased three years ago for a bargain, about £130. Those deals are harder and harder to find.” (A new Savile Row bespoke suit can cost £2,500 to £8,000, or $4,275 to $13,700, depending on the tailor.)

He says his closets – which he built himself – look like a retail store, circa 1890. “I call it a gay man’s man cave. And I can spend hours down there, with my stuff.” The suits (including frock coats, morning and tailcoats, their accompanying waistcoats and trousers) occupy 12 wardrobes spread over three windowed rooms.

Rigid hats (i.e., top hats, bowlers and straw boaters) cannot be stacked. They take up six cabinets. “A top hat must sit on its lid,” says Richardson. “If you put a hat on its brim, you’ll look like Prince Philip at a garden party. He doesn’t have to care [how he looks]. But the rest of us do.”

His soft felt hats (he has 120 fedoras) are also stored upside-down for posterity’s sake. “Long after I’m gone, I hope there will be heads small enough to fit my top hats,” says Richardson. “I even collect suits that don’t fit. [But] if they’re no longer made, or are examples of excellence in 19th- or 20th-century bespoke tailoring, I have to have it.”

Richardson says bespoke is a dying trade, and he laments it. “Thirty years ago, I could have walked into two or three shops in Victoria and had a wonderful suit made. No more. Being seen in public is the joy I get. I wore white tie and tails to the Christmas party at the seniors’ home about 15 years ago, and this sweet little woman came up to me, with tears in her eyes, and said, ‘It’s been a lifetime since I’ve seen a man in white tie.’

“She would have been born before the turn of the century. She may well have gone to the balls at Government House here in Victoria, and dreamed of dancing with the Prince of Wales. It touched me deeply.”

GLOBE AND MAIL
TORONTO
GAYLE MACDONALD
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 14, 2017

#ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
JUNE 20, 2017 / 4:21 PM / A MONTH AGO
Man buns and cornrows: Barbie’s boyfriend Ken gets a makeover

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-life-kendoll-idUSKBN19B2YH

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Man buns, cornrows or bleached blond hair? Barbie’s longtime boyfriend Ken is getting a makeover with new hair styles, a range of body types, a hip wardrobe and skin tones for every ethnicity.

Toymaker Mattel on Tuesday announced 15 new Ken dolls, featuring seven skin tones, nine hairstyles and three body styles including a more muscular “broad” physique.

The move follows the introduction in 2016 of three new bodies – petite, tall and curvy – for Barbie that California-based Mattel said reflected a changing world.

Ken, Barbie’s faithful boyfriend of 56 years, is now catching up.

“We are redefining what a Barbie or Ken doll looks like to this generation,” Lisa McKnight, senior vice president and general manager for Barbie, said in a statement.

She said the variety of Ken dolls would allow girls to “further personalize the role they want him to play in Barbie’s world.”

Ken was invented in 1961 as Barbie’s buff, blue-eyed friend and has undergone many iterations including the first African-American Ken in 1981 and Earring Magic Ken in 1993, which became a big seller among gay men.

In 2004, his romance with Barbie was deemed over by Mattel, but the toymaker officially reunited them on Valentine’s Day in 2011.

The launch of the new Ken range follows declining sales of Barbie dolls around the world as girls increasingly turn to other dolls and electronic toys.

Mattel in April reported that Barbie sales declined 13 percent in the first quarter of 2017 when it also reported a much bigger than expected quarterly loss and cut its full-year sales growth forecast.

All 15 Ken dolls will be in toy stores later this year.

Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

ALWAYS interested in observations about menswear…from 1897!

Masculine attire at the present day, though simple and practical, has few points of beauty to recommend it. Briefly, it resolves itself into a series of woollen cylinders which changeth not from generation to generation.

http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7183131M/The_evolution_of_fashion

Stan Weston, 84, Dies; Sent G.I. Joe Marching Into Childhoods of Millions

By RICHARD SANDOMIRMAY 11, 2017

Stan Weston, whose concept for a military action figure became the heroic G.I. Joe, one of the most popular toys ever produced, died on May 1 at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 84.

His daughter, Cindy Winebaum, said the cause was complications from surgery.

In 1963, Mr. Weston was a successful licensing agent who represented properties and personalities like the television drama “Dr. Kildare,” the comedian Soupy Sales and the Kingston Trio folk music group. When he approached the Hasbro toy company, he believed he might be able to replicate the success of the Barbie doll, the plastic fashionista that was introduced by Mattel in 1959 and was followed two years later by her boyfriend, Ken.

From Elliott Handler, a founder of Mattel, he had learned that a popular product could spawn a big, continuous business, like Barbie’s outfits and accessories.

“Stan, you’ve got to sell them the razor,” Mr. Weston said, recalling Mr. Handler’s advice in the book “Mego 8-Inch Super Heroes: World’s Greatest Toys!” (2007) by Benjamin Holcomb. “Then you can sell them a lot of blades.”

After trolling the Encyclopaedia Britannica for a subject that might yield Barbie-esque success, he alighted on the men of the United States military, who wore many uniforms, wielded numerous weapons and drove various vehicles (read: accessories).

For his pitch to Hasbro, he mounted paraphernalia from military branches and flags on yellow cardboard, according to a 2012 article by his brother, Jay, in The Huffington Post. At a second meeting, Mr. Weston brought mock-up figures of a soldier, a Marine, a pilot and a sailor using small, flexible wooden models that he had purchased in an art supply store

“You will make a fortune with these,” Donald Levine, a Hasbro executive, told Mr. Weston, according to the article.

In a letter to Mr. Levine that confirmed his ideas, Mr. Weston said that a “complete military package” could be developed around “rugged-looking scale dolls for boys complete with military wardrobes to scale, military headgear to scale, military weapons to scale,” and armed service insignia, combat medals, sharpshooting awards and flags of the United States and the world.

As payment, Hasbro offered him $75,000 or a tiny royalty fee that was below the industry norm because he was new to the toy business, his daughter said. Eventually, he asked for $100,000, and Hasbro agreed.

“When he saw the line at the 1964 Toy Fair,” she said, “he knew he had made a mistake.”

Mr. Levine, a Korean War veteran, told NPR that he named the doll after watching the 1945 film “The Story of G.I. Joe,” and that it was his way to honor the armed forces. Manufacturing of the G.I. Joe figures, 12 inches tall, began in 1964, before American involvement in Vietnam had swelled and public faith in the government and the military had begun eroding.

Hasbro advertised G.I. Joe in a commercial with a martial-sounding song with the lyrics, “G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe, fighting man from head to toe, on the land, on the sea, in the air.”

Vincent Santelmo, who has written several books about G.I. Joe, recalled seeing displays of the action figure in a toy store in the Bronx when he was growing up. “My mother wasn’t fond of the war-toy thing, but she let me have them, and after that, my relatives purchased anything that had to do with Joe for me as gifts,” he said in a telephone interview. “Once in a while, an unsuspecting aunt would slip in a Ken. I could just tell by the style of the book that he wasn’t a G.I. Joe, and I put him to the side someplace.”

G.I. Joe was a breakthrough: a boy’s doll, only in battle dress, with a footlocker full of accessories that kept young fans hungry for more. More than 400 million G.I. Joe action figures had been sold in the United States by 2009, according to Toys and American Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010). And hundreds of G.I. Joe characters have been produced by Hasbro.

“It defined the beginning of the action figure category,” said Steve Pasierb, president and chief executive of the Toy Association, the trade group for manufacturers.

But the good times did not last forever. In the late 1970s, Hasbro shelved G.I. Joe, but it revived him as a three-and-three-quarter-inch figure several years later.

TWO of my favourites.