Mel Brooks: Ripped Jeans and Going Sockless

Robert Trachtenberg is writing and directing a documentary on Mel Brooks. The following is an excerpt from an interview he did with Brooks for the Spring issue of M Magazine. 

Robert Trachtenberg

A funny thing happened the other day.

You came to see the movie for the 

first time with a couple of executives

who shall remain nameless.  One of them--

Jordan Fields -- was wearing jeans with

a tear in the knee.  When the lights

came up, you immediatley noticed it and the 

the first thing you said was...

Mel Brooks

'You're too old for that.' Yeah.

I never saluted the knee-tear in 

jeans. Never. I've never gone along

with a lot of stuff.  Frank Yablans, big

movie producer, used to wear alligator

penny loafers with no socks.  He'd

cross his legs and you'd say, 'Hmmm,

doesn't work.' Great story: We were both

at Fox in the seventies. There was an executive 

parking lot, and I had a space there.

I'll never forget it -- one day I pulled up in 

in a silver '72 Honda Civic and Frank 

pulls up in a sleek black Rolls Royce.

He got out, looked at my Civic and said, 

"You know Mel, I'll never be big enough

to drive a car like that." 

                                                            

M Magazine on Paul Stuart & the End of an Era

"Grodd believed Americans needed an alternative to the overtly

stylish menswear from Europe and the repetitious predictability 

of the Ivy League look."

 (click image to read)

Jean Palmieri, veteran Fairchild editor since 1986,  reports on the recent sale of Paul Stuart to Mitsui. Opinions run the gamut, from Thom Browne to Alan Flusser and down 44th Street to Claudio Del Vecchio at the Golden Fleece.  I called Charlie Davidson when I heard about the sale:

  "It's the end of an era.  Brooks, Press, Stuart...That stretch of Madison Avenue...that was America.  Now, with the sale of Paul Stuart, it's all gone. It's all over."  CD